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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.
That is super interesting. I had no idea that there was decent, non-judgemental denominations like that. Especially ones that are so old. It's still, not for me, but its nice to know that, occasionally, 'Christian' churches can actually be cool like that.
Thanks for sharing!
Sure. They aren't really Christian anyway. They came out of Christianity, but they call themselves a creed rather than a religion. Basically, "don't be an asshole" and you're welcome.
You do know that the founding fathers and first pilgrims are different people?
I'm not sure about the founding fathers, but isn't that exactly why the pilgrims came to North America?
The British sent a bunch of crazy religious dicks off and hoped for the best.
I've been watching a lot of QI lately, and that was a topic in a recent episode I watched. You basically got it exactly.
The whole 'pilgrims escaping religious persecution' story is an absolute myth. The puritans basically wanted to be able to persecute others for not following their beliefs - they were the persecutors. It's wild (and similar to what we're seeing today).
So, the wannabe theocrats we have today are correct about the pilgrims wanting a theocracy (in 1620), but the people who we consider the Founding Fathers didn't actually found the country until 157 years later.
That's a big gap of time they're overlooking / disregarding.
Maybe we should just set them adrift like England did and hope for the best.
So much of the world is the fallout of the fucking brits screwing things up
Well, more broadly, the age of imperial colonialism was bad for pretty much every civilization said empires came into contact with. The Spanish and Portuguese were doing heinous shit for centuries. Later, the Dutch, French, Belgians, Germans, Brits, the US (don’t forget the Native American genocide and the Monroe Doctrine, amongst other things), and others got in on the action (Japan is in this club too, largely taking their inspiration from the Portuguese and the Brits, but for mostly contextual reasons of “they seriously pissed off two much bigger empires right as they were getting into the positive economic feedback loop” - aka the Pacific Theater of WW2 - had their imperial colonial era substantially truncated).
More pointedly: empires existed before the age of European colonialism, but what with the advent of the age of sail, the Europeans unfortunately went down a road that was on average (arguably) far more nakedly exploitative and obviously unsustainable in the long run than any empire in history (excepting the Mongol empire, of course, which was more or less just Genghis doing a huge zerg rush with early-game cavalry and mounted archery units).
TL;DR: any reasonably-stable country in Europe (plus the US) with enough scratch to put together a halfway decent navy was getting in on the action for literal centuries.
Yes, no, it's complicated. If you wanted to cherry pick data for either direction, you can do it. It's more accurate to say there was a wide mix of ideologies.
Maybe we shouldn't be so beholden to the opinions of people from 200+ years ago.
I still don't get why this is so important to people. Yes there was a religious cult that came to what is now the US. Ok? It's a cute historical event but it doesn't add up to a whole lot.
Technically, the pilgrims who fled to America were fleeing away from progressive changes to theology in Europe at the time. That's why all the pilgrim women covered their hair, their legs, and sacrificed goats.
George and the homies appreciated separation of Church and State, though, so props for that at least.
They were the freaks of their society. They weren't facing religious persecution. They were utter outcasts for being nuts about it.
Ahh yes the merchant revolution of the US, in which rich white men got mad about paying taxes and the whispers of slave abolition in England and revolted.
It wasn't the people's war, it was the merchants war.
Had nothing to do with suspending the right to trial by jury, forced deportations, suspending peaceful assembly, demanding quartering troops, cutting off trade routes...
Similar thing with the French revolution, it's the bourgeoisie who found nobility privileges unfair that led most of it.
Yeah who cares what the founders wanted? What do we want right now?
I never understood this. Why do deify these men? If anything we should be proud of the progress we have made since they've been dead and understand their important, but deeply flawed place in history. Anything else is just mythological, ultranationalist propaganda
The founders didn't flee anything. They were born here and got tired of taxes and oppression.
Well, most of them were born here at least.
Even if they had, this country is no longer theirs, for they no longer live in it, we do, and it is ours. Even if, for the sake of argument, they had chosen to run things by the rules of a particular religion, we would be under no obligation to run our United States the way they ran theirs.
No, they did it so they could steal land from the indigenous peoples.
They didn't flee from shit!
They spilled their own blood and the blood of those who would impose their beliefs onto them inorder to free themselves of any such imposing.
Yeah, but try telling that to all the people who've been brainwashed into thinking this was founded as a Christian country and that the founders were all Christians.
Um, actually, that is exactly why the Puritans did so. England wouldn't let them impose their religious beliefs upon the populace at large. (Please note: while someone else answered this already, they did not say um, actually. Therefore I get the point.)
What if we were the kings though?
Idgaf what they thought.
Didn’t they own people and commit treason??
Look, we only worship false idols when and/or where it reinforces our beliefs. So this shit doesn't matter! In one ear and out the other until my pastor/news host/political personality mouthpiece tells me what to think about that retort of yours and how to respond! In the meantime I will pray on it and pray you find Jesus and that will bring me great comfort and validation that I'm working on personal growth. Because I recognize my flaws and problems and quietly ask someone else to help me fix them unlike you heathens.
sorry, triggered, in a mood and got carried away lol
more like not to build an oligopoly
And you can’t recognize worker, if he is rotated by 45 degrees. So you kill him. For the king!
Yes they did...