Misunderstanding America's Religious Founders

Americans have a shorthand way of describing the issue that impelled many of the early American settlers: they were seeking freedom of religion.

Well, yes and no. Mostly no.

Let’s use the example of the Pilgrims. There is no question that they were persecuted in England for failing to adhere to the Church of England. That’s why they packed up and moved to Holland, a country that did not have any problem with their religious practices. Yet they packed up and left the religious freedom that Holland afforded to travel on leaky boats to a dangerous land lacking even the rudimentary essentials of civilized life, where fully half died, for religious reasons.

The reason was not freedom from persecution, but the right to form their own religious environment that was every bit as structured as any European established church. The difference was that in the New World they would not be immersed in a culture that was either antagonistic or indifferent to their faith.

So when so many – even Christians – claim that the early religious immigrants were looking for freedom to worship, they have it wrong if that implies indifference to other faith or morality. These pilgrims had a firm, fixed belief in their own belief system. They were not members of the “Church of What’s Happening Now.” They were not moral relativists who believed that all paths lead to salvation. They left Delft to come to Massachusetts to suffer and die because of a rock-like faith that transcended life itself. A faith that does not believe that it is the one true faith and seeks to create an environment where that faith is practiced exclusively does not do what the Pilgrims did. They would have stayed behind.