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Immigration and Religious Freedom

Posted August 27, 2010 by Patrick Young, Esq.
Categories: Hate Watch

I teach civics for immigrants preparing to take the citizenship test. One of the questions on the test is, “Why did the colonists come to America?” The officially designated answer is, “For religious freedom.”

Amid all the mosque controversy, it is good to remember that the search for religious freedom did not end with the colonial period.

The founders of our country were very aware of the wages of religious intolerance. Europe between 1520 and the early 18th century was wracked by religious warfare. We all know that Catholics killed Lutherans, Lutherans killed Anabaptists, and Puritans killed Anglicans. Religions that today seem like maternal twins were then viewed as exotic and dangerous to the welfare of the state and commonwealth.

Many of the founders were descended from settlers who had been members of persecuted religious minorities in Britain.

As the country was being born, people like Jefferson and Madison realized that the new nation could either tolerate all, or risk becoming the next battleground in the wars of religion.

They chose well, enshrining their choice in the First Amendment.

The choice for toleration made America an asylum for people seeking freedom of religion from around the world. America became the place that my family came to largely because it allowed us to practice our Catholic religion in peace, right next door to Jews, Episcopalians, and Quakers, people we might have persecuted, or who might have persecuted us, in the old country.

Tags : 1st amendment, mosque, muslims, religious freedom

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