Remember Nathaniel Hawthorne’s Puritan society in his novel, The Scarlet Letter? Poor Hester Prynne violated the laws of the church, which meant that she broke society’s laws, too. At the beginning of the novel, the reader joins Hester as she leaves the safety of the town prison and makes her way back into the society that jailed her. Reading the book for the first time in the 11th grade, I had a hard time understanding how, in a free society, the religion of one group could also form its judicial system. That makes the laws of God the same thing as the laws of man. Separation of church and state was also an 11th grade U.S. history lesson, so we students figured no more Hesters could be jailed for breaking the laws of her religion . Or so we thought. We fought a war 250 years ago to separate the colonies from a king who was not only ruler of the government but leader of the church. A quick walk through British history shows what a mess that ideal leads to: remember Henry VIII
If you had a high school English teacher who was a 19th century British literary fanatic like I was, then you probably struggled with Charles Dickens and his classics a time or two. That means you remember a few of his best characters, like Pip and Oliver Twist, and you might even know that Dickens used many of his own life experiences to shape his novels. For example, Dickens’ father was taken to debtor’s prison, so young Charles had to provide income to his family by working in a blacking factory and other jobs that gave him particular insight into the horrors of child working conditions in the 19th century. If you’ve read Dickens, you’ve read about those conditions. But what you might not know is that those same horrors existed in this country, fueled by the Industrial Revolution and greed. Nineteenth century American industry used hungry children in manufacturing jobs because they were cheap and small, giving them access to dangerous jobs like cleaning machines and going whe