So before we start talking about sex and intertwining it with religion to see where they connect let's start at the very beginning of religion and America. I honestly had to really dig for this information because your more well known websites tend to lack objectivity on both sides when dealing with the questions posed here. Though I will say as far a human behavior you see things here that fall in line ith behavior on other subjects. Most would start this story with the Mayflower landing at Plymouth Rock on November 21, 1620 in what is now Cape Cod, Massachusetts. I wanted to go back further than that to get a more accurate portrait. Was is religious persecution? Was it something else? What is a mixture of things?
It seems to have really started with the Protestant Reformation movement that swept Europe in the 16th century. In 1517 Martin Luther published his Ninety Five Theses. This is also sometimes known as Disputation on the Power and Efficacy of Indulgences. Luther was a professor of moral theology at the University of Wittenburg in Germany. His writings were basically concerned with what he saw as abuses and over indulgences of the Catholic Church. One of the main sticking points was with what is known as plenary indulgences. This is where someone commits a sin then confesses and is told to do a penance and say some hail mary's or perform some sort of fuction then the sin is reduced. I'm not sure what exactly Luther's issue is with it but apparently at some point it became abusive in his eyes and many people agreed ith him. The issue I see with it is that according to the Bible a bishop or preacher of some type cannot absolve anyone from a sin. Only God can do that. With this practice it would seem people could go in and confess and do some choirs and not even be sincere with the confession, but then again I'm a protestant and it's just my two cents. After the Catholic church issued the Edict of Worms in 1521 condemning the teachings of Luther it led to the Reformation and the beginning of the Protestant movement. The Church of England would not completely reject the papal authority until 1534 when King Henry VIII officially founded the Church of England. The Church of England's origins go back much further but King Henry VIII is considered the official founder. He founded it because the Pope wouldn't give him an annulment to one of his many wives.
So let's fast forward a good while now that you have that information. After the Reformation many christians didn't think that was good enough. Sure the church had rejected papal authority but it still maintained many customs and beliefs from the Roman Catholic Church. These people were known as puritans. The puritans were not a specific church as some were presbyterian, and others were calvinists, and so forth. They were pretty strong willed. Their goal was to remove any links between the Church of England and the Catholic church. Because of their beliefs they could be fined by local bishops but it's believed that wasn't enforced too often. The conflict seemed to be more with their neighbors. They ridiculed and lambasted by those in the media and entertainment industry of the time. That sounds pretty familiar but i'll keep going. The point is that it wasn't so much about the government persecuting them as it was the public.
Due to this persecution they at first, fled to the Netherlands. Most didn't do very well there either. They returned to England then off to the new world roughly a decade later. It's worth noting that there is a big difference between a puritan and a pilgrim. A puritan wanted to reform the church. They weren't what you would call a separatist. The pilgrims on the other hand were separatists. They believed the Church of England basically had gone into the crapper and they wanted to start from scratch. Most of the puritans came to America between 1630-1640 which was a decade after the pilgrims.
As far as ideas of religious liberty, at this time there was none. That didn't come until later on. Long before the arrival of the pilgrims Spanish Catholics were murdering French Protestants in what is now Florida. After the arrival of the puritans they would hang Quakers in Boston. I believe 4 were hung from 1659 to 1661. Catholics were banned from the colonies. When they were able to come to the colonies they were not allowed to hold public office for a long time.
Before I move forward I must point out that in our history books they tend to focus on the pilgrims. I suppose they find it the most interesting. Now it's true that religion played a big part in the founding of some of the more northern colonies like Massachusetts and Rhode Island, but if I stopped there it would be very misleading. Many people settled in those colonies around the same time period for different reasons. Some of those reasons had nothing to do with religion at all. For example, in the southern colonies such as Virginia, tobacco farming played the biggest part. A lot of business people in England saw big money making opportunities here and there was a big corporate influence.
We'll leave off here for today and pick up the next part in a couple days. Don't forget to click that upvote!