Religious Freedom in America

 I'm reading "Sacred Liberty: America's Long, Bloody, and Ongoing Struggle for Religious Freedom" by Steven Waldman and wanted to share this quote with you.

"Those who demand religious rights have too often been mocked and murdered, tarred and feathered. The same nation that boasts of its commitment to religious liberty also allowed for the following injustices. In the seventeenth century, Massachusetts hanged people for being Quakers. When the Declaration of Independence was signed, nine of the thirteen colonies barred Catholics and Jews from holding office. In 1838, the governor of Missouri issued Executive Order 44, calling for the “extermination” of the Mormons. Protestant mobs burned convents, sacked churches, and collected the teeth of deceased nuns as souvenirs during anti-Catholic riots in the 1830s—just one of the many spasms of “anti-papism” that roiled America from the colonial era until well into the twentieth century.""Hundreds of thousands of Africans were stripped of not only their liberty but also their religions when they were brought to America, in what one historian called “a spiritual holocaust.” After the Civil War, the United States government banned many Native American spiritual practices while coercing indigenous children to convert to Christianity. Before and during World War II, Jehovah’s Witnesses were imprisoned, beaten, and even castrated for refusing, as a matter of conscience, to salute the American flag."

Start reading this book for free: https://a.co/2wwL4Qy