I do know most of the public history of the CoLDS, but it wasn't really germane - just pointing out that a lot of 'sects' were pushed away from an area where they were a minority. Once they were gone, that was it. Nobody tended to go looking for Catholics to kill, or Protestants to hang, outside of their area. As long as it wasn't in their face, they didn't care.

That's what drove the first amendment - the right to NOT have to be whatever the flavour of religion of the president/king/grand munchkin of the day happened to be.

*urgh*

You've never studied that time period, have you? Not even casually?

Martin Luther - 95 theses, 1517. Founding of the Church of England, 1534.

Over the next century, Catholicism splintered into sects during what became known as the Protestant Reformation.

The established church did _not_ like this. Especially in areas where the church and the state had little to no separation, the people that wanted to worship differently were rabidly pursued. For an example of how bad it can be, just look at relatively recent history of the Irish wars between the Orange and the Green. People point at the IRA, but carefully ignore the _other_ side. Neither side was 'goodness and light'.

The "Pilgrims" that settled in the colonies in 1620 were 'Separatists', meaning they disagreed with how the established church acted (rites, liturgy, etc). Instead of fighting it, they left. They weren't the last. Over the next 150 years, many groups settled in the colonies, all to build things anew. People born into the US, Canada, UK, and other 'first world' countries in the last century _not_ on a farm just can't easily conceive of how difficult life was at that point. I would say it's amazing, personally, that they had as few issues as they did. If you actively acted against the community by going outside the established standards, you threatened the ability of that community to survive - because there wasn't time and energy to waste dealing with it. Kicking people out makes _sense_, and it's a lot better than killing them.

So, by the time the colonies got tired of being treated as second class (or third class) citizens by the Parliament of an insane King suffering from syphilis, there were hundreds of different groups scattered around the colonies, each trading with the other, each with a different way of worshipping - and getting along with each other. Shaker, Quaker, anabaptist groups such as the Mennonites (Amish are best known now), Lutheran, Episcopalian, Roman Catholic, etc, all managed to _not_ be constantly killing each other! The founding documents written by Thomas Jefferson, and later on the fight of the States to demand the Bill of Rights be added to the Constitution rammed through by the fascists Alexander Hamilton and John Adams (they probably didn't think themselves as such, but considering their illegal Constitution basically said that the Government had no controls, that's what they ended up being), are summed up in one of his writings (this is only part of it) - "But it does me no injury for my neighbour to say there are twenty gods, or no god. It neither picks my pocket nor breaks my leg."

These were people that were Anglican, Lutheran, Catholic, and yet they all managed to get together and agree that the government needed to keep out of deciding religion for the masses. That's the freedom _of_ religion. You can worship as you wish, you can tell people that you don't like to leave your church, and you can form a new church if none suit you. You just can't demand that everyone in your neighbourhood must be Lutheran. (This happened, especially in The Germanies. The religion of the prince of the area became your religion) Telling people to leave your church, at the very beginning of the colonies, meant telling them to leave the community - because all of the people that started that community WERE the church. Later, in larger towns such as New Amsterdam and Boston, you simply moved to another area, or just went to another church.

Nowadays, it's taken to extremes. I personally don't appreciate public prayer, etc, but I don't get offended at someone doing a prayer before a football game - especially if what they do is have different people doing different 'services', and that the man purpose of it is to say "It's a game, let's hope everyone leaves intact, and have a good time." I don't care if they call to Allah, Jesus, or the Flying Spaghetti Monster. If they try to turn it into preaching, that's another story. Even in school, I didn't have a problem with a 'prayer minute', or five minutes of silence to start the day, etc. I just didn't want someone deciding what I should pray. That's the point, they can say "This is a time for prayer." Even an atheist needs to get hit with a cluebat if they are offended by it. Nobody is telling them they have to pray to YHVH - they can pray to the coat-rack in the corner if they want. Or they can doodle. It's a perfect time for everyone to relax and get ready for the day, or at least wonder if there really is a dog.