People have honestly no idea about the early history of the US.
The pilgrims literally left England because they couldn’t oppress people enough. They can to America to build their perfect religious society.
Many colonies in the South weren’t ‘fleeing’ anything, they were fully funded by the crown with the goal of settling the land and sending resources and taxes back to Britain.
Here’s another semi obscure tidbit.
Do you know what happened to the puritan religion? As in, the actual church that was famous for burning witches and forcing women to wear letters.
It morphed into the United Church of Christ and, I kid you not, the Unitarian Universalists. (Among other splinters)
the Unitarian Universalists
What? No! How? Those poor bastards, I thought they were unscathed. Well, at least their heart’s in the right place these days.
honestly its the heavy emphasis on morality that caused the evolution and growth as well as the splintering. They actually thought about what was right and wrong and see where they had it wrong and allowed current knowledge to be used. Im by no means trying to praise a religion but this is why you get the evolution to unitarian universalist.
I actually went to a UU church in my 20s. I’ve always been an atheist and I’ve made no secret of it and I didn’t then and not only was everyone cool with it, plenty of them were also atheists. Including the minister, who became a UU minister because his father was an abusive evangelical minister who taught him how to speak in a church and he rejected all of his father’s ideas and became a progressive voice in the best way he knew how. The first time I went, they were celebrating Bob Marley’s birthday. I was hooked right away. It was a great way to have a social group at the time and also a great way to find social justice causes to work on.
These days, I’m in my 40s and I’m living in a different place. The church is on the other side of town, I have no idea who the minister is, and I wouldn’t be able to convince my wife and daughter to go anyway, so it isn’t worth it.
But if you’re young, an atheist, and are interested in social justice and also want a social life, you could do worse.
I’m an atheist as well and went to a UU church for a little bit in my mid 30s.
I enjoyed it. It was a nice third place. The people were all over the place with regard to their beliefs.
Really it was what I think church should be in the 21st century. Scripture is read but it was pretty much only positive messages and relevant to current events. The minister was wildly liberal and progressive. We sang. Scripture and songs were from all the major religions, not just Christianity or even Abrahamic. Really it was treated more of a “history of religion” than preaching. Religion itself has some positive messages and a very important place in history.
