I did understand that the state of Maryland was founded as a Catholic state, obvious enough from the name if you think about it, though I didn't know anything about its history beyond that. JAR gives the history as follows:
The second colony to pass laws requiring religious tolerance was Maryland, formed initially as refuge for persecuted Roman Catholics under the Church of England, it passed a Religious Tolerance Act in 1649.I would like to know more about this but assuming these facts are basically true there's already plenty enough to say:
The act was repealed by Governor Claiborne, and appointee of the Puritan Oliver Cromwell but reinstated when the Calvert family regained control of the colony.
But in 1689 though there was a Puritan led Protestant Revolution in Maryland that overthrew the government and set up a Theocracy. One of their first acts was to outlaw Roman Catholicism.
For starters, the idea of "persecuted Roman Catholics" is ridiculous, Romanist spin right there. They were prevented from having political influence in England and in the Protestant colonies, yes, because whenever they got enough political influence they brought the people under the power of the Pope and became the persecutors in the true meaning of the term of Protestants and others --bloody persecutors, putting people to death at the stake, and under the Inquisition torturing them while keeping them alive as long as possible to suffer the most possible and so on.
The laws prohibiting them from taking part in the political life of England and the colonies were in self-defense, and when they are opposed, as in Ireland when Cromwell sent troops to quell the violence caused by the Romanists, and given just punishment for their rebellions, that is not persecution, that is either the defense of the innocents or simply the rule of law and order. Not that Protestants are completely above committing violence themselves but the fact of the matter is that in the majority of the instances Rome is the instigator and their cruelty is beyond belief in many cases -- which I hope to be able to document eventually. (Meanwhile you can get a lot of it from Chris Pinto or any of the sources I've listed in the margin at my other blog).
Rome of course cries persecution, the vicious wolf complaining about being muzzled and tied up, but today the fanged one is likely to get a sympathetic ear from those who have lost all sense of history or abandoned the Protestantism of their forefathers.
Religious tolerance is not just an open door to powerful people with evil intentions on a political level, it's also a violation of the Commandment against having other gods. A Christian nation must uphold that Commandment and not allow other religions with their other gods to be treated as equal to the one true God -- not persecuted and not deprived of ordinary means of living a peaceful life of course. The Puritans and other Protestants established colonies in America for the purpose of honoring God and it doesn't honor God to give equal place to the religions that deny Him, certainly not to the Antichrist religion of Rome (or of Islam).
What I have been learning about religious tolerance in America is that it was imposed deceitfully on the people by Roman agents trying to regain the power lost in England, and it succeeded here for a number of reasons, the Protestants having let down their guard or not seeing the wolf making its stealthy approach again. There was a time when Protestantism really WAS Protestantism because it recognized the real threat of the Roman false church's designs to put itself in power over all people. There are few true Protestants left these days, and it looks like Europe is shaping up to become another Holy Roman Empire with the Pope pulling the strings behind the scenes. Poor Europe. Poor America.
But they did their work well, convincing people that "religious tolerance" is just freedom for all so that it's the Protestants and Puritans who are hated for "intolerance" while it's the wolf that kills and tortures people for "heresy" that's allowed the freedom.
The Roman Church is the Harlot Church described in the book of Revelation, which used to be recognized widely among Protestants, and the papacy the seat of the Antichrist. They lost much of their power in the Protestant Reformation, and England did manage to keep beating them back as well, but now they're regaining their lost power, and when it's at its full expression it's no less evil than that of Islam -- and Islam used to be recognized as one of the two legs of the Roman Empire too, ponder that as the Holy Roman Empire starts shaping up again!
God help Europe, God help America, God help the world. [But of course this takes me back to what WOULD bring us God's help: Repentance for our falling away from Him. This is all God's judgment, as I've pointed out at all my blogs from the beginning.]
[I did a related post on this subject on Faith's Corner a while back, Poor Poor England. ]