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million annually, the Vatican is the central administrative office of the Roman Catholic Church.
Here the Pope wields executive and judicial powers over a religious empire of over 63,000,000
members in thousands of churches. They have extensive real estate holdings (they own one-third
of Rome), own major companies and utilities and have controlling interests in others, possess
priceless works of art, religious artifacts, and massive deposits in Italian and foreign banks
(including America and Switzerland). It is rumored, that the Vatican owns 40-50% of the shares
quoted on the Italian Stock Exchanges, which is worth about $5 billion.
Vatican City has their own flag, their own bank, their own license plates (numbered from 1-
142), their own radio station (Radio Vatican, which reaches every country on earth with
broadcasts in thirty languages), their own newspaper (l´Osservatore Romano), their own post
office (issuing their own stamps), their own telephone system, the Institute for Religious Works
(established in 1942, which provides about $10 million a year towards their budget), a pharmacy,
a bar, a gas station, a train depot, and a printing plant. There are no taxes; and they issue their
own passports and citizenship papers. The neutral country is protected by 100 Swiss guards, and
150 Italian police.
Despite the efforts of the Catholic Church to destroy the Holy Bible, the Scriptures survived,
and in 1603, King James of England gathered 54 English scholars to assemble manuscripts to
prepare a Bible. They used the Antioch manuscripts, and the Jewish Massoretic text, completing
their work in 1611. The result was the King James Version of the Bible that was used by the
Episcopalians in England, and the Scottish Presbyterians. Today, it is the most widely accepted
version of the Scriptures in the world.
In England, two groups opposed the Church of England, because of the centralized control of
the Anglican Church and their elaborate rituals: the Puritans, who wanted to try and purify it
from within; and the Separatists, who felt that the Church was so corrupt, that it was beyond the
possibility of reform. To escape the persecution of King James, William Bradford led many to
Holland, in 1608; and in 1619, they joined a larger group in England and sailed to America on
the Mayflower, where the Separatists became known as Pilgrims. They had intended to land at
Virginia, but was blown off course, hundreds of miles north, where the 103 settlers floated into
the peninsula of Cape Cod in Massachusetts, in November of 1620.
Some of the Pilgrim leaders became worried about the group who had come from London
and Southampton, and to control their actions, 41 of them drew up plans for a civil government,
based on Christian principles, which became known as the Mayflower Compact. Bradford was
elected as their first Governor, and he established a system that was unlike the Jamestown colony
in Virginia (who were Anglicans), which was based on the communal theories of Plato and
Francis Bacon. Although half of the settlers died during the harsh winter, the success of the
Plymouth colony brought an influx of others seeking religious freedom from the dominance of
the Anglican Church of England. To protect their newly found freedom, their government took
on the form of a theocracy, which only allowed propertied church members to vote; and there
was no tolerance towards other religions.
As the population grew, the Puritans were unable to maintain their strict control, and other
colonies in New England were established as a haven from those frustrated with their rigidity.
Even though Puritan control was broken in the late 1600’s, the New England colonies which
welcomed Quakers and Jews, continued to ban Roman Catholic worship until 1783.
In 1624 the Dutch established a colony known as New Netherland, which was seized by the
British in 1664, and renamed New York. Various religious groups flourished there, such as the
Dutch Reformed, Swedish Lutherans, French Protestant (Huguenots), Quakers, and Jews. In