For the past 60 years, I held in trust a wooden model of the Mayflower. The Mayflower was the ship the Pilgrims sailed in 1620 as they migrated from England to the coast of America in search of a place where, without fear of punishment, they could practice their Christian faith. As I replaced the rigging on the Mayflower model and reglued the masts so that they could properly hold the varnished canvas sails, I began to contemplate what the Mayflower ship represented. It seems heroic that the Pilgrims were willing to risk their lives to leave England and to sail across a treacherous sea in a ship as small and unstable as the Mayflower, as I was taught, in pursuit of religious freedom.

But then I asked myself if the Pilgrims’ desire to preserve their freedom of religious expression ever masked intolerance of another’s freedom of religious exp ...