Religious BIGOTRY & HIGHER EDUCATION

• Ironically, the Puritans who came to New England to escape being punished for their religion were the most rigid punishers of people because of religion:

Banning of Catholic Priests on penalty of death

"No Jesuit, or spiritual or ecclesiastical person ordained by the authoritie of the Pope, or Sea of Rome shall henceforth at any time repair to, or come within this Jurisdiction: ... he shall be committed to prison, or bound over to the next Court of Assistants, to be tryed and proceeded with by Banishment or otherwise as the Court shall see cause: and if any person so banished shall be taken the second time within this Jurisdiction upon lawfull tryall and conviction he shall be put to death."

Laws against Quakers

"This court doth order and enact, that every person, or persons, of the cursed sect of the Quakers, who is not an inhabitant of, but is found within this jurisdiction, shall be apprehended without warrant... shall commit the said person to close prison, there to remain, without bail, unto the next court of assistants, where they shall have a legal trial: and being convicted to be of the sect of the Quakers, shall be sentenced to be banished upon pain of death:"

Law against Anabaptists

"Forasmuch as experience hath plentifully proved that since the first arising of the Anabaptists, about a hundred years since, they have been the incendiaries of commonwealths and the infecters of persons in main matters of religion, and the troublers of churches in all places where they have been... every such person or persons shall be sentenced to banishment."

These laws, expressing the narrowminded views of the Puritans, were taught and advocated by the leadership of Harvard College, the only college in America.

DECISION: You are a Puritan in Boston. You have three teenage children. The only college available for their education is Harvard. But Harvard promotes religious bigotry. Do you send them to college or not?

Click here to find out what happened.