A post came across my Facebook feed this morning regarding how the original thirteen colonies upheld religious freedom. Short answer: they didn’t. The myth we were taught in school was that the pilgrims came to the colonies for religious freedom. The historical fact is they came here to practice their own forms of theocracy.

Ten of the original 13 colonies had their own religion written in the law. This wasn’t about finding a church with the best music or a pastor with the best jeans. Back then religion meant power and if you didn’t follow the law there were consequences.

-Virginia was Anglican.
Miss church and you could be fined or jailed and the vestry might send someone to your house to check on you and it wasn’t a nice welfare check.

-Massachusetts was Puritan and they banned dissenters, whipped baptists and executed Quakers. Ann Hutchinson was banned for holding bible studies class at home. A river in New York is named after her.

-Maryland was Catholic founded and they passed a law that if you denied the trinity you could be put to death (the trinity is not even in the Bible).

-Pennsylvania was Quaker, known for tolerance but even they banned gambling, theater and oath taking and their pacifism made them politically controversial.

-New York and New Jersey had strong Dutch Reform roots but under British rule Anglican gained power. Lutheran pastors weren’t even allowed to preach publicly.

-North Carolina had Quakers, who were fined and barred from holding office for refusing to take loyalty oaths or military service.

-Rhode Island was the exception.
Founded by Roger Williams after he was banned from Massachusetts he believed forced religion was “soul rape.”

I am familiar with Roger Williams, the man who founded the first Baptist church on American soil. He also said that forced worship stinks in God’s nostrils.

And…

“That cannot be a true religion which needs carnal weapons to uphold it.”

“God is too large to be housed under one roof.”

“No man shall be required to worship or maintain a worship against his will.”

“The civil sword may make a nation of hypocrites and anti-Christians, but not one true Christian. A pagan or anti-Christian pilot may be as skillful to carry the ship to its desired port as any Christian.”

This was the Baptist faith I grew up in. It’s why I have to specify that I was raised in a Yankee Baptist household. We were not southern Baptists.

That’s not to say it was rainbows and unicorns, and I became an agnostic in my teens and an atheist in my 50s, because so much of the theology stopped making sense to me. But there are parts of it I still hold dear. Particularly the concept of Soul Competency, and Soul Liberty, although I take it somewhat differently than the Baptists do, but not by much. We all have the inner light, but where it leads you might be different from where it leads me.

Here’s the thing: to deny sexual minorities and same sex couples civil and marriage rights, on the basis of religious belief, Is a form of forced worship.

The path to same sex marriage in Rhode Island was contentious, largely due to opposition by the Catholic church in that state, but as same sex marriages in Massachusetts were given recognition in Rhode Island, eventually enough state representatives came to support it and it was passed without an accompanying referendum fight and signed into law on August 1, 2013. In 2024 a poll showed that 79% of respondents supported same-sex marriage.

That’s how it usually goes. When we can live our lives openly, and can be seen for the people we are, we become neighbors, family, friends, co-workers, fellow Americans, and hate loses its power over all of us.