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voodoochild
[img]rc1.png[/img]



which of the follwoing if true would support the assertion that the settlers of Mass Bay Colony "were concerned by entanglements between church and state"?

1) they established a body of government in the colony that barred ministers from holding public office
2) they disagreed with the governing foundation in England in which the Anglican Church was headed by the King.
3) early settlers wanted to assume their own freedom of religion

a - 1 and 2
b - 3
c - 2
d - 3 and 2
e - 1 and 3


OA states A.


Why is A) correct? Why would the barring of ministers frm holding public office be considered entanglement between the church and the state? for 1) to be true, I have to assume that ministers were from Church.

Thoughts?

When we are talking about the way things were in US a couple of centuries ago, the word 'minister' refers to 'a member of the clergy; a religious minister' and is used in that way only here. It is not used in the context of 'Minister of State' or 'Finance Minister'.
If you have read something on skirmishes between the state and the church, you will see that 'minister' refers to a person from the church.
Now that I think about it, it may not be intuitive to people who read only newspapers. This is the reason we tell you that it is good to read books on different topics. The passage uses tricky language but you can easily figure out what it is telling you with some effort.

with all my respect for you Karishma and your preparation (you have a lot of it) but in my personal opinion I see a bunch of RC passages from a wide variety of sources and NO ONE emulate in a good manner the offical ones.

They seem more a paste and cut. OG Passages have, even when are really twisted, a fluency and a consistency.

Anyway, Thanks for your work :)
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Even I got the answer A. Even if u don't know that The Ministers here are religious clerks, I think you can still answer the question. The passage says that the ppl settled in Mass Bay Colony fled England and were concerned about the entanglements between Church and the govt. So, it makes sense that they wanna keep govt ppl away from holding religious positions and vice-versa to avoid the effects of the Church on the govt.
Makes sense? Correct me if I am wrong.
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voodoochild
[img]rc1.png[/img]



which of the follwoing if true would support the assertion that the settlers of Mass Bay Colony "were concerned by entanglements between church and state"?

1) they established a body of government in the colony that barred ministers from holding public office
2) they disagreed with the governing foundation in England in which the Anglican Church was headed by the King.
3) early settlers wanted to assume their own freedom of religion

a - 1 and 2
b - 3
c - 2
d - 3 and 2
e - 1 and 3


OA states A.


Why is A) correct? Why would the barring of ministers frm holding public office be considered entanglement between the church and the state? for 1) to be true, I have to assume that ministers were from Church.

Thoughts?

When we are talking about the way things were in US a couple of centuries ago, the word 'minister' refers to 'a member of the clergy; a religious minister' and is used in that way only here. It is not used in the context of 'Minister of State' or 'Finance Minister'.
If you have read something on skirmishes between the state and the church, you will see that 'minister' refers to a person from the church.
Now that I think about it, it may not be intuitive to people who read only newspapers. This is the reason we tell you that it is good to read books on different topics. The passage uses tricky language but you can easily figure out what it is telling you with some effort.


Karishma,
Thanks for your detailed response. The author doesn't state what happened in the new colonies. How do you know that ministers were from the Church? They could be native Americans too. The passage states that they were concerned about the entanglements between Church and govt in England (even 'UK'/'England' is not said), it doesn't state that such entanglements existed or possible in new colonies......I see your point about knowing outside stuff. I agree that this passage demands knowing something that's not supported in the passage. Please correct me if I am wrong - such answers by default are wrong in official guide/GMAT. Show me any one question that requires outside knowledge. There are a lot of passages in which answers can be false, if you know about the subject. For instance, there is a caffeine passage in OG....it's a good one. With the latest research, some of the answer choices are not supported at all, if you consider outside knowledge.....

I am not sure whether this RC is GMATlike...
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voodoochild


Karishma,
Thanks for your detailed response. The author doesn't state what happened in the new colonies. How do you know that ministers were from the Church? They could be native Americans too. The passage states that they were concerned about the entanglements between Church and govt in England (even 'UK'/'England' is not said), it doesn't state that such entanglements existed or possible in new colonies......I see your point about knowing outside stuff. I agree that this passage demands knowing something that's not supported in the passage. Please correct me if I am wrong - such answers by default are wrong in official guide/GMAT. Show me any one question that requires outside knowledge. There are a lot of passages in which answers can be false, if you know about the subject. For instance, there is a caffeine passage in OG....it's a good one. With the latest research, some of the answer choices are not supported at all, if you consider outside knowledge.....

I am not sure whether this RC is GMATlike...

You need to learn to learn from your mistakes and then move on. Over analyzing only wastes time.
As for this question requiring 'outside knowledge', it doesn't. I agree that some people may not immediately realize that 'minister' refers to 'members of the church'. It's something like the word 'difference'. For some people, difference between a and b implies 'a - b', for others it implies mod(a - b). Such words do appear in OG as well but we know that if GMAC finds cultural differences in performance of a particular question, they omit the question from the bank.
For me and many others, the question is very straight forward because instinctively, minister implies church minister to us. They are after all talking about separating the state and the church. It may not be so for you. So learn and move on.

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