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As American families sit down to their traditional Thanksgiving feasts they will naturally recall the familiar story of the Pilgrims taught to every school kid and, in the process, distort the true character of the nation’s religious heritage.
Most children learn that the Mayflower settlers came to the New World to escape persecution and to establish religious freedom. But the early colonists actually pursued purity, not tolerance and sought to build fervent, faith-based utopias, not secular regimes that consigned religion to a secondary role. The distinctive circumstances that allowed these fiery believers of varied denominations to cooperate in the...
Real Pilgrims Sought Purity, Not Tolerance or Diversity
Williams founded Rhode Island as a sanctuary for religious beliefs where no man could be prevented from worshiping God in his own way. Even atheists were allowed in Rhode Island. It was Williams, not Jefferson, who coined the phrase "wall of separation".
Williams, of course, was hated by the Puritan bigots who, after expelling him from Massachusetts, put him under a death sentence were he ever to return. His crime? Advocacy of religious toleration, something not to be tolerated in the theocratic madhouses of New England.
The other source...