The New England colonists were predominantly Puritans who led strict religious lives. Laws in these colonies assumed that citizens who strayed away from conventional religious customs were a threat to civil order and should be punished for their nonconformity.
Roger Williams (1603 – 1683) was himself a puritan minister from Massachusetts Bay Colony. In his view, any civil authorities had no right to involve themselves in matter of faith. Banished from Massachusetts in 1635, he founded Rhode Island, the first colony with no established church and the first society in America to grant liberty of conscience to everyone.
Massachusetts Bay Colony was therefore the New England colony that did not require all adults to attend church service.
The New England colony that didn't require all adults to attend church services was Rhode Island.
Explanation:
The English colony, later named Rhode Island and Providence Plantations, was founded in 1636 by the anthropologist, political philosopher, politician and theologian Roger Williams, a Baptist exiled from the Massachusetts Bay Colony. Williams' constitution of the colony was democratic, granting the members of all denominations full freedom of belief and conscience. Rhode Island banned slavery in 1652. Under the royal statute of 1663 governors were appointed until the end of colonial rule. Only between 1686 and 1689 Sir Edmund Andros acted as governor of the Dominion of New England, which included Rhode Iceland.
