INTRODUCTION
The history of the creation of the United
States of America, as taught and understood by a great number of modern
Americans, goes something like this: In
1620, pilgrims fled King James’ England aboard the Mayflower to escape
religious persecution. They settled in
what would become Massachusetts and celebrated the first Thanksgiving. They abused the natives of the land and
farmed, and flourished. More settlers
arrived, and English taxation in the colonies became so severe that, in the
mid-1700s, a revolution was sparked.
When the nation that emerged on the other side wrote their Constitution,
they vowed that government would not establish or recognize an official
religion, thereby safeguarding against the tyranny that their ancestors fled
one hundred years earlier. This
abbreviated history, so commonplace today in American classrooms is unfortunate
and dangerous for three reasons. First,
it ignores over a century of the formation of the nation. Second, it presents a distorted view where
the ideological landscape is made up of a united proto-America against a
tyrannical England and its supporters in the colonies. Third, as is often the case with poorly
elaborated history, it has been used to support views that are largely out of
keeping with the spirit of proto and revolutionary America. These views include the liberal historical
revisionism so pervasive today that seeks to strip God from the entire
historical scene and Christian fundamentalism that seeks to restore a mythical
Christian America with godly leaders and godly laws in a sacral state akin to
Calvin’s Geneva or David’s Israel. A
deeper look at this history and its participants, however, reveals a different
picture altogether.
When surveying American history, there are
many individuals who stand out as embodying American ideals. Voluminous works have been compiled on George
Washington, Thomas Jefferson, Benjamin Franklin, and others who devised what
would become the American form of government.
Quotes like Patrick Henry’s “Give me liberty, or give me death” embody
the spirit of freedom. Stories of Daniel
Boone, Davy Crocket, and Lewis and Clark display proudly the American quest for
adventure. In the Christian classrooms,
stories of the Wesley brothers, George Fox, and Jonathan Edwards are examples
of Christian fervor in the early days of the nation. One man, however, occupies all of these
arenas. Before Adams and Jefferson
constructed the Declaration of Independence, this man stood for freedom. Before the first amendment guaranteed freedom
from governmental interference in matters of conscience, this man insisted that
government had no place in religious affairs.
Before Boone and Clark explored the American frontier, this man left
everything familiar and settled his own land in Indian territory. This man,
this giant of American history, was Roger Williams. Rather than attempt a full study of the life
of Roger Williams, this paper will focus on his life between 1631 and 1640. William’s arrival in Massachusetts and his departure
from the church he founded in Providence will act as bookends for the
study. Williams’ life and work continued
for over forty years after leaving the church.
Still, during this nine year period Williams’ views on, and contribution
to, ecclesiology, government, and cultural awareness can all be clearly seen.
HISTORICAL
BACKGROUND
As with any event in history, Roger
Williams’ arrival in Massachusetts and the events that followed received much
of their significance from a culture and events that long preceded his
birth. In order to understand what
Williams did and what he said it is necessary to understand, at least briefly,
what he called those “wonderful, searching, disputing, and dissenting times.”[1] Though the event is impossible to date with
precision, Williams was born in London, likely in 1603.[2] This was the same year that Queen Elizabeth
died, ending one of the longest reigns in the history of the English monarchy,
and James Stuart, who had already ruled Scotland for thirty-six years, added
the southern half of the island to his dominion with his ascendancy to the
English throne.[3]
James inherited an England that had, for
seventy years, been caught in the throes of an ecclesiastical pendulum that had
been swinging since Henry VIII severed ties with Rome and placed himself at the
head of the newly formed Church of England.
