Which early colonial settlements practiced freedom of religion?
Roger Williams' Providence settlement. Trick question! Roger Williams' Providence settlement founded in 1656 expressly guaranteed religious freedom. However, the Pilgrims originally were a tolerant people when they founded Plymouth in 1620. By 1691, the Pilgrims had adopted the theocratic, intolerant Calvinism of the Puritans, who founded the Massachusetts Bay Colony in 1628. The Puritans came to this land expressly to establish a Bible commonwealth, and banished heretics and dissenters. In Virginia, heresy was a capital offense punishable by death by burning. Quakers were particularly persecuted. People who were not orthodox Christians were not legally protected, and could be denied civil rights and jailed. The founders of the new nation of the United States of America, conversant with extreme religious intolerance and violence in the several colonies , were determined to put an end to it. That is why they established church/state separation.