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From VOA Learning English, this is THE MAKING OF A NATION – American history in Special English. I’m Steve Ember. This week in our series, we tell the story of the European settlers who established colonies in the American Northeast in the sixteen hundreds. The Puritans were one of the largest groups from England to settle in the area known as Massachusetts. They began arriving in sixteen thirty. The Puritans had formed the Massachusetts Bay Company in England. The king had given the company an area of land between the Charles and Merrimack rivers. The Puritans were Protestant Christians who had split from the Anglican Church. They wanted to change the church to make it more holy -- more pure, in their eyes. The Puritans were able to live as they wanted in Massachusetts. Soon they became that area's largest religious group from Europe. By sixteen ninety, fifty thousand people were living in Massachusetts. Puritans thought their faith was the only true religion and that everyone should believe in it. They also believed that church leaders should lead the local government, and that all people in the colony should pay to support the Puritan church. The Puritans thought it was the job of government leaders to tell people what to believe. But some people disagreed with the Puritans who became leaders of the colony. One of those who disagreed was a Puritan minister named Roger Williams. Roger Williams believed, as all Puritans did, that other European religions were wrong. He thought the spiritual traditions of the Native Americans were wrong, too. But he did not believe in trying to force others to agree with him. He thought that it was a sin to punish or kill anyone in the name of Christianity. And he thought that only members of the church should have to pay to support the church. | 