When Henry’s daughter took her young brother’s throne (the fifteen
year-old’s death having ended his short six year reign), she worked to restore
England to Catholicism by washing the country in the blood of Protestant
heretics. Many Protestants, some of whom
came to be known as Puritans, bemoaned the backsliding of the Church of England
into the corruptions of Rome, and fled to sit at the feet of Calvin in Geneva.[4]
The succession of Elizabeth five years
later was seen by many as the beginning of a golden era whereby God would
eradicate the Roman perversions instituted by the “Antichristian monarch” Mary. Many of those who had fled to Switzerland
returned, fresh with Calvinistic ideas and recommendations. Hopes failed to turn into reality, however, as
the Puritans were largely ignored and Elizabeth worked to stabilize her country
by re-establishing a Protestantism that the Puritans still felt reeked of
Papist corruption.[5]
When James, from largely Calvinist
Scotland arrived, many thought their prayers had been answered. However, the Stuart king tightened the
church/state relationship more than ever, believing his rule to be divinely
appointed, and “demanded stricter conformity”[6] to
the Church of England than ever. It was
into this England that Roger Williams was born.
Those Puritans who would not conform to James’ rules faced two
choices. They could conform, risk
prison, or leave. Edwin Gaustad conveys
the severity of their dilemma:
To stay in England meant either to conform, at great cost to
the Puritans’ consciences, or to enter prison, at great cost to their welfare
and perhaps even their lives. Some who
despaired of ever reforming the bureaucratic Church of England even withdrew
from than national body, thereby making themselves targets for arrest and
imprisonment. One such group fled to
Holland when Roger Williams was still a young boy, and in 1620 emigrated to
America aboard the Mayflower . . . where, years later, their history and that
of Roger Williams would intersect.[7]
At the time of Williams’ arrival, the Massachusetts Bay colony was governed by John Winthrop, a Puritan. Bruce Prescott describes how Winthrop came to power, and this is important to understand the conflict that would ensue between the governor and Roger Williams:
Born into a family
of English gentry, Winthrop was heir to the Manor of Groton in Suffolk. Before
sailing across the Atlantic, he was elected governor of Massachusetts Bay by
speculators and investors who had never set foot in New England. Their idea of
a "Christian commonwealth" was but a step or two removed from a
feudal fiefdom. They expected their commonwealth to be ruled by an aristocracy
of Puritan gentry aided and abetted by a Puritan clergy desirous to secure
their own privileged standing within the community. As much as anything else,
they were searching for a place where their family fortunes would not be placed
in jeopardy by the instability of English political life.[8]
MASSACHUSETTS
When Roger Williams and his wife set sail
for the New World on December 1, 1630[9], they
were likely filled with joy at the prospect of beginning their new life
together across the sea, away from the heavy hand of the King. Even John Endicott, recent governor of the
colony heralded the couple’s arrival at the Massachusetts Bay, calling Williams
a “godly minister.”[10] Going to Boston not long after their arrival,
the Williams were welcomed and Roger was invited to become a resident minister
at the church there. This posed a
problem for Williams. He turned down the
post, saying, “I durst not officiate to an unseparated people, as, upon
examination and conference, I found them to be.”[11] If Williams’ language is less that accessible
to a modern reader, Governor John Winthrop clarified Williams’ objection by
saying Williams “refused to join with the congregation at Boston because they
would not make a public declaration of their repentance for having communion
with the churches of England, while they lived there.”[12] Winthrop had come to know the Williams well,
as Mrs. Winthrop and their son John Jr. had accompanied the couple on their
trip to the New World.[13] The Puritans at Boston were of the sort that
believed they could reform the Church of England from within[14],
not unlike Martin Luther in the early days of his reformation. Williams, however, was more than just a
Puritan. Edmund Morgan called Williams
“a special kind of separatist.”[15] Williams
believed that the Church of England was so corrupt that reformation was impossible. Rather, he advocated complete
separation. Though it is difficult to
discern how developed his thoughts on this matter were at this stage, his
feelings on the degree of separation that was necessary would become undeniably
clear in the coming years. Leaving
Boston, Williams and his wife traveled to north Salem in April of 1631.
