Religious Freedom In North America

As Walter Koenig so eloquently points out, religious tolerance or religious freedom has been the ideal of many societies. Indeed, the North American colonies were largely founded to create safe havens of religious freedom and tolerance for Europeans suffering from persecution. However, despite the fact that the North American colonies are often lauded as being the model of religious freedom and tolerance, European imperialism, as a whole, actually decreased religious freedom in the colonial world. This can be seen through the treatment of people with non-Christian religions, the Spanish Inquisition, and, most notably, with the forced conversion of the native peoples of the New World.