As Christians celebrate Easter today, it is easy to take for granted some of the religious liberties this country affords. Most people buy into the myth that the Pilgrims came from England in search of religious freedom. They found it in Plymouth Colony, took a break for Thanksgiving dinner, then somebody passed the First Amendment and we all lived happily ever after.

Alas, the myth is, well, a myth. There never was a golden age of religious tranquility in America. In fact, the opening shots of the culture war were fired aboard the Mayflower itself. The Pilgrims came from England, yes, but largely by way of Holland. The leaders aboard the Mayflower had fled from England to Holland 10 years earlier, and were no longer being persecuted. Quite the contrary, they were being assimilated.

In leaving Holland, they were fleeing permissiveness. And they weren't coming to America seeking "religious freedom" in some abstract sense, an idea that would have horrified them. What they wanted most was simply seclusion, someplace where they could live in their own world, according to their own vision of the truth.

And there, in miniature, is the question we still face: How do you live together with people when you disagree with them about what life means in the first place?

The Pilgrims' own solution was vintage 17th century: Suppress the heretics. Plymouth promptly set up official, tax-supported churches and required everyone to formally join one (and not just show up for services) in order to vote or hold public office. At one point in Plymouth's history, 3,000 people lived in the colony, but only 230 could vote or run for office.

Nor did religious liberty spring spontaneously from American soil. Legalized persecution of Catholics, Quakers and Jews thrived throughout the American colonies -- and continued in various states until the end of the 19th century. Massachusetts, for example, kept its established church until 1832. From 1854 to the 1920s, most states passed Blaine Amendments targeting Catholics for economic discrimination. There were religious riots in several cities, notably in Philadelphia (where both sides had cannon) and in Manhattan. And in 1890, Vermont was still enforcing its constitution's requirement that all candidates for public office must "hold and profess the Protestant religion."

Didn't the First Amendment usher in at least sort of a golden age of religious tranquility?

Nope, that didn't change until well into the 20th century. Before that, the states could legally do whatever they wished regarding religion.

Wasn't it always just as wrong for a state government to deny people their religious liberty as it would be for the federal government?

Certainly. It just wasn't illegal. There has never been a time in America during which the law of religious liberty (or any of our other individual rights, for that matter) was perfect.

We need to insist on a principled interpretation of the Constitution that protects as much of the natural right to religious liberty as possible. For example, if we treated government religious distinctions the way we treat ethnic and racial ones, sanity would finally come to the annual holiday wars.

But there is an even bigger step we can take -- one that does not require us to change the Supreme Court's mind. We as a people must realize that the Constitution, while it codifies some protections for religious liberty, does not exhaust the natural right to religious liberty itself. We should take founder James Madison up on his insight and insist on our natural right to religious freedom even where it is outside the protection of written law.

So, is there religious liberty in America? Yes, but not because of the Pilgrims. And only partially because of the Constitution. There is religious liberty in America because there are human beings in America. And human beings have natural rights.