Williams found the church as Salem to be
more separate and thus, to his liking. Here,
he was promptly offered a pastorate that he was inclined to accept. However, the powerful Boston authorities,
upset that Williams had rebuffed their offer, put civil pressure on the Salem
church to delay his hiring. Winthrop
expressed his amazement that the Salem church would seek to make Williams a
minister without conferring with Boston on the matter. In his journal, dated April 12, 1631, he
wrote, “therefore, they [the Boston court] marveled that they [Salem] would
choose him without advising with the council [Boston]; and withal desiring him,
that they would forbear to proceed till they had conferred about it.”[16] Though the churches of the area were
congregational in their polity, the Salem church hesitated. This is ironic, because Winthrop wrote a mere
two and a half years later that “they were all clear in that point, that no
church or person can have power over another church.”[17] This, however, is precisely what Boston had
done, and Williams left the town after less than four months. He headed south by ship, bypassing Boston, to
Plymouth in search of a people who more closely held his separatist
convictions.
Williams, for a time, enjoyed some peace
in Plymouth. The Separatists who had
arrived on the Mayflower just over a decade earlier welcomed Williams. During his time in Plynouth, Williams began
to develop many of his theological and political ideas. He also began to develop a friendship with
the Indians (though this was admittedly a strange concept in Williams’
day). He began to learn Indian
languages at this point, possibly with a hope of evangelizing the native
tribes. [18]
After a while, however, the governor of
Plymouth, William Brewster, began expressing concern over some of Williams’
teaching. In Brewster’s history Of Plimouth Plantation, the governor
wrote that Williams “began to fall into some strange opinions, and from opinion
to practice.”[19] What this teaching was is unclear, though it
likely included Williams’ explosive comments about the ownership of Indian
land. He called King Charles I a liar in
his assertion that all of Europe was part of Christendom, as most Puritans
regarded most of Europe as outside the true Church. He also denied the validity of royal land
grants, effectively condemning those who did not obtain their land fairly from
the Indians. Though it is likely that
most of these discussions were private ones, such controversial opinions were
more than the Plymouth Puritans could bear.[20] Williams asked to be released from his
position in the church, and left Plymouth to return to Salem with a group of
supporters in tow. The year was 1633.
Williams’ return to Salem was met with
immediate acceptance from the church there.
They welcomed Williams and his followers with open arms, offering him,
albeit unofficially, the same position that had caused problems with Boston two
years earlier. It was during this tenure
that Williams accompanied the senior pastor Thomas Skelton to clerical meetings
at Boston about which the two raised concerns about the potential establishment
of a “Presbiterye or Superintendancy.”
These concerns were what Winthrop was referring to when he wrote “they
were all clear in that point, that no church or person can have power over
another church” as quoted above.[21] Williams did well for himself in Salem,
having a spacious house that was appropriate to “a man of some accomplishment
and stature.”[22] Roger and Mary also welcomed their first
child into the world in Salem.
As in Plymouth, however, the peace
Williams sought was short-lived. Before
long, controversies began to erupt.
Debates within Salem, and between Salem and Boston, kept Williams in the
thick of political and theological battle.
There was the question as to whether women in Church ought to pray with
their heads uncovered. Proverbial shots were fired as zealous Boston pastor,
John Cotton not only preached that
Paul’s admonition to the Corinthians was not binding on women in Boston, but
traveled to Salem to make the same point.
When Puritans, including leader John Endicott, incensed over the
presence of a Papal cross in the English flag, proceeded to cut it out,
Williams was thought to have been behind the event, though he was not indicted
by name. Additionally, Williams objected to the taking of Indian land “without due
compensation or negotiation.”[23] This offence was horrible beyond words. To the Massachusetts authorities, Williams
was not only speaking an affront to the King, but was undermining the existence
of the colony itself! If, as Williams
asserted, English colonization was “a sin of unjust usurpation upon others’
possessions,”[24]
the entire undergirding of Massachusetts itself was at risk. Though Williams
was called to court and questioned on the matter, no charges were ever filed
against him, because other ministers argued on his behalf that his writings had
been ambiguous.[25]
This dismissal by the court could have
been the last of Williams’ troubles, but Williams could not manage to leave
well enough alone. Two other issues, on
which Williams was adamant, were not able to be overlooked by the court. Williams spoke out openly about the
inappropriateness of forcing a man to swear “so help me God” in court, saying
that, were the swearer a non-believer, the civil authorities would be causing
him to break the third Commandment by taking the Lord’s name in vain. Additionally, Williams believed that the
civil magistrate had no right to enforce matters of religion. The magistrate’s arm, Williams argued,
stretched only as far as was necessary to keep civil order. Enforcing matters of conscience was the
prerogative of the Church, and could not rightly be made compulsory by civil
authorities.
