Religious Intolerance In American History

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Religious Intolerance in American History The stories that fill our history books and that are taught by teachers across this country today, oftentimes read like storybook fairytales with regard to important historical events in American History. Many may be surprised to learn that our history, surrounding matters of religion, is marred with controversy and depraved behavior that nonetheless shaped our country and made it what it is today. Thomas Tweed maintains in his book Retelling U.S. History that “To teach a history that excludes large areas of American culture and ignores the experiences of significant segments of the American people, is to teach a history that fails to touch us, that fails to explain America to us or to anyone else”…show more content…
Gary Wills stated in his book Head and Heart: A History of Christianity in America that “The Founders of the New England colonies did not come to America to protect any variety in religious practice, or to assert the primacy of individual’s conscience. Far from it” (Wills 19). These first settlers were against tolerance. One of the earliest known examples of religious intolerance can be found in the story of Roger Williams, a Puritan, who came to Massachusetts Bay Colony in 1631. Williams challenged social and religious norms within the colony which greatly angered Puritan leaders. In their book The Godless Constitution Isaac Kramnick and R. Laurence Moore write “Williams got into trouble principally because he was determined to secularize the institution of government and politics in ways that baffled and disturbed his Puritan contemporaries” (Kramnick & Moore 47-48). Kramnick and Moore also described Roger Williams as a man ahead of his time. This becomes more evident upon further reading when we learn that Williams was a strong believer in what we today recognize as the separation of church and state. For his beliefs, Roger Williams was banished from Massachusetts Bay. He went on to settle the colony of Rhode Island, which eventually was the…show more content…
In our modern-day society witchcraft, while not mainstream, is considered a type of religion. However, in Salem 1692, when three young girls accused two older white women and Tituba, a West Indian slave of bewitching them, a crazed panic rumbled through the town. A mob mentality ensued an in the end twenty so called “witches” were hanged. Several of the accused women were single, middle-aged women who did not follow the traditional Puritan role of
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