The Puritans In The 18th Century

When the Puritans first settled in New England, they sought religious freedom from England, but by no means did their no civilization separate church and state. Their church and government interwove and they used religion to keep people in line. For instance, the Puritans required everyone to attend church every Sunday and the government could punish parents who did not teach their children about Puritanism (Dolan, 1995). In addition, anyone who dissented from the Puritans, such as the Quakers, were either killed or exiled from the colony because they “posed a threat to the order and harmony of the Massachusetts colony” (Dolan, 1995, p. 20). By the 18th century, however, Puritans began to tolerate the existence of some other religions, but church and state were still not separated. The key word there is ‘some’ because the Puritans still discriminated against Roman Catholics and Jews (Dolan, 1995).
It was not
In 1972, Sherbert v. Vener exempted Seventh-Day Adventists from certain unemployment insurance regulations, but in 1990 the court ruled in Employment Division v. Smith that the Free Exercise Clause does not give religious organizations the right to exemptions from neutral laws. This case was particularly important because it inspired Congress to pass the Religious Freedom Restoration Act three years later (Chopko, 1992). The case involved two Native Americans who consumed illegal drugs for religious reasons. Interestingly, the first time the U.S. Supreme Court received this case, they sent it back to the Oregon Supreme Court to decide whether “sacramental use of illegal drugs violated Oregon's state drug laws” (“Employment Division”). The state court decided the state drug law violated the Native Americans’ religious freedom and, specifically, the free exercise clause. Then it went back to the U.S. Supreme Court and they reversed the state’s decision (“Employment