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Article: Religious conscience in colonial New England.
- Article from:
- Journal of Church and State
- Article date:
- September 22, 2008
- Author:
CopyrightCOPYRIGHT 2008 J.M. Dawson Studies in Church and State. This material is published under license from the publisher through the Gale Group, Farmington Hills, Michigan. All inquiries regarding rights should be directed to the Gale Group. (Hide copyright information)
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Religious freedom, unlike so many other American liberties, is largely an indigenous product. It is not an inheritance transplanted from Europe by the founding fathers, but is rather the outcome of peculiarly American circumstances and problems and is the end result of a slow and oftentimes painful experience. It is perhaps not an overstatement to assert that religious liberty is the great gift of America to civilization and to the world." (1)
The Europe on which the colonists turned their backs did not believe even in religious toleration, much less in religious liberty. "Nowhere on earth prior to 1640, unless it were in Holland, was toleration in any effective ...