Holy Experiment Day

What the day is

Holy Experiment Day is observed on March 4. The phrase Holy Experiment was William Penn's own name for the colony of Pennsylvania, which he founded as a place where people of different faiths could live together in peace. The date matches the anniversary of the royal charter that created the colony, signed by King Charles II on March 4, 1681, although the origin of the observance itself is not documented.

It is a chance to learn about an early and influential experiment in religious tolerance in the American colonies.

Origin and background

William Penn was an English Quaker, a member of a faith that faced harsh persecution in England at the time. The king owed a large debt to Penn's late father, Admiral Sir William Penn, and settled it by granting the son a large tract of land in North America. The king named the territory Pennsylvania, meaning Penn's woods, in honor of the admiral, a naming that the modest Penn is said to have found embarrassing.

Penn's plan, which he called the Holy Experiment, was to build a colony based on freedom of conscience, fair dealing with the Native peoples and a representative government. He designed Philadelphia, whose name means brotherly love, on an orderly grid of streets. The colony attracted Quakers, Germans, Scots-Irish, Swedes, Dutch and others, and it became known for religious diversity.

The record was not perfect. Penn himself owned enslaved people, and relations with the Lenape and other Native nations worsened after his death. Still, the colony's early laws on religious liberty influenced later American ideas, and Pennsylvania was a major center of the founding era.

How to take part

• Read a short biography of William Penn and the founding of Pennsylvania.
• Visit Philadelphia's historic sites, including Penn's Landing and Independence Hall, or look up their history online.
• Learn about the Quaker meeting, in which worshippers sit in silence until moved to speak.
• Talk about what religious tolerance means today, and where it is still tested.
• Read the Pennsylvania Charter of 1681 or an excerpt, available from the state archives.