The more secular founding fathers: How did they survive?

[Lord Kenneth]

How did the deistic Thomas Paine and others survive in the same time period that was heavily religious enough to bring about, for example, the Salem Witch trials?

In fact, what was public reaction to their blasphemy?

[espritch]

The inhabitants of Salem were very religious Puritans. The Salem Witch trials occurred in 1692. Tomas Paine wasn’t born until 1737, over 40 years after this event. By then, in part as a reaction to this event, the colonies had become considerably less puritanical.

In short, he survived because he was born in more sane era.

[American]

A pure guess is that if you had money, power, and good friends, then you were really something and you didn't need to suck up to the church. In fact you could probably make them do your own bidding instead, at least on some levels.

[jj]

And, Kenneth, he was part of the enlightenment, the movement that founded this country.

Which was, by the way, a considerably materialist movement. Now, some people of the period espoused logical positivism, which has been shown to be an incorrect philosophy, but since science moves, don't let that bother you... They didn't know about QM yet.

I mention it only because certain dishonest, misleading mean people here will try to cite it as evidence that the forefathers were "wrong" about something, and use that to argue for the lie that "this is a Christian Nation"