The Right To Be Free

9 Pages 2353 Words

to be known as Puritans, and even more extreme was a group of puritans known as Separatists whom desired not purify but to break completely from the Church of England. It was later, in 1620, that a group of Dutch Separatists took action with regard to this desire to break from the church, securing rights to a ship known as the Mayflower, which would later carry some 102 of America’s first settlers, the least of whom were separatists, to the rocky coast of New England.
It was the beliefs of those few separatists that led to the sailing of the Mayflower. Their desire to live and think as they wished, free from the persecution of those who misunderstood their ways led to their settling in America, a land that was, for them, synonymous with freedom since there would be no opposing majority to persecute them.
Though the separatists fled Europe seeking religious freedom, true religious and civic freedom was not apparent among the American colonies until the rise of the Quakers. Dubbed “Quakers” from the report that they quaked when under deep religious emotion . . . Quakers advocated passive resistance . . . would turn the other cheek and rebuild their meetinghouse on the site where their enemies had torn it down (qtd. In Bailey, Kennedy, and Cohen, 58). These people were in a sense the first “true Americans” as they believed that all men are in fact created equal, or as any doctrine may have stated that all men are were children in the sight of God. The Quakers built their society on the principles of civil equality apparent in their anti-slave feelings and their pro-native American relationship with local tribes. Some Quakers went as far as allowing natives to watch their children. William Penn, the founder of their colony, Pennsylvania, was completely all accepting with regard to religion in the colony though, through pressure from England, he was forced to prevent Catholic and Jewish colonists to vote or hold publ...