What Colonial Founders Believed About Tolerance — And Why It Was More Complicated Than You Think
Walk into any early American history exhibit and you'll see it: the story of brave settlers fleeing religious persecution, seeking a place where they could worship freely. And it's a powerful narrative. But here's what most people miss — the relationship between colonial founders and the idea of tolerance was messy, contradictory, and varied wildly depending on which colony you're talking about But it adds up..
Some founders genuinely believed tolerance was a moral imperative. This leads to others practiced a more selective version — they wanted freedom for themselves but weren't especially eager to extend it to anyone who worshipped differently. Understanding this tension isn't just academic; it shapes how we think about religious freedom today.
What Colonial Religious Tolerance Actually Meant
When we talk about colonial founders and tolerance, we're really talking about a spectrum of beliefs and practices that shifted dramatically depending on time, place, and who's doing the interpreting Not complicated — just consistent. Which is the point..
The Puritans who settled Massachusetts Bay in the 1630s are the case study everyone points to — and for good reason. They left England to escape Anglican persecution, and they built a society where church and government were essentially the same thing. But you couldn't hold public office without being a church member. Dissent wasn't just discouraged; it could get you banished.
But here's where it gets interesting. The Puritans didn't see themselves as intolerant. They believed they were protecting the truth. In their minds, allowing false religions to flourish wasn't tolerance — it was negligence. They had found the right way to worship, and allowing error to spread would be morally irresponsible.
This is where a lot of people lose the thread It's one of those things that adds up..
This distinction matters more than you might think. Now, absolutely. Many colonial founders operated from a similar logic: they weren't against tolerance in principle, but they defined it narrowly. Freedom for everyone else? Freedom for their particular expression of faith? That was a harder sell No workaround needed..
The Exceptions Who Pushed Back
Rhode Island is where the story gets more interesting. Roger Williams was a Puritan minister in Salem who got banished in 1635 for questioning the Massachusetts Bay Colony's treatment of Native Americans and its blending of church and state. Rather than fall in line, he founded Providence Plantations — what would become Rhode Island — on a radical principle: government should have no power over matters of conscience.
Williams wrote extensively about this, arguing that forced religion was no religion at all. On top of that, he believed genuine faith had to be voluntary. Also, this wasn't just political pragmatism — he genuinely thought souls would be damned if they were coerced into worship. His colony became a haven for Quakers, Jews, and anyone else who didn't fit elsewhere Nothing fancy..
This changes depending on context. Keep that in mind.
William Penn took a similar approach in Pennsylvania a few decades later. As a Quaker, Penn had experienced persecution firsthand in England. When he received his charter in 1681, he designed a colony explicitly built on religious freedom. The Frame of Government he wrote in 1682 guaranteed liberty of conscience for all who acknowledged "the One Eternal God Easy to understand, harder to ignore..
Penn's vision was remarkably inclusive for the era. He welcomed settlers of different faiths, negotiated fairly with the Lenape (at least initially), and created a government structure that limited the power of any single religious group. Quakers would eventually lose their majority in Pennsylvania, but the tolerance Penn built into the colony's foundations persisted.
Worth pausing on this one It's one of those things that adds up..
Maryland's story is another piece of this puzzle. Which means founded in 1632 as a haven for English Catholics, it passed the Act Concerning Religion in 1649 — one of the first laws in the Western world to guarantee freedom of worship for Trinitarian Christians. The act wasn't perfect (it still excluded non-Christians), but it was remarkable for its time Turns out it matters..
Worth pausing on this one.
Why These Differences Existed
So what made some colonies embrace tolerance while others rejected it? A few factors.
First, there was the question of why people left their home countries. On the flip side, puritans in Massachusetts Bay saw themselves as building a "city upon a hill" — a model Christian society. They weren't escaping religion; they were trying to create the right religion in a new place. By contrast, Roger Williams and William Penn were more focused on the process of faith — they believed coercion corrupted worship, regardless of what you believed.
Second, practical considerations mattered. Also, rhode Island and Pennsylvania were both relatively empty when they were founded, and attracting settlers meant being more inclusive. Massachusetts Bay had a larger pool of Puritans to draw from, so they could afford to be pickier. Pennsylvania's success as a colony actually depended on attracting diverse settlers — Quakers alone couldn't fill the territory Most people skip this — try not to..
Short version: it depends. Long version — keep reading.
Third, the political situation in England shaped colonial policy. When Puritans gained power in England during the Interregnum, Massachusetts Bay felt more secure and less tolerant of dissent. When the Anglican monarchy was restored in 1660, colonies like Maryland and Virginia had to manage new pressures. Tolerance sometimes depended on what was happening three thousand miles away.
Why This History Matters Now
Here's the thing: the colonial era set the template for debates we're still having. The tension between "freedom for me" and "freedom for everyone" didn't end in 1776. It evolved.
Early Americans inherited these contradictions. Plus, the First Amendment was revolutionary precisely because it went further than most colonial founders ever did — it separated church from state entirely and protected all religions, not just certain ones. But the arguments about where those boundaries should be? Those arguments started in the 1600s Worth keeping that in mind..
Understanding what colonial founders believed about tolerance also helps us avoid two bad habits. One is hagiography — treating the founders as saints who always believed exactly what we wish they believed. Think about it: the other is presentism — judging them solely by modern standards without understanding their context. The truth is more complicated, and it's more interesting.
What Most People Get Wrong
A few misconceptions keep showing up in how this topic gets discussed.
The biggest one: assuming all colonial founders wanted religious freedom in the same way. They didn't. Some wanted to practice their faith without interference. Others wanted to build a society according to their religious principles. These sound similar, but they lead to very different policies when someone else's faith shows up next door.
Another mistake: treating tolerance as a single concept rather than a spectrum. Context matters. Which means massachusetts Bay was less tolerant than Rhode Island, but it was also more tolerant than contemporary England had to be. Compared to the religious wars tearing apart Europe, even the Puritans looked relatively restrained.
Finally, people sometimes forget that the colonies weren't isolated experiments. They were connected to broader Atlantic world networks — ideas about religious freedom circulated through pamphlets, personal correspondence, and the movement of people between colonies, England, and Europe. Quakers spread their ideas across multiple colonies. Roger Williams corresponded with other thinkers. The conversation was more dynamic than "this colony good, that colony bad Nothing fancy..
How to Think About This Topic More Clearly
If you're trying to understand what colonial founders actually believed about tolerance, a few approaches help.
Start by asking which founders. "Colonial founders" isn't a monolith. Roger Williams and John Winthrop had fundamentally different visions. So did William Penn and the Massachusetts Bay magistrates. That's why the question "what did colonial founders believe? " usually needs to become "what did these founders, in this colony, at this time, believe?
This is where a lot of people lose the thread.
Pay attention to the difference between tolerance as a principle and tolerance in practice. Some founders talked a good game about liberty of conscience but implemented it inconsistently. So others didn't philosophize much but created genuinely pluralistic societies. Actions matter, but so do the ideas behind them.
Consider what was at stake. For many colonial founders, religious tolerance wasn't an abstract question — it was about whether their souls would be saved, whether their communities would survive, whether their children would inherit a world worth living in. That's high stakes, and it explains why people sometimes made choices that seem contradictory to modern eyes Most people skip this — try not to..
FAQ
Did colonial founders invent the idea of religious tolerance?
Not exactly. Day to day, the idea had deeper roots in European thought — figures like Sebastian Castellio and Michael Servetus argued for religious freedom in the 16th century. But colonial founders, particularly in Rhode Island and Pennsylvania, implemented these ideas on a larger scale than had been tried before.
Were any colonies completely free of religious persecution?
No. So even the most tolerant colonies had limits. Rhode Island excluded some groups, and Pennsylvania's early Quaker government wasn't always fair to Native Americans or enslaved people. The closest any colony came to broad religious freedom was probably Pennsylvania in its early decades, but even that had problems.
How did colonial ideas about tolerance influence the First Amendment?
The colonial experience showed both what worked and what didn't. The failures of religious coercion in Massachusetts Bay and the successes of religious freedom in Rhode Island and Pennsylvania demonstrated that government-backed religion created conflict rather than unity. By the time the Constitution was written, most founders agreed that separating church and state was the most practical approach — even if they disagreed about why Still holds up..
Why did some founders become more tolerant over time?
Several reasons. Some had experiences that changed their views — Roger Williams' interactions with Native Americans, for instance, shaped his thinking about religious coercion. Others found that tolerance was simply better for business and population growth. And some founders, particularly in later generations, absorbed Enlightenment ideas about individual rights that went beyond what their parents believed Easy to understand, harder to ignore..
What's the most important thing to understand about colonial religious tolerance?
Probably this: it was a process, not a destination. The colonies didn't go from intolerance to tolerance in a straight line. But different colonies tried different approaches, learned from each other's successes and failures, and gradually the idea of religious freedom expanded — though it took centuries to include everyone. The colonial period was the beginning of a conversation, not the end of one And it works..
The Bottom Line
What colonial founders believed about tolerance depends entirely on which founders you're talking about. Some saw it as a virtue worth building entire colonies around. Others practiced a more limited version — freedom for their people, but not necessarily for everyone. A few didn't think about it much at all until they were forced to.
The honest answer is that colonial America was a laboratory of religious freedom, with wildly different experiments running simultaneously. Some failed. Some succeeded. Most evolved over time as founders and their descendants confronted the messy reality of living with people who believed differently than they did Which is the point..
That messiness is actually the point. Still, if colonial founders had all agreed on tolerance from the start, we wouldn't have the rich historical record we do — the arguments, the failures, the eventual breakthroughs. The tension between freedom for oneself and freedom for others didn't start in the colonies, but colonial experience shaped how Americans would debate it for centuries to come.
Understanding that complexity doesn't make the story less inspiring. If anything, it makes it more so — because it shows that religious freedom wasn't handed down from on high. It was fought for, argued over, and built piece by piece by people who didn't always agree but kept trying anyway But it adds up..
