According to the First Amendment to the United States Constitution, "Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof." The Pilgrims escaped from England in the early 1600s for that very reason, but it wasn't until the Bill of Rights was ratified in 1791 that the ideal would come to fruition. Our Founding Fathers considered freedom of religion to be a fundamental human right, but it has come under fire in recent years by those who cite the concept of separation of church and state.