No. The Puritans migrated to the "New World" to establish "religiously" cleansed societies. They were NOT hospitable, in the least, to what they considered heresy, blasphemy, or apostasy.
Indeed, they KILLED people for it; others they banished: Roger Williams was banished to England by the Massachusetts Bay Colony for his beliefs in separation of church and state and freedom of religion. He fled and lived with the Narragansett Indians and formed Providence in 1636. Another famed heretic was Anne Hutchinson who was also banished for speaking out against the Church in Massachusetts Bay. She formed Portsmouth settlement. (Parenthetically: Two other settlements arose and all four joined together with permission from England to form Providence Plantations – later called Rhode Island.)
Pay attention: There is NOTHING in there about religious tolerance, or freedom of conscience. The Puritans were the ORIGINAL "holy" fascisti... Ask the Quakers. The religious tension was more than just Catholic and Protestant; Puritans, Presbyterians, Quakers, Methodists, Baptists and others all had their own particular forms of worship and systems of belief. People who came to America in the 17th and 18th centuries were not seeking land of religious freedom for all so much as a land where they could practice their own form of religious intolerance free of interference from rival denominations.
"The "religious" colonists who founded most of the New England settlements were the original American Taliban, and their descendants continue to plague us.
You think I exaggerate?
Read "The Scarlet Letter!" They were under DIRECT religious scrutiny at ALL times. They had no choice about attending religious ceremonies. Every aspect of their lives was regulated by their church authorities.
Their elders and leaders were not interested in any KIND of religious tolerance. That was why they fled England, and were eventually dispatched even by the Dutch.
The Puritans were INSUFFERABLY INTOLERANT. It was they whom Rousseau had in mind when he banned the proselytizers from his City on the Hill.
The FOUNDERS, or at least those from Virginia, were not so attached to the Church as to the Company, and managed to impose the church-state separation by dint of a majority of delegates. Of the 13 original colonies, only 4 were "religious," five if you count Rhode Island. The secularists (well, they were mostly Deists, but whatever) had the "votes."
So the separation is embedded in the Constitution. I am entirely in consonance with the fellow who told some sanctimonious fraud of a Senator that the People's representatives placed their hands on the Bible when they swoare to uphold the Constitution, not the other way around, not on the Constitution swearing to uphold the Bible.
If you want to hear me swear some more on this topic, then meet me at the beach, chers.
http://youtu.be/mOS5xH_ZpOo
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