Religious Freedom?

[Sophus]

When they say Europeans came to America to avoid religious persecution do they really mean some harmless sect of Christianity was suffering from intolerance or were their religious beliefs so crazy that nobody could to put up with them anymore? Because we got stuck with groups like the Puritans. Is this why it is taking America longer to shake off religion and we still ostensibly have more literalists and Creationists and bigots than most of Europe?  

[DJAkuma]

Weren't the quakers and amish part of it too? If so, then yes, it was the crazy ones that didn't want people in england to make fun of them anymore.  Fat lot of good it did them though since people here think they're nutjobs too.

[Inevitable Droid]

Is this why it is taking America longer to shake off religion and we still ostensibly have more literalists and Creationists and bigots than most of Europe?  

As is my wont, I googled, and found a brief article with insightful reader comments: Why Is America So Religious? - http://blow.blogs.nytimes.com/2008/09/29/why-is-america-so-religious/

Two sets of comments struck me as most interesting:

5. September 29, 2008
3:52 pm
 
I am a lifelong skeptic and non-believer, but I have also enjoyed studying religion and religious history in detail over the past 30 years.

I think that the United States’s outlier status has three causes:

(1) exaggerated over-reporting of religious belief and observance by respondents to polls, who don’t want to admit that they don’t actually believe in the doctrines of the religions in which they were brought up and merely pretend to believe for complex social and emotional reasons;

(2) the competition between religious sects and denominations as a result of two centuries of religious freedom and the lack of government sponsorship of / meddling in religion; and

(3) the strong current of anti-intellectualism in American culture, going as far back as the 1820s, and as documented in Susan Jacoby’s latest book, “The Age of American Unreason.” Widespread denigration or devaluation of real learning, reason, careful inquiry, etc. has led to equally widespread belief in New Age superstitions, paranormal woo-woo, and fundamentalist revivalist religion.

Jeff D

â€" Jeff D

12. September 29, 2008
4:01 pm

These are hypotheses, nothing more:

1. Most of the Western European countries in that chart are more socialist than the USA; people in those countries might view their governments as the benevolent higher power.

2. The USA was more rural for a longer period than its peers, with the Church fulfilling the functions that, in other jurisdictions, were fulfilled by government.

3. The US Government, by articulating the separation of church vs. state, made it easier for churches to avoid being subsumed into governments than was the case overseas.

â€" Richard C

[Beelzebub's Grandson]

The "Separation of Church and State," for the founders of this country, was in their context a separation of THE Church (Catholic) from the State. It was for them a means of following their own way in sacred observance. So the idea of "Freedom FROM Religion" is false, at least in what the Founders of the USA intended.

[LegendarySandwich]

The "Separation of Church and State," for the founders of this country, was in their context a separation of THE Church (Catholic) from the State. It was for them a means of following their own way in sacred observance. So the idea of "Freedom FROM Religion" is false, at least in what the Founders of the USA intended.

That sounds like bullshit to me. I'm pretty darn sure that the Founding Fathers wanted religion completely separate from government.

[Beelzebub's Grandson]

The "Separation of Church and State," for the founders of this country, was in their context a separation of THE Church (Catholic) from the State. It was for them a means of following their own way in sacred observance. So the idea of "Freedom FROM Religion" is false, at least in what the Founders of the USA intended.

That sounds like bullshit to me. I'm pretty darn sure that the Founding Fathers wanted religion completely separate from government.

I do not mean to imply otherwise. I simply mean that the Founding Fathers were not attempting to create an atheist state. When I said it was a means of following their own way of sacred observance, this does not mean it was written into law that you have to. I was speaking to the current popular notion that America was meant to rid Humans of Religion. That is simply not true.

[Cycel]

The "Separation of Church and State," for the founders of this country, was in their context a separation of THE Church (Catholic) from the State. It was for them a means of following their own way in sacred observance. So the idea of "Freedom FROM Religion" is false, at least in what the Founders of the USA intended.

I don't have any expertise in this area of study but I think the desire of the founding fathers was to prevent the establishment of a state sponsored church, such as the Church of England overseas.  Unless I am mistaken It was the only body, for example, permitted to perform marriages in England.  The Puritans arrived here as much for political reasons as religious and in their early years attempted to establish state sponsored religion on the model of the Anglican church in England.  So the intention of the founding fathers was very much directed at preventing that from happening.  The separation of church and state was meant to prevent government from becoming involved in the affairs of religion, thus guaranteeing personal rights against the threat of theocracy.  Many of the founding fathers, themselves Deists, had little use for organized religion of any kind. This is made quite clear in many of their surviving letters.  If their intention had been the suppression of Catholicism then they would simply have passed laws discouraging the spread of Catholicism.

[Inevitable Droid]

I simply mean that the Founding Fathers were not attempting to create an atheist state.

Probably true.  But they were certainly attempting to create, and did create, a secular one.  How are you relating your main point to the Original Post of this thread?

When I said it was a means of following their own way of sacred observance, this does not mean it was written into law that you have to. I was speaking to the current popular notion that America was meant to rid Humans of Religion. That is simply not true.

They meant to rid government of religion.  And rid it they did, mostly*.  Unfortunately the voters still cling to religion, which causes politicians to at least give lip service to it, and sometimes make campaign promises in light of it, which they then fulfill, to the detriment of humanity; for example, the moratorium on developing new lines of stem cells.
 
* The tax break for churches makes no sense in a secular country and should be challenged Constitutionally.

[Sophus]

The "Separation of Church and State," for the founders of this country, was in their context a separation of THE Church (Catholic) from the State. It was for them a means of following their own way in sacred observance. So the idea of "Freedom FROM Religion" is false, at least in what the Founders of the USA intended.

That sounds like bullshit to me. I'm pretty darn sure that the Founding Fathers wanted religion completely separate from government.

I do not mean to imply otherwise. I simply mean that the Founding Fathers were not attempting to create an atheist state. When I said it was a means of following their own way of sacred observance, this does not mean it was written into law that you have to. I was speaking to the current popular notion that America was meant to rid Humans of Religion. That is simply not true.

Umm... I never said that they did. We have a secular government not an "atheist state". This thread is about the history dating back before the founding fathers, and whether or not the early Europeans to travel here were religious radicals outcast from their own countries.