In July 1635, Williams was again called to
court and officially warned regarding his “erroneous and very dangerous”
opinions.[26] Here, the court was making official
complaints about Williams’ teaching. In
his defense, the church at Salem wrote letters to the church elders in Boston,
but the elders refused even to read them to their congregation. Williams accused the Boston elders of showing
a distinct lack of Christian charity and said that by not working with the
Salem church toward a solution, they had committed a “spiritual offence against
our Lord Jesus.”[27] Just three months later, the court summoned
Williams again and levied charges against the Salem minister. The court argued that Williams’ letters to
churches “complayninge of the magistrates for injustice, extreme oppression
&c: & the other to his owne churche, to persuade them to renounce
Communion with all the Churches in the Baye, as full on Antichristian
pollution,” were dangerous. The court
urged him to recant, offered him counsel from the other ministers present, and
even offered to delay the proceedings to give Williams time to reconsider his
position. Williams turned down all the
court’s offers, and the court dismissed to consider its sentence. Williams, ever a man of principle, stood his
ground, even as his own church at Salem joined in the chorus of
condemnation. The Salem church, likely
influenced by the political power in Boston, had written to the court, “openly
disclaim[ing] his errors, and wrote an humble submission to the magistrates,
acknowledging their fault in joining with Mr. Williams in that letter to the
churches against them.”[28] The next morning, when the court reconvened,
the judgment was definitive. Williams
was ordered to leave the colony within six weeks.[29] The minister who had come to America seeking
religious liberty was banished for exercising that very liberty. Rev. James D. Knowles, writing in 1834, wrote
regarding Williams’ banishment:
What was there . . . in the opinions of Mr. Williams, that was
so offensive to the rulers in church and state?
His denial of the right to possess the land of the Indians without their
own consent . . . His ideas of the unlawfulness of oaths . . . the impropriety
of praying with unregenerate persons . . . We are led to the conclusion, that
Mr. Williams’ banishment is to be found in the great principle which has
immortalized his name, that THE CIVIL POWER HAS NO JURISDICTION OVER THE
CONSCIENCE.[30]
This contention of Williams, more than his ideas on ecclesiology, more than his thoughts on the divine right of kings or the acquisition of Indian land, had been the death knell for his residency in Massachusetts. This idea, that the magistrate could not rightly interfere with matters of conscience, that the government had no authority in religious affairs, would become a hallmark of his writing and influence for the rest of his life. It would be another hundred and fifty years before the drafting of the first amendment, but Williams had begun to plant the seeds of this “seditious” idea that would become the bedrock of American society.
Williams did not heed the court’s deadline
for his banishment from the colony. His
second child was born the same month as his hearing, and it was a cold New
England winter. Where was he to go? Travel back to England, perhaps less perilous
than wandering through the wilderness of Indian country, was scarcely an
option. His ideas would not be any more
acceptable in the old world than in the new.
So, he waited. Perhaps he thought
the court would reconsider. Perhaps he
was waiting for divine direction. Perhaps,
as he told the court, he was too ill to brave the wilderness in the dead of
winter. At any rate, in January 1636 he
had still not left his Salem home. At
this point, the court decided to take action.
