The bad history boys

When Rick Santorum makes assertions based on a conservative political stance about the place of Christianity in US history, the relationship between the State and religion, and religious freedom, it is often bad history but history that needs more checking than cheap jibes at Barack Obama.  Was the USA always “a moral enterprise” as Santorum thinks?
The people who founded the first British colony in the new world, Virginia, were interested in the country’s riches, and had financial backers who included the well-connected Sir Walter Raleigh, and the Virginia Company (a joint-stock company established in 1606 as a commercial venture to exploit the new world). The early colonists might be people who came to have religious freedom, but more likely they came to make or extend their fortune (the Mayflower did not sail until 1620) taking along indentured servants and, later, using slaves. They were probably Anglicans.
Sometimes, those who are persecuted for their beliefs then, when they escape persecution and achieve some independence, make impressive persecutors of those holding contrary beliefs. In 1636 Roger Williams founded the Providence settlement in order to escape religious persecution by fellow colonists, and not to escape religious persecution by the British.
For somebody who claims to be an ex-professor of history, Newt Gingrich seems to know less USA history than he should. There was not much religious liberty for some who came to the British colonies, and liberty was curtailed by fellow colonists – but if one wanted to be simplistic, and pander to a susceptible audience:

This country was founded by people who came here in order to avoid religious persecution. The very basis of this country was religious liberty. Our core document says we are endowed by our Creator with certain unalienable rights.
— Newt Gingrich, Speech, Conservative Political Action Committee (CPAC), February 2012 [My emphasis.]

I emphasize the problematic interpretation of the search for religious liberty, but why did I emphasize “Our core document”? Search the USA’s core document (which must be the US Constitution) and you will find no mention of anybody’s creator, ours or theirs. If you look at the US Declaration of Independence, an important political document but not the core document – not having any force in law – you find “that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights” [my emphasis]. Incorrect statements by Gingrich – bad history being manipulated to pander to those who like to hear what they want to hear.

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