Roger Williams: Father of Religious Freedom in America
Roger Williams came to the New World in 1631 with much
the same hopes as the first Pilgrim Separatists. His heart's
desire was to see a pure church raised up, with no ties
to the Church of England and its corruption, compromise,
and oppression. Ironically that desire is what led 
to his
banishment from the Massachusetts Bay Colony at the end
of 1635. His outspoken zeal for "soul liberty" proved too
radical for the Puritan leaders of the colony, who had
brought with them the same spirit of religious intolerance
from which they had fled.
Slipping away just before his arrest, Roger Williams fled
into the wilderness and found refuge among the Indians.
In later writings, Williams recalls how he was " denied
the common air to breathe... and almost without mercy and
human compassion, exposed to winter miseries in a howling
wilderness [for fourteen weeks] not knowing what
bread or bed did mean ." During this time, whatever
shelter he found was in the dingy, smoky lodges of the
Indians. Their hospitality to him in his time of need was
something he sought to repay with kindness all the rest
of his life.
In early 1636, Williams purchased land from the Indians
and with a few friends founded a settlement they called Providence
Plantations , which soon became a refuge for those "distressed
of conscience." Williams eventually obtained a royal charter
for the colony, which later became the State of Rhode Island,
based on this mandate:
No person within the said colony, at any time hereafter,
shall be anywise molested, punished, disquieted, or called
in question for any differences in opinion in matters of
religion ... but that all persons may ... enjoy their own
judgments and consciences in matters of religious concernments.
What is most significant about the royal charter is that
it acknowledges at the foundation of Rhode Island's government
two important principles: republicanism (democratic
governments made up of representatives elected by its citizens)
and religious liberty . These principles characterize
our American government and are later expressed in both
the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution of
the United States.
Neither republicanism nor religious liberty can be found
in any of the charters of the other colonies in which the
church and state were united. It is therefore easy to determine
the original source of those principles which have protected
our religious freedom and made America a refuge for the
oppressed of every land. The nation's debt to Roger Williams
is a debt that can never be canceled.
The Bloudy Tenent
His bitter experience of the English Reformation, from
the acrid stench of men burning at the stake in England
to his banishment from Massachusetts, caused Roger Williams
to write his famous Bloudy Tenent of Persecution for
Cause of Conscience in which he argued his case for
something hitherto unseen in the Western world -- the complete
separation of church and state. The Puritan society of
Massachusetts, through the civil magistrates, attempted
to force its religious conscience on all who lived there.
This was consistent with the whole bloody history of Christendom
since the reign of Constantine. Such persecution revealed
to Williams "that religion cannot be true which needs such
instruments of violence to uphold it." [1]
In the great struggle of his soul, Roger Williams finally
came to the conclusion that the true church had long ago
ceased to exist on the earth:
The Christian Church or Kingdom of the Saints, that Stone
cut out of the mountain without human hands, (Daniel 2)
now made all one with the mountain or Civil State, the
Roman Empire, from whence it is cut or taken: Christ's
lilies, garden and love, all one with the thorns, the daughters
and wilderness of the World. [2]
Christianity fell asleep in the bosom of Constantine,
and the laps and bosoms of those Emperors who professed
the name of Christ." [3]
So, when did the church die? The trail of evidence that
proved the death of the church led from the Puritan society
of New England all the way back to Constantine's nationalization
of Christianity in the fourth century. Since that time,
Williams concluded, the world had been under the dominion
of the "anti-Christian" Roman Catholic Church. [4] Gone
was the cultural and spiritual wall that had separated
His garden, the church, from the wilderness of the world. [5] As
legal scholar Timothy Hall described it:
"According to Roger Williams, there was no garden to be
protected any longer. Weeds grew where cultivated flowers
once bloomed. He did not advocate a wall between church
and state; he mourned the wall's destruction and the destruction
of the church. There was no church left to be separated
from the state. The most that true believers could do was
wait in expectation that God would one day send apostles
who would replant the garden." [6]
There are some who credit Williams with founding the first
