Religious freedom in the context of "Patent of Toleration"

Christianity is the predominant religion in Serbia. The Constitution of Serbia defines it as a secular state with guaranteed religious freedom. Eastern Orthodox Christians with 6,079,396 members, comprise 84.5% of country's population. The Serbian Orthodox Church is the largest and traditional church of the country; adherents of it are overwhelmingly Serbs. Public schools in Serbia allow religious teaching, most commonly with the Serbian Orthodox Church. Serbian public holidays include the religious celebrations of Eastern Orthodox Christians. Other Orthodox Christian communities in Serbia include Montenegrins, Romanians, Macedonians, and Bulgarians. The Catholic Church is prominent in north Vojvodina amongst the Hungarian minority. Protestantism is most largely found in Slovak populations within Bački Petrovac and Kovačica. Christianity first arrived in Serbia in the 9th century. It became state-religion in the 9th century when Serbia began to identify as a Christian country. In a 2011 census, 91.22% of Serbians identified as Christian.

William Penn (24 October [O.S. 14 October] 1644 – 10 August [O.S. 30 July] 1718) was an English writer, theologian, religious thinker, and influential Quaker who founded the Province of Pennsylvania during British colonial rule. An advocate of democracy and religious freedom, Penn was known for his amicable relations and successful treaties with the Lenape Indians who had resided in present-day Pennsylvania prior to European colonization there.

In 1681, King Charles II granted an area of land corresponding to the present-day U.S. states of Pennsylvania and Delaware to Penn to offset debts he owed Penn's father, the admiral and politician Sir William Penn. The following year, Penn left England and sailed up Delaware Bay and the Delaware River, where he founded Philadelphia on the river's western bank. Penn's Quaker government was not viewed favourably by the Dutch, Swedish and English settlers in what is now Delaware, and the land was also claimed by the Calverts, proprietors of the neighbouring Province of Maryland. In 1704, the three southernmost counties of provincial Pennsylvania were granted permission to form a new, semi-autonomous Delaware Colony.

St. Mary's County, established in 1637, is a county located in the U.S. state of Maryland. As of the 2020 census, the population was 113,777. Its county seat is Leonardtown. The name is in honor of Mary, the mother of Jesus. St. Mary's County is part of the Lexington Park, MD Metropolitan Statistical Area, which also is included in the Washington-Baltimore-Arlington, DC-MD-VA-WV-PA Combined Statistical Area. It is part of the Southern Maryland region.

The county was the home to the first Maryland Colony, and the first capital of the Colony of Maryland. Settled by English Catholics, it is considered to be the birthplace of religious freedom in North America, at a time when the British colonies were settled primarily by Protestants. The county is home to the Patuxent River Naval Air Station and St. Mary's College of Maryland. Traditionally, St. Mary's County has been known for its unique and historic culture of Chesapeake Bay tidewater farming, fishing, and crabbing communities. But with the advent of the military bases, growth of an extensive defense contractor presence, and the growth of St. Mary's College of Maryland, as well as increasing numbers of long-distance Washington, D.C. commuters, it has been undergoing a decades-long transformation which has seen the county's population double since 1970.

The Wars of the Three Kingdoms were a series of conflicts fought between 1639 and 1653 in the kingdoms of England, Scotland and Ireland, then separate entities in a personal union under Charles I. They include the 1639 to 1640 Bishops' Wars, the First and Second English Civil Wars, the Irish Confederate Wars, the Cromwellian conquest of Ireland and the Anglo-Scottish War of 1650–1652. They resulted in the execution of Charles I, the abolition of monarchy, and founding of the Commonwealth of England, a unitary state which controlled the British Isles until the Stuart Restoration in 1660.

Political and religious conflict between Charles I and his opponents dated to the early years of his reign. While the vast majority supported the institution of monarchy, they disagreed on who held ultimate authority. Royalists generally argued political and religious bodies were subordinate to the king, while most of their Parliamentarian opponents backed a limited form of constitutional monarchy. This was worsened by differences over religion and religious freedom. Reformed Protestants such as the English Puritans and Scottish Covenanters opposed the changes Charles tried to impose on the Protestant state churches of England and Scotland. In Ireland, the only one with a Catholic majority, the Irish Confederates wanted an end to anti-Catholic discrimination, greater self-governance, and a reversal of land grants to Protestant settlers.

