The Ohio Valley: Testing Ground for America's Experiment in Religious Pluralism

Abstract

The most extensive early test of the American dogma of the separation of church and state seems to me to have taken place in pioneer Ohio, where a complete range of the plurality of America's religious associations first confronted public consciousness. Unlike Kentucky, whose many Protestant denominations had a largely southern cast, and unlike upstate New York, whose culture was heavily under New England influence (or, at least, appeared to literate Yankees to be so), Ohio's early citizens came from a wide mix of puritan, mid-Atlantic, and southern backgrounds. For example, every sect of Pennsylvania Germans established major outposts in Ohio's developing counties. The Buckeye State early brought together several concentrations of Roman Catholics. Early and late, diverse communities of Jews also settled there, both in smaller towns as well as in Cincinnati, Columbus, and Cleveland. Also at the end of the nineteenth century, Eastern Orthodox Christians began a migration to Cleveland that later expanded into the larger industrial towns that grew southward, in such places as Toledo, Canton, and Youngstown.