Rather than hang him, as some magistrates advocated, they would forcibly
place Williams and his family on an England-bound ship, and be rid of him. When soldiers arrived at the Williams’ house,
however, they found that the family had left three days earlier, with no word
of his destination. It has been
suggested that it was Winthrop himself who warned Williams of his impending
arrest, though he would never admit it publicly.[31] So Roger set out into the wilderness of New
England in the winter of 1636/37 with nothing but the providence of God to
guide him.[32]
WILDERNESS
Roger Williams would travel through the
bitter snow for fourteen weeks. The snow
was so bad that, writing more than three decades late, he said he could still
feel it.[33] During the fourteen weeks he was taken in by
the Indian tribes that he had befriended during his years in
Massachusetts. Had it not been for these
“Barbarians”, Williams surely would not have survived.[34] Here, a hundred and forty years before Daniel
Boone would brave the wilds of Virginia and what would become Kentucky,
Williams learned the ways of the wilds as he made his way south toward the Narragansett Bay, some forty miles away. Williams had evidently heard of the area
before, likely from his Indian friends (a strange term in those days, but one
Williams and the Indians would have been likely to use), for the magistrates in
Boston had expressed concern about reports of Williams and his followers plans
to start a plantation there.[35]
Williams
asked to purchase a section of land on the bay from his friend, Canonicus, a
sachem of the Narragansett tribe.
Canonicus refused payment, gifting the land instead, and a friendship
began to develop that would endure until Canonicus’ death in 1647. Canonicus so enjoyed his friendship with
Williams that he requested two things upon his death: that he be buried with some cloth that had
been the last gift (of many) from Williams, and that Williams, whom he regarded
as a son, attend the funeral. Williams appropriately
named the land he had purchased Providence, and sent for his family in the spring
of 1637. Others came from Salem as well
to this land that Williams promised would be free of governmental interference
in matters of conscience and, by
Williams’
relationship with the Indians was far from without conflict, however. Within months of arriving at Narragansett
Bay, an Englishman was killed by Indians off Block Island. Williams provided counsel in the ensuing
conflict not only to the bloodthirsty Pequot Indians, who had been judged
responsible for the murder, but to the Massachusetts authorities (Winthrop) and
the Narragansett tribe. Winthrop, who
had voted for Williams’ banishment, had managed to maintain a friendship with
the man and relied on his expertise in monitoring Indian activity in the
area. That Williams agreed to do so, and
exchanged a multitude of letters with Winthrop, as well as his chief clerical
antagonist John Cotton, speaks volumes to his character.[36] He urged Canonicus to sever ties with the
Pequot and assist Massachusetts in the attack.
These negotiations strengthened his relationship with the Narragansett,
and the failure of negotiations with the Pequot sealed their fate.[37]
PROVIDENCE
From the very beginning Providence was a
special place, at least in the heart of Roger Williams. If Williams had been an outsider in the
Massachusetts colony, he was now an insider.
“Now he could not protest against the authorities, for suddenly he had
become the authority.”[38] Two things became very clear as his
settlement quickly grew to about thirty people.
The first was the necessity of some sort of local government. The second was organization in the local
church. These institutions, however,
must be kept separate. In attending to
the first, the settlers agreed that the town should be a voluntary association,
with agreements that, while voluntary, were binding on those that lived
there. He even wrote to John Winthrop
for advice on governmental affairs.
Winthrop, then governor of the Massachusetts colony for six years, was
happy to oblige.[39]
It is interesting that the two conversed
so freely on civil matters, for they began the discussion from two very
different starting points. Many of the
Old England Puritans, of which Winthrop could be said to be one, took the fact
that was a consensual agreement between a people and their ruler and wedded it
to an idea that such government had been ordained by God, thus giving it moral
as well as civil authority. “Rulers, the Puritans said, were God’s viceregents,
agents appointed to enforce His will, but His manner of appointing them was
indirect: He gave authority initially to a whole people and allowed them to
pass it on, through a covenant, to rulers.”[40] This belief led directly to the very thing
Williams had been arguing against in Massachusetts – that is, the power of the
state to regulate in matters of morality.
Williams, on the other hand, said that government was indeed an
agreement between rulers and their people, but that God did not factor into
it. He was not saying that God is not
active in the world. He was saying,
rather, that the interjection of a theoretical hand of God into matters where
His involvement was not clearly present was blasphemous.[41] Thus, a loose governmental structure was
established, by voluntary consent, with biweekly meetings to discuss town
business including planting and harvesting, division of land, and safeguarding
against Indian attacks. This voluntary association, with simple majority rule
in matters of civil affairs was, in Williams’ mind the most logical way to do
things
The program was modest enough: Let us work together as
sensibly as we can, but let us work.
