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is the greatest occasion of civil wars. . . . It is the will and command of God that . . . a permission of the most Paganish, Jewish, Turkish, or Anti-Christian consciences and worships be granted to all men in all nations and countries."

As the Puritans in Massachusetts were hanging Quakers, and taxing 100 pounds to each ship carrying Quakers onto shore, Roger Williams was planting the seeds of his vision of a melting-pot of free people. He saw the persecution that takes place when governments have preferred or "official" religions, and the dangers in closed-mindedness toward matters of opinion. He saw the dangers in governments that involve themselves in religious affairs of the populace, and he saw the same dangers in religions that involve themselves in politics. In 1644 Williams wrote, "When they (the Church) have opened a gap in the hedge or wall of separation between the garden of the church and the wilderness of the world, God hath ever broke down the wall itself, removed the Candlestick, etc., and made His Garden a wilderness as it is this day. And that therefore if He will ever please to restore His garden and Paradise again, it must of necessity be walled in peculiarly unto Himself from the world, and all that be saved out of the world are to be transplanted out of the wilderness of the World." This was the inspiration for what Thomas Jefferson would later call "The wall of separation between church and state."

This wall' the notion of government affairs being kept out of religion and vice versa, was imperative for the assembling of a free country, as it was imperative to have the freedom to worship as each citizen saw fit. It was never intended to become a nation where only certain sects of Christianity were free to worship. Nor was it ever intended to be a land where only god-fearing people are free to live and practice their beliefs. America never had a state sanctioned religion because this nation was born from those who sought the freedom to worship away from state sanctioned religions, and by those who desired the freedom to not worship any god at all. The very first amendment to our Constitution, this being on the fore-front of the minds of our Founding Fathers, gives everyone the right to live freely in America without having to be burdened by the dogma of a lone religious sect. America is an Atheist nation as much as it is a Jewish nation, as much as it is a Christian nation, and as much as it is a nation of pagans that are our Native American

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