In a sense, the Pilgrims that came on the Mayflower initiated the path to the United States as we know it. They were a mix of that tremendous guilt associated with many monotheistic religions and a search for a liberty. But they were bigots too.
Enforcing those guilt ridden standards demands bigotry of the unseen shadow work. They had a lovely saying though: they said of marriage that it was the church within the church. That sounds poignantly humanistic to me.
The same stream of stoic philosophy informed Oliver Cromwell decades later. A phrase from the yoga sutras comes to mind: “Too much austerity leads to crack ups.” It’s true and quite observable in many societies.