Williams encouraged each head of a household to sign a covenant, or
agreement, that would bind them together “with free and joint consent” and “to
promise unto each other” that whatever the majority decided to do, all would
obey. As new arrivals came, they, too,
would be obliged to sign this agreement.[42]
Williams also saw the need for a stable church organization. While Williams was adamant that no man would be molested for his conscience, he recognized that those who were Christian would clearly need a place to worship. The forming of a church at Providence raised many questions. What form should that church take? If not modeled on the Church of England or the Puritan churches in Massachusetts, then what? Williams was certain of one thing: membership in the church ought to be voluntary. People would not automatically be considered part of the church because they were citizens of Providence. Membership in the church would only be affected by baptism of a professing adult. Williams would have none of the infant baptizing that occurred in many of the Puritan churches, and no one would be a member except by their choosing and voluntary declaration of faith. The English Baptists that Williams had encountered seemed to hold to these beliefs and, in fact, some of Williams’ accusers in Massachusetts had often called him a Baptist. So, in 1638, twelve settlers, including Williams started the first Baptist Church in the New World.[43]
In 1640 Providence had grown to about
forty settlers, and they covenanted with each other to form an official
government. This government would uphold the liberties that had been the
centerpiece of the town since Williams’ arrival three years earlier, and
declared, “We agree, As formerly hath been the liberties of the Town, so still
hold forth Liberty of Conscience.”[44] It was official. Providence had a government that had
religious liberty at its very core. This
religious liberty, which would later be incorporated into the Final Rhode
Island charter, granted by King Charles II twenty-three years later, would be
firmly established as a tenet of American civilization for centuries to
come. This fight would not be easy, and
Roger Williams fighting days were far from over, but this decisive victory was
seminal in the founding of Rhode Island and, later, the United States of
America.
WILLIAMS THE
SEEKER
Roger Williams fought, nearly to the
death, for the freedom to worship as he saw fit, free from governmental
interference. In 1838, he helped to
found a church based largely on those principles. The church still exists to this day as “The
First Baptist Church in America”. Then,
less than two years later, he did something unthinkable – he left. The man of God, who studied the Scriptures
tirelessly, who had been both layman and minister, broke fellowship with the
body of believers that had followed him to Providence. He had not lost his faith. He had not decided that the church he had
founded had become heretical. He did not
leave Providence, for he went on to fight for both of their charters, and their
way of life, for the rest of his life.
In order to understand why he made this decision, one must peer deep
into the depths of his theology regarding the nature of the Church. Such a journey is beyond the scope of this
paper, but many have embarked upon it, and a summary of some of their findings
may prove useful to better understand the events discussed above, as well as
those that followed. One such traveler
wrote:
Roger Williams left England because he thought the Church of
England was wrong. He left
Massachusetts, though not quite voluntarily, because he thought the churches of
Massachusetts were wrong. Most of his
writings were demonstrations that others were wrong. Yet he was not a quarrelsome man. His successive separations were acts not so much
of defiance as of discovery, a progression through the wilderness toward the
church.[45]
Roger Williams left
the church at Providence, it was as a result of a line of thinking that, when
take to its extreme (a habit Williams was known for), led Williams to believe
that there could be no true Church of Christ until His return when he would
re-establish it.
The progression of thought began with the
understanding that the Church is made up of believers – not all in a particular
locality, nor those who had been baptized as infants, but only those who had,
following a profession of faith, been baptized voluntarily. Williams also agreed that all church practice
was sacred. This is one of the reasons
he argued so vehemently for the churches of Massachusetts to repent of their
ties with the Church of England. If the
Church of England was the corrupt, Antichristian Church that he and other
Puritans said it was, then all ties ought to be severed and Antichristian
worship was to be repented of.
