On Roger Williams and the First Amendment

I have tended to equate Puritanism as a historical cultural phenomenon exclusively with the Massachusetts Bay Colony and its intellectual descendants.

When Puritans were in the minority or outside the power structure, they were effective in marshaling “freedom of conscience” for their perceived self-interest. But establishing an explicitly liberal social compact basis for civil society does in fact seem to be the unique provenance of Roger Williams and Rhode Island. He paid a dear price as the impetus for departing from the established order.

You touched on the New Testament as Williams’s model of civic “freedom of conscience” as the ground and authentic condition of true faith. To adopt an “established faith” protects that faith in some sense but also distorts it. So, I’ve heard the argument expressed often that freedom of religion or of conscience is essential for the true and purest expression of faith itself. Religion is benefited by the wall of separation. It doesn’t guarantee purity of religion, but it forms the ground for its possibility. The perceived benefit of a state religion in the days of Constantine was to forestall, prevent and resolve the torturous divisions over doctrine that beset the church as its branches and roots spread and a greater cultural diversity entered its ranks for refuge. Many new converts naturally interpreted Christian teaching in light of and consistent with prior held beliefs from their “pagan” or Jewish background. Nestorianism, Marcionisn, various strains and threads of Gnosticism, Arianism, Manicheanism, etc were thought by Constantine, his antecedents among the father’s, and his contemporaries to put a fractionalizing pressure from within upon Christianity and upon Rome. To look sympathetically at the threat of faction is to view their impulse to accept the protection of the Empire sympathetically. Though I think Rome has always done a great job at self justification, and hence don’t need my help, there were extreme ecclesiological and theological brawls of their day demanding settlement.

Constantine, under the influence of his mother, turned to and against Christianity as a refuge and power base from which to further consolidate power in Rome and throughout the Empire. So it’s easy to see how the arrangement benefited both the church and the state. He seduced the church with offers of protection. He gave to the Roman Church a prestige and primacy in settling theological disputes and laid the ground work for Theodosius to mandate Christianity as the exclusive state religion. But as you point out, some dissented.

The dark side of the period of the judges after the conquest of Canaan, was the practice from the Biblical phrase that “everyone did that which was right in his own eyes.” This sets up the problem of anti-nomianism and anarchy, of which the randomization of religious belief is a symbol. Lawlessness and loss of order has always been a fear among governing elites; the colonial and American founding fathers were no different. This is a unique kind of problem from a governance standpoint. While individual religious belief seems entirely disconnected from popular order today under the norm and regime of 1st Amendment religious freedom, there is an aggregate social effect that naturally flows on a collective level from individual belief patterns. But the New Testament did offer a solution to the problem by raising the importance of a free choice to believe as the ground of authentic faith. That might need supporting references. It’s analogous to the contract rights of informed consent. The Acts 15 “Jerusalem Council” established what was minimally necessary by way of religious practice, dropped the necessity of circumcision, all for the purpose of preserving table fellowship between non-observant gentiles and offended Jews. But Paul also said that “in Christ, there was neither Jew nor gentile…” so that religious observance was still in some sense distinct from faith. It’s interesting how one form of Puritanism (Mass Bay Colony) turned to the Holiness Code of Canaan’s conquest while the other form of Puritanism appealed to evangelical liberty. One was liberal, and the other was statist.

The world view that cosmological and political order were necessarily intertwined has been the default view the world over. Obviously, empires crushed what lay before them drawing tribes, towns, cultures in and exerting a cosmological and political over-lordship. But even when conquered, no one question that fidelity to gods and religious practice was a necessary part of “good citizenship.” It is this overwhelming tradition and historical/cultural homogeneity of view that we must wrestle with and distinguish our own practice freedom of conscience from. When Augustine, Calvin, Luther and Henry VIII ultimately resort to this long established view of the marriage of statecraft and religion, they were falling back on long established and virtually universal practice. At least that is my understanding. There was always a kind of liberalism or tolerance for local custom, gods, and religion that came with Imperial protection, as long as the Roman Emperor was revered and worshipped in his own right.

Your analysis of modern evangelicalism seems spot on. Perceived loss of status and privilege, xenophobia, and paranoia about the prospect of being persecuted in society and politics among pro-Trump evangelicals has driven that contingent to seek refuge in the Presidency. Even among educated white Evangelicals, it is common to view Trump favorably for what they believe they will get from his Presidency. This ratifies a prior held belief that the Judeo-Christian world view is meant to be preeminent in society. They are a kind of priesthood for white bourgeois conservative political power because of their wealth, their cultural exclusion and homogeneity, and their vote-getting power election after election.

The movement from the issue of conscience to the issue of good public policy is more fraught and challenging than I think your analysis allows. Let me delve into why I think so. The two coin sides of Puritanism over time (if you measured by their actual and model civil and criminal codes) would undoubtedly yield a surprising level of agreement in spite of the high profile and hot button areas of disagreement. Our secular law codes are saturated with elements from the Tanakh and the New Testament. From family law to secured transactions to property law to tory and contract law and criminal law, religion is woven into the fabric of the common law and the codes. This always impressed me during my legal studies how prohibitions on bearing false witness and against murder, adultery, incest, theft, perjury, libel and slander, and the establishment of remedies and punishments were all basically taken from Biblical law sources. I take it as gospel that modernization and reform were necessary in some areas at least, but the basic structure was so entrenched as to be virtually unmovable and in some ways hidden by its ubiquity.

Back to the two contingents within evangelicalism…. My thought is that more unites us than divides us. But where we do disagree, there is a fundamental difference over how to resolve the disagreement and not merely a substantive policy disagreement.

As an example, I look at Roe as established precedent, and Casey, which allowed state regulation of abortion on the grounds of a compelling state interest in preserving life after viability, as established ‘precedent on precedent,’ in the words of Judge Kavanaugh in his recent hearings. Nothing in the Casey opinion depends on religion or the religious views of the justices or of pro-lifers for its rationale. It’s a secular opinion with secular language effectuating a limited constