Western Washington University Western CEDAR History Faculty and Staff ubP lications History Fall 2004 The luE sive Common Good: Religion and Civil Society in Massachusets: 1780-1833 Johann N. Neem Western Washington University,
[email protected] Follow this and additional works at: https://cedar.wwu.edu/history_facpubs Part of the History Commons Recommended Citation Neem, Johann N., "The Elusive Common Good: Religion and Civil Society in Massachusets: 1780-1833" (2004). History Faculty and Staff Publications. 4. https://cedar.wwu.edu/history_facpubs/4 This Article is brought to you for free and open access by the History at Western CEDAR. It has been accepted for inclusion in History Faculty and Staff Publications by an authorized administrator of Western CEDAR. For more information, please contact
[email protected]. The Elusive Common Good Religion and Civil Society in Massachusetts, 1780-1833 JOHANN N. NEEM In 1810, Theophilus Parsons, the Federalist chief justice of the Massachusetts Supreme Court, argued that the state need not recog- nize voluntary churches, calling the idea "too absurd to be admitted." In contrast, the modern idea of civil society is premised on the right of individual citizens to associate and for their institutions to gain the legal privileges connected with incorporation.' Federalists did not share this idea. They believed that in a republic the people's interests and the state's interests were the same, since voters elected their own rulers. JohannN. Neem, AssistantProfessor of History,Western Washington Univer- sity, is a postdoctoral fellow at the Center on Religion and Democracy at the University of Virginia. At Virginia, he thanks his adviser Peter S.