In God we Trust: on the Christian Roots of the concept of Religious Freedom in the United States of America

Abstract

Through a panoramic overview, this article presents the concept of religious freedom in the United States of America from a historical perspective. Americans received freedom as an essential value inherited from the Christian spirit of the first settlers and the remarkable influence of the currents of thought in Seventeenth-Century England. Although freedom was the value that early American settlers adopted as a cornerstone, in order to sustain their legislative texts and interpersonal relationship, the historiographical construction of the Pilgrim Fathers as the personification of liberty has predominated in the American social imaginary. The topic has gained renewed importance because of the current rise of certain forms of religious fundamentalisms. In this context, it is emphasized the fair balance that the State must carry out in order to fulfill a double duty: the defenseof religious freedom, as well as the eradication of any kind of violence that would try to justify its own aberrations by misusing the name of God.