Baptist church in America, and point to the fact of his
baptism in Providence. It is true that Roger Williams and
eleven friends formed the first Baptist church in America
in Providence, Rhode Island. Ezekiel Holliman baptized
Williams by immersion in March of 1639. He had followed
Williams from the Salem church where Williams had briefly
taught several years before. Williams then proceeded to
baptize Holliman and ten friends. Shortly after this, however,
he came to a most remarkable conclusion, as one of those
friends describes:
I [Richard Scott] walked with him in the Baptists' way
about three or four months, in which time he brake from
the society, and declared at large the ground and reasons
of it; that their baptism could not be right because it
was not administered by an apostle. After that he set upon
a way of seeking (with two or three other men that had
dissented with him) by way of preaching and praying; and
there he continued a year or two, till two of the three
had left him. [7]
Roger Williams' actions declared what his later words
would make abundantly clear: all Christian baptisms were
and are invalid, unless apostles, like those of the first-century
church, administered them. Roger Williams expressed this
in his radical statement regarding the conversion of the
Indians of New England:
How readily I could have brought the whole Country to
have observed one day in seven; ... to have received a
Baptism ... to have come to a stated Church meeting, maintained
priests and forms of prayer, and a whole form of Antichristian
worship in life and death ... Why have I not brought them
to such a conversion as I speak of? [8] I
answer, woe be to me, if I call light darkness, and darkness
light ... woe be to me if I call that conversion unto God,
which is indeed subversion of the souls of millions in
Christendom, from one false worship to another, and the
profanation of the holy name of God. [9]
In Roger Williams' eyes the church had died and would
remain dead until God rekindled the spark of the early
church through the love and authority of the apostles he
would raise up at some point in the future. It did no good
to try to convert people to a dead religion. Williams began
to call himself a "waiter," for he saw no alternative but
to wait patiently until that restoration. [10] Meanwhile,
he and the rest of mankind must find a way to live in peace
and practice their diverse and divided religions according
to the persuasion of their own conscience.
The Separation of Church and State
This conclusion brought Roger Williams to his understanding
of the proper role of the state. He realized that the affairs
of the state ought to be purely secular. He rejected John
Winthrop's "City on a Hill" vision of the Puritan colony
in Massachusetts, in which the civil government had the
power to enforce religious correctness . He believed
that no nation had a mandate from God to bring His redemptive
plan to the world, [11] therefore
the affairs of the state should be separate from the affairs
of religion. Individual believers of all faiths should
be protected from the tyranny that results when religion
forms an alliance with secular government.
It was from this conviction that Roger Williams established
the colony called Providence Plantations, which later became
the state of Rhode Island. Nowhere in the colonies was
there more personal freedom and acceptance of diverse religious
expression. Williams believed that government in the nations
was "merely human and civil." He did not see civil government
as redemptive. He recognized that the political skills
and moral fortitude necessary to preserve civil peace might
easily be found among Jews, or Turks, or Chinese as among
people who professed Christianity. [12] As
Timothy Hall observed, "Although they had the wherewithal
to dictate the terms of Providence orthodoxy and thus erect
their own brand of religious establishment, they declined
to do so." [13]
One hundred years later, the foundation of secular government
laid by Roger Williams in Rhode Island came together with
the social and political views of John Locke, who lived
in England in the mid-1600s. Locke proposed a radical view
of government that consciously separated the realms of
church and state. Locke and others like him in England
who promoted this new model of government were not so much
concerned about the purity of true religion. Although they
came from a completely different perspective than Roger
Williams, Locke and others contributed powerfully to the
ideals that triumphed in the American Constitution.
In a letter written to the town of Providence in 1654
or 1655, Williams addressed in more general terms the relationship
between civil duty and individual conscience. His analogy
of the seagoing vessel has become perhaps the most famous
excerpt of all his writings:
There goes many a ship to sea, with many a hundred souls
in one ship, whose weal and woe is common; and is a true
picture of a commonwealth, or a human combination, or society.
