religious dissenters
Doctrinally opposed believers
Religious dissenters are people who reject or oppose the established religious doctrines or practices of their society, particularly an official state church.
The term appears most often in historical contexts—Puritans, Quakers, and other Protestant groups who dissented from the Church of England: The colony was founded by religious dissenters fleeing persecution.
The phrase implies organized disagreement rather than mere private doubt.
- PuritansEnglish Protestant reformers
- freedom of conscienceRight to hold beliefs
- freedom of worshipRight to practice any faith
- schismFormal organizational fracture
- heresyBelief opposing official doctrine
Quakers · burning at the stake · Anabaptists · pamphleteering · apostasy · heterodoxy · martyrdom · separation of church and state · nonconformity · Levellers · theological debates · reformism · excommunication · banned books · blasphemy laws · underground churches · anti-clericalism · Mennonites
- Colonial AmericaGeorge Washington, Thomas Jefferson, Ben Franklin, Benjamin Franklin, Declaration of Independence
- InterregnumOliver Cromwell, Cromwell, Protectorate, Commonwealth
religious dissentersconformists
Those obeying social norms
true believers · devout followers · adherents · traditionalists · fundamentalists
religious dissentersreligious establishment
Faith-based institution
church hierarchy · established church · clergy · prelates · high priests
religious, religion, religions, religiously, religiosity, irreligious, dissent, dissenter, dissenters