“Pray for Liberty of Conscience to revive among us”: The Myth of Religious Freedom in America
Seeded by members of religious groups, those either persecuted in England and Europe or sects at odds with the dominant doctrines passed down by heads of state and church authorities, America’s east coast became a haven for dozens of Protestant splinter sects and others as early as the 1500s. This new land offered something unheard of back home, religious freedom.
We all read that particular chapter in our elementary and junior high school books, with their drawings of earnest, black-garbed Pilgrims kneading bread dough, tilling the soil, or looking quizzically at ears of multi-colored corn. While it is true that those brave folks undertook a treacherous journey in order to practice as they wished, it is not true that they were ready to grant religious freedom to others.
From a review of archived documents in the Library of Congress we learn, “The religious persecution that drove settlers from Europe to the British North American colonies sprang from the conviction, held by Protestants and Catholics alike, that uniformity of religion must exist in any given society. This conviction rested on the belief that there was one true religion and that it was the duty of the civil authorities to impose it, forcibly if necessary, in the interest of saving the souls of all…