“Is Not This a Paradox?” Public Morality and the Unitarian Defense of State-Supported Religion in Massachusetts, 1806–1833

The outcome of the legal and constitutional controversy leading to the fall of the state-supported religious establishment in Massachusetts followed a schism in the Congregationalist churches. In that controversy, Unitarians defended religious taxation as an expedient means to advance their desired ends of a public morality rooted in theological liberalism.