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the colony, Lord Baltimore, encouraged English people who still wished to practice the Roman Catholic faith were encouraged to settle there. In 1649, the Maryland Toleration Act was passed. It protected Roman Catholics in the colony, as well as other Christians. Most of the other colonies also permitted freedom of religion, but they also tended to favor the Protestant Christian denominations. Non-Christian sometimes faced severe punishment. By the time of the American Revolution, there were different religious ideas throughout the colonies. As the Founding Fathers created a new federal government, they hoped to avoid the sort of religious warfare that had occurred among the European states. The idea of religious freedom was so important that it was included in the first sentence of the First Amendment to the US Constitution: Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances. 2 The first part of the Amendment says that the government can not establish any particular religion as the official state religion, or favor one religion over another one. This is called the establishment clause . Another element of the Amendment is the free exercise clause, which says that people have a right to believe as they wish, and to practice any religion they want, or to not practice any religion at all.

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Religious Freedom in the United States