Quote:
Originally posted by snowman
Our european ancestors were very supersticious, religious, zelots of all kinds in the 1700's. Take the Salem witch trials for example.
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Yes, there were zealots, as always in history. But they weren't the majority. In fact the people responsible for the witch trials were expunged from England partly because of their zealotry.
"In the year 1700, in the thirteen colonies, there was one church for every 598 colonists. Forty years later there was one church for every 642 colonists. And by 1780, in the middle of the War for Independence, there was one church for every 807 Americans. To put the matter simply, over the course of the eighteenth century the number of churches was declining in proportion to the number of Americans. 1780 was the lowpoint.
Here are some more numbers. In 1730 just under half (48%) of all the titles published in the colonies were religious. Religious titles dropped to 38 percent in 1760. The slide continued until it bottomed out in 1775, where a mere 16 % of all the titles published in the colonies were religious"
Not that "religious" means "intolerant," exactly, but it's an interesting data point.