From Religious Conflicts to Religious Liberty:The Birth of Religious Liberty in USA

This paper examines the history from the migration of Europeans to America due to religious persecutions to the establishment of the First Amendment of the Constitution. I argue that the seemingly neutral policy of religious liberty has a characteristic of Protestuntison. Its theoretical foundation is the ideas of natural right, social contract, division of politics and religion, and religious toleration raised by John Locke, and all these theories have a Christian foundation. Although this is a great creation in dealing with religious conflicts, because of the Protestant foundation of American religious policy, US government has been facing more and more problems when dealing with affairs about other religions both from domestic and abroad.