Were people executed because of their real or perceived religious beliefs in the American colonies?

Question

Do you know if this kind of persecution took place here? I am not asking about the Salem Witch trials which everybody knows about and which falls in a different category.
I am asking about people who died because they did not belong to the accepted religion.

Answer 1

Yes most of the the New England colonies with the exception of Rhode Island was highly intolerant of Quakers and had laws regarding them. They were often publicly humiliated, tortured and sometimes killed and the laws at the time supported this.

Rhode Island is where most New England Quakers sought refuge because Roger Williams intended that state to be a truly free religious area where people could live peacefully no matter what religion they practiced.

Answer 2

There is good news here and bad. The good news is that the US never had a government sponsored pogrom against any specific religious group which resulted in executions.

I think the reason the US Constitution does not specify a state religion is that Europe had just spent several centuries mired in the terrible religious wars after the Reformation. The founders of the US, although not irreligious, did not want to make religion a focus of the government for fear its power would be abused as it had been so badly in most of Europe.

So now here is the bad news. The religious tolerance of the Constitution does not always percolate down through the culture of the US evenly. In the many of the original 13 colonies Catholics were barred from settling. (The memory of "Bloody Mary" the last Catholic Queen of England was still too fresh perhaps) A notable exception is Delaware.

Later in our history the Klu Klux Klan made it a habit to persecute Jews or Catholics. Death threats, cross burnings, beatings were the KKK's favored methods of intimidation with lynchings, shootings or burnings being the execution methods.

Answer 3

Yes if you trace slavery back far enough many of the slaves were put to death for not believing in a Christan God. The slaves original beliefs were in Islam, Muslim... and forced to accept a different God. There were many killing. History doesn't want you to know that because it opens old wounds.
PEACE

Answer 4

I am not aware of this happening here, back then. We came over here to get safe from countries that were killing those who did not belong to the religion the rulers ordered them to belong to. Even high ranking Counts would be killed if they did not agree 100% with thier king.

Answer 5

One example I can think of is the Mormons. They were persecuted, run out of towns, and some murdered. That's how they ended up in Utah.

Answer 6

A lot of Mormons were raped, looted, murdered for their religious beliefs prior to the exodus to Utah. That's a bit late, I know, but you didn't place a deadline on your question.

Answer 7

I imagine there was some social ostracism of people who didn't fit in and that could have lead to their dying, because back then, being on your own could be fatal...

Answer 8

You need to go to a Islamic country if you want to know about religious intolerance.

Or talk to the atheists here in America ...they both have the same religious intolerance problem.

Answer 9

No.....They were hung:)