"Read the article mr. Anal they left because they were getting shit on"
I read it. Did you? Apparently not..
They were getting shit on, as you colorfully phrase it, because they were telling the Church of England that they were doing everything wrong. Since the church was an extension of the government, well, even you can see where that went to.
But, most didn't leave because they were oppressed, they left because they couldn't tolerate the fact they couldn't tell others what to do. So, when they got here, they proceeded to oppress other religions.
Many immigrants to New England, who were motivated by a desire for greater religious freedom, actually soon found repression under the Puritan theocracy to be far more repressive than any "oppression" of their faith that they had experienced back in Britain. (For example see: Roger Williams, Stephen Bachiler, Anne Hutchinson, Mary Dyer, etc.)
Puritan oppression, including torture and imprisonment of many leaders of non-Puritan Christian sects, led to the (voluntary or involuntary) "banishment" of many Christian leaders and their followers from the Massachusetts Bay Colony. This negative impact of Puritanism on many new colonists had a positive result on American history in that it led to the founding of many new colonies—Rhode Island, Pennsylvania, New Jersey, Delaware, New Hampshire, and others—as religious havens that were created for devout Christians who wanted to live outside the oppressive reach of Puritan theocracy. |
