In the 1760s my ggggggg uncle Joseph Craig, preached his version of the Separatist Baptist faith in Virginia and was thrown in jail. He continued to preach through his cell window and people gathered from all around to hear him. Family history was that Patrick Henry defended him. Eventually Rev. Craig and his extended family including my direct ancestors, traveled to what is now eastern Kentucky on the path only a few years earlier identified by the Boone family. They settled around what is now Lexington. So religious persecution is always going to be there. I grew up knowing that my aunt, the first on either side of my family to graduate from college, could not teach in Missouri because she was a Catholic. I grew up in Texas where mine was the only Catholic family on the block. My mother was Protestant until she converted in her 70s and I listened to her aunts complain about my father being Catholic. So I have never taken religious freedom for granted. I am grateful every time I go into a church. BTW, if you go to the website of the Separatist Baptists you will find the most virulent anti-Catholicism on the web. LOL So it makes me smile to know that I’m descended from some.
Two of my families fled religious persecution in Holland. Without America they would have been imprisoned or killed!
I’ve got to start looking into my family background. I know I come from a mixed protestant/catholic background but being the youngest in my family, I’m not aware of any problems that came from that.