America has often been called the melting-pot due to its vastness of cultural diversity. However, America during the colonial years was an experimentation in religious freedom. You name it, and they probably had it from the rigid, liturgical worship of Roman Catholicism and Anglicanism, the free worship of Baptists and Quakers, to witchcraft and the occult. Today, I hear many people expressing their fear of "strange" religions coming onto the scene in Christian America, but these people fail to realize that America began with a conglomeration of strange religious expressions.

Early in the life of the new nation, European Christianity still dominated. Soon, this European environment began to stiffel the goals of the religious groups. In their attempt at religious freedom, many groups became intolerant to those who disagreed with them. A major point which must never be overlooked is that the majority of early Americans were not "church-going" people. Some statistics even show that under one-third of the population had any church membership whatsoever. Many others practiced the occult or other mystery religions. America was founded not only in Christian pluralism but in the even broader scope of religious pluralism. It would be very wrong interpret American history in the light of Christianity alone. Though predominately Christian, America was and still is the melting-pot of Christian diversity and religious pluralism.