There are multiple Chinatowns in the borough of Queens in New York City. The original Queens Chinatown emerged in Flushing, initially as a satellite of the original Manhattan Chinatown, before evolving its own identity, surpassing in scale the original Manhattan Chinatown, and subsequently, in turn, spawning its own satellite Chinatowns in Elmhurst, Corona, and eastern Queens. As of 2023, illegal Chinese immigration to New York has accelerated, and its Flushing neighborhood has become the present-day global epicenter receiving Chinese immigration as well as the international control center directing such migration. As of 2024, a significant new wave of Chinese Muslims are fleeing religious persecution in northwestern China’s Xinjiang Province and seeking religious freedom in New York, and concentrating in Queens.

The Ministry of the Presidency (MPR) was the department of the Government of Spain that, from 1974 to 2023, assured the link between the different Ministries and the Prime Minister and it was responsible for the relations between the Government and the Parliament. This department also supported The Crown in the exercise of its functions.

In this sense, it was responsible for coordinating the matters of institutional relevance; preparing, carrying out and tracking the legislative program; supporting the Prime Minister; supporting the Cabinet, the Government Delegated Committees and the General Commission of Secretaries of State and Undersecretaries; supporting the Government with its relationships with the Cortes Generales and managing the government policies regarding historical and democratic memory, as well as the exercise of the right to religious freedom and worship.

Southern Maryland, also referred to as SoMD, is a geographical, cultural and historic region in Maryland composed of the state's southernmost counties on the Western Shore of the Chesapeake Bay. According to the state of Maryland, the region includes all of Calvert, Charles, and St. Mary's counties and the southern portions of Anne Arundel and Prince George's counties. It is largely coterminous with the region of Maryland that is part of the Washington metropolitan area. Portions of the region are also part of the Baltimore Metropolitan Area and the California-Lexington Park Metropolitan Statistical Area. As of the 2020 Census, the region had a population of 373,177. The largest community in Southern Maryland is Waldorf, with a population of 81,410 as of the 2020 Census.

Initially inhabited by the indigenous Piscataway people, the first European settlement in Southern Maryland (and the state as a whole) was established in St. Mary's City in 1634. While the settlement was intended to be a Catholic refuge, religious strife was prominent in Maryland's early years. The passage of the Maryland Toleration Act in 1649 resulted in St. Mary's City being cited as the birthplace of religious freedom in North America. The area developed an agricultural economy based on tobacco with labor sourced from indentured servants and slaves. The War of 1812 saw military action in the region during the British campaign to capture Washington, while the American Civil War saw the end of slavery in Maryland and John Wilkes Booth fleeing through the region following the Assassination of Abraham Lincoln. Much of the area remains rural with agriculture still playing a large role in the region's economy. Despite this, the region has seen large suburban growth and development in the late 20th and early 21st centuries as urban sprawl from nearby Washington, D.C., expands southward.

Structural inequality occurs when the fabric of organizations, institutions, governments or social networks contains an embedded cultural, linguistic, economic, religious/belief, physical or identity based bias which provides advantages for some members and marginalizes or produces disadvantages for other members. This can involve, personal agency, freedom of expression, property rights, freedom of association, religious freedom, social status, or unequal access to health care, housing, education, physical, cultural, social, religious or political belief, financial resources or other social opportunities. Structural inequality is believed to be an embedded part of all known cultural groups. The global history of slavery, serfdom, indentured servitude and other forms of coerced cultural or government mandated labour or economic exploitation that marginalizes individuals and the subsequent suppression of human rights (see UDHR) are key factors defining structural inequality.

Structural inequality can be encouraged and maintained in society through structured institutions such as state governments, and other cultural institutions like government run school systems with the goal of maintaining the existing governance/tax structure regardless of wealth, employment opportunities, and social standing of different identity groups by keeping minority students from high academic achievement in high school and college as well as in the workforce of the country. In the attempt to equalize allocation of state funding, policymakers evaluate the elements of disparity to determine an equalization of funding throughout school districts.