It has fallen out sometimes, that both Papists and Protestants,
Jews, and Turks, may be embarked into one ship. Upon which
supposal, I do affirm, that all the liberty of conscience,
that ever I pleaded for, turns upon these two hinges -- that
none of the Papists, Protestants, Jews, or Turks, be forced
to come to the ship's prayers or worship; nor, secondly,
compelled from their own particular prayers or worship,
if they practice any. I further add, that I never denied,
that notwithstanding this liberty, the commander of this
ship ought to command the ship's course; yea, and also
command to that justice, peace, and sobriety, be kept and
practiced, both among the seamen and all the passengers.
If any seamen refuse to perform their service, or passengers
to pay their freight; -- if any refuse to help in person
or purse, towards the common charges, or defense; -- if
any refuse to obey the common laws and orders of the ship,
concerning their common peace or preservation; -- if any
shall mutiny and rise up against their commanders, and
officers; -- if any shall preach or write, that there ought
to be no commanders, nor officers, because all are equal
in CHRIST, therefore no masters, nor officers, no laws,
nor orders, no corrections nor punishments -- I say, I never
denied, but in such cases, whatever is pretended, the commander
or commanders may judge, resist, compel, and punish such
transgressors, according to their deserts and merits. [14]
The civil government in the Providence Plantation had
legitimate authority over religious conscience in certain
areas basic to maintain civil order. However, Williams
recognized that civil government's authority over conscience
was only within the specific scope of government's
ordained responsibilities. "He had confidence in the universal
recognition of certain fundamental moral precepts whose
violation could be punished as 'incivilities.' He believed
that there was 'a moral virtue, a moral fidelity, ability
and honesty' that all individuals, Christian and non-Christian,
could recognize." [15]
Williams recognized that all men are accountable to the
instinctive moral law that God has put in every man's conscience,
which is the basis upon which civil authorities can "praise
those who do good and punish those who do evil." His theory
of government rested on both civil authorities and individuals
of all religious persuasions respecting that covenant of
conscience. He established in Providence the beginnings
of a society in which the civil government could allow
religious freedom of conscience, and individuals could
respect the legitimate authority of the civil government.
Without this mutual respect for the legitimate spheres
of authority of each, democracy could not work.
These principles of government won the debate a century
later in the drafting of the Constitution which established
the legal foundations of the United States of America.
In establishing the first truly secular [16] state
Roger Williams opened the door to the freedom necessary
for the restoration of the true church -- a land where every
man's right to grope for God would be protected. [17]
In that protected ground, and in the fullness of time, " Christ's
lilies, garden and love " could again be planted.
But it would be another two hundred years before the
fullness of time would come.
[1] Roger Williams, Bloudy
Tenent of Persecution for Cause of Conscience (1644),
p. 139
[2]Bloudy Tenent ,
p. 174
[3]Bloudy Tenent ,
p. 184
[4]Bloudy Tenent ,
p. 184; Williams, The Bloudy Tenent Yet More Bloudy ,
p.442
[5]Bloudy Tenent ,
p. 174
[6] Timothy L. Hall, Separating
Church and State (Urbana and Chicago, University
of Illinois Press, 1998), p. 25
[7] Sydney Ahlstrom, A
Religious History of the American People , volume
1, page 222.
[8] The trust the Indians
accorded him because of his friendship, fair dealing, and
the effort he put in to learn their language, made him
uniquely qualified to do this.
[9] "Christenings Make
Not Christians," The Complete Writings of Roger Williams ,
vol. 7, pp. 36-37.
[10] Hall, p. 27; Bloudy
Tenent , pp. 293-294
[11]The Godless
Constitution , p. 50-51
[12]Ibid ,
p.54
[13]Ibid ,
p.100
[14] "Roger Williams
to the Town of Providence," c. Jan 1654/55, in The
Correspondence of Roger Williams , ed. LaFantasie,
2:423-24. For a similar use of the ship metaphor, see Williams, The
Examiner Defended , p. 209.
[15] Hall, p. 110; Bloudy
Tenent Yet More Bloudy , p. 365
[16]Secular means
not bound by religious rule; it does not mean Godless.
[17] Acts 17:26-27
Back
Printer-friendly
