The search for religious freedom is what brought the Pilgrims to what is now the US in 1620. As William Bradford wrote in his History of Plymouth Plantation, they were determined, "whatever it might cost them, to shake off the anti-Christian bondage."
Still, the colonies, and later states, persecuted believers of other sects. For example, Baptists in Episcopalian Virginia who preached, did not pay taxes to the state church, or failed to baptize their infants were jailed, beaten with bludgeons, whipped, stoned, tortured, shot, or accused of child abuse. Rhode Island was founded by Roger Williams after he was exiled from Massachusetts for his divergent Christian beliefs. Maryland was founded as a safe haven for Catholics who were banned from various other colonies.
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| A Virginia Baptist pastor is waterboarded in 1778 by Episcopalian church-state authorities. |
The Founding Fathers, descendents of those who fled persecution in Europe, saw firsthand how religious establishment worked in their own states and determined to take extreme diligence and care to ensure the federal government would not make any laws concerning religious establishment or encroach upon religious freedom. They considered this right so important they defended it in the First Amendment: "Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof..."
Hence, it is unlikely that freedom of religion in the US will ever be attacked blatantly and directly. Instead, freedom of religion today is insidiously attacked through attrition. Two of the most egregious encroachments apparent to me are through:
The Establishment of Statolatry
Tithes to the Established Deity of State