Additionally, when believers returned to England, as they often did, and
worshipped at Anglican churches, they often refused to partake of
communion. This was not enough, Williams
said, because all Church functions
were sacred, both communion and the preaching of the Word. If church members were allowed to go to the
non-Church of England to hear the preaching of the Word, this was
hypocrisy. In The Bloudy Tenent, he wrote, “teaching and being taught in a Church
estate is a Church worship, as true and proper a Church worship as the Supper
of the Lord.”[46] If all church practices were sacred, the line
of reasoning continued, then Christians should worship not with heathens in
their midst, but separate. All manners
of worshipping God were holy, believed Williams, “and Christians must not share
them with any non-Christians, because God would withhold His presence from any
group of worshippers that knowingly included wicked men.”[47]
With all Church ordinances being holy, and
such ordinances necessarily being separate from the world, this left the
problem of evangelism. For, if the
unconverted ought not to be in the church for the preaching of the Word, then
how would they be converted? Didn’t the
Bible teach that “faith comes by hearing, and hearing by the Word of God?”[48] The solution for this in Williams’ mind was
that God had appointed some as apostolic ministers, whose task it was to take
the Word to the heathen masses. These
ministers were the ones who were enabled and authorized to plant true churches
after the model of the early Church.
For, how could a true church be started by a minister whose ordinance of
preaching was only delivered to Christians?
The apostolic minister was a different office than that of the church
preacher, who was to preach the Word to the saints for their growth and
edification. Williams may have hoped to
be such to the Indians.[49] However, the understanding that such an
apostolic minister must be commissioned directly by Christ, or through an
apostolic succession of sorts, Williams began to believe that such an office
was not possible in his day. It had not been possible since before the
Constantinian synthesis of the fourth century, since at that time the Church
had become horribly corrupted This idea
of two kinds of ministers, with the apostolic kind solely equipped to establish
churches, was not a novel one. However,
most of those who held it did not believe, as did Williams, that, through the
Pope, Antichrist had taken over the Church.
The lack of anyone with the authority to
appoint apostolic ministers left Williams with one conclusion. There could be no true Church until Christ
returned and appointed apostles to the task.[50] On this assertion, Williams left the church
at Providence. He would seek Christ,
champion religious liberty, and fight for the establishment of Rhode Island for
the rest of his life.
CONCLUSION
Roger Williams was an enigmatic man whose
ideas rarely set well with those around him.
His understanding of government, the church, and human rights were a
century ahead of his time. As a politician, theologian, and rebel,
he left a legacy of thought in these areas that would become pillars of
American society, though not for nearly one hundred years after his death. Though one may disagree with some of the
ecclesiological conclusions he came to, the legacy of Williams is one that is
important, particularly for Christians, to learn. It teaches that separation of Church and
State is a Christian value, that even the non-religious must be allowed to
practice their non-religiosity, and that the conversion of man may never be
rightly implemented at the tip of a sword.
Even in the 20th century, the echoes of Williams’ voice were
heard as, in 1961 the Supreme Court ordered Maryland to remove a belief in God
as a requirement to hold public office.[51] The Roger Williams Memorial (erected in 1984
in Providence) stands as a testament to freedom and liberty for all.
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Birth of Liberty. New York,
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Fry, Plantagenet Somerset. Kings
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Publishing, 1999.
Publishing, 1999.
Gaustad, Edwin S. Roger Williams
(Lives & Legacies). New York, NY: Oxford University Press,
2005.
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Greene., Theodore P. Roger
Williams and the Massachusetts Magistrates. Boston, MA: D.C.
Heath: 1964 1st ed., 1964.
Morgan, Edmund Sears. Roger
Williams: the Church and the State. New York, NY: Harcourt,
Brace & World, 1967.
Prescott, Bruce, "The relevance
of Roger Williams." Baptist History And Heritage 43, no. 3
(June 1, 2008): 51-57. ATLA Religion Database with ATLASerials, EBSCOhost (accessed
(June 1, 2008): 51-57. ATLA Religion Database with ATLASerials, EBSCOhost (accessed
December 13, 2012).
[1]
Edmund Sears Morgan, Roger Williams: the Church and the State (New York,
NY: Harcourt, Brace & World, 1967), 3, citing Roger Williams, The Complete Writings (7 Vols., New
York, NY, 1963), VI, 228.
[2]
Morgan, Roger Williams, 6, and Edwin
S. Gaustad, Roger Williams Lives & Legacies (New York: Oxford
University Press, 2005), 2.
[3]Plantagenet Somerset Fry, Kings & Queens of
England and Scotland (New York, NY: DK Publishing, 1999), 52, 66.
[4]
Gaustad, Lives and Legacies, 2.
[5]
Morgan, Roger Williams, 9.
[6]
Gaustad, Lives and Legacies, 3.
[7]
Ibid., 4.
[8]
Prescott, Bruce. 2008. "The relevance of Roger Williams." Baptist
History And Heritage 43, no. 3: 51-57. ATLA Religion Database with
ATLASerials, EBSCOhost (accessed December 13, 2012), 52.
[9]
John M. Barry, Roger Williams and the Creation of the American Soul: Church,
State, and the Birth of Liberty (New York, NY: Viking Adult, 2012), 143.
[10]
Gaustad , Lives and Legacies, 5.
[11]
Morgan, Roger Williams, 25, citing Roger Williams, The Complete Writings (7 Vols., New York, NY, 1963), VI, 356.
[12]
Ibid., citing John Winthrop’s Journal,
in James Savage, The History of New
England, (2 Vols, Boston, MA, 1853), 63.
[13]
Barry, Creation of the American Soul,
143.
[14]
Gaustad, Lives and Legacies, 6.
[15]
Morgan, Roger Williams, 25.
[16]
Theodore P. Greene., Roger Williams and the Massachusetts Magistrates.
(Boston, MA: D.C. Heath: 1964 1st ed., 1964), 1, citing Winthrop’s Journal, edition in Original
Narratives of Early American History (New York, NY, 1908).
[17]
Ibid.
[18]
Morgan, Roger Williams, 43.
[19]
Gaustad, Lives and Legacies, 7.
[20]
Barry, Creation of the American Soul,
161.
[21]
Ibid, 166.
[22]
Ibid.
[23]
Gaustad, Lives and Legacies, 9.
[24]
Ibid.
[25]
Ibid.
[26]
Gaustad, Lives and Liberties, 11.
[27]
Ibid., 12, citing The Correspondence of
Roger Williams, I:23-27.
[28]
Greene., Williams and the Massachusetts Magistrates, 3, citing Winthrop’s Journal, edition in Original Narratives of Early American
History (New York, NY, 1908).
[29]
Barry, Creation of the American Soul,
203-205.
[30]
James D. Knowles, Memoir of Roger
Williams, in Greene, Williams and the
Massachusetts Magistrates, 22.
[31]
Barry, Creation of the American Soul,
209.
[32]
Gaustad, Lives and Legacies, 13-14.
[33]
Barry, Creation of the American Soul,
213.
[34]
Ibid., 214.
[35]
Barry, Creation of the American Soul,
208.
[36]
Gaustad, Lives and Legacies, 16-23.
[37]
Gaustad, Lives and Legacies, 27.
[38]
Ibid., 48.
[39]
Ibid., 49-50.
[40]
Morgan, Roger Williams, 87.
[41]
Ibid., 89.
[42]
Gaustad, Lives and Legacies, 49.
[43]
Gaustad, Lives and Legacies, 52.
[44]
Ibid., 16, citing the Providence Agreement in Early Records of the Town of Providence, 1892-1951, 21 vols., vol.
I.
[45]
Morgan, Roger Williams, 28.
[46]
Morgan, Roger Williams, 30, citing
Roger Williams, The Complete Writings
(7 Vols., New York, NY, 1963), III, 203.
[47]
Ibid., 31.
[48]
Romans 10:17.
[49]
Morgan, Roger Williams, 43.
[50]
Morgan, Roger Williams, 49.
[51]
Gaustad, Lives and Liberties, 125.
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