Religious Liberty In The United States Essay

America has always been a religious nation. The “threads of America's religious history are so intimately woven into the social and political fabric of the United States that they continue to shape public life today.” Religious liberty in particular is an important part of the American identity; many of the earliest Europeans to settle in America, including the Puritans of New England and Catholics of Maryland came to America because they sought relief from religious persecution in their European homes. Religious liberty might well be defined as a raison d’être for the United States; if it were not for the religious persecution that occurred in Europe against groups like the Puritans and Quakers, the United States would have developed into a dramatically different nation. So, in order to understand the framework for religious liberty in the United States it is important to look at the writings of religious leaders like William Penn and Roger Williams who helped to
Religious liberty does not mean boundless freedom for religious groups to act over and above government, or to seek to advance their religious beliefs through legislation. In fact, religious liberty in the United States is founded upon the notion that religious ideologies cannot and should not be imposed on others; and thus the separation of church and state serves as a bulwark for religious liberty. For Christians, or any other religious group to truly have religious liberty, they must also allow for others to be able to express and live according to their consciences, even if those consciences are in conflict. This is the beauty of pluralism in the American system, as differing ideologies can exist simultaneously. Fundamentalist Christians and Buddhists, Atheists and Agnostics and Muslims can all live in relative peace and simultaneously exercise religious