text: Well, BITD, in jolly ol', it was sometimes mortally illegal to be Catholic, and sometimes mortally illegal to be Protestant, and always mortally necessary to be one or the other. Depending, it seems, on who married whom, or wanted to. GTFO, right? So, a lot of people did. And brought their religions with them. And the right of religion being the first of the rights guaranteed in the US constitution convinced a LOT of people that religion was the shit. Happily, a Beneficent Deity invested us all with True Understanding, so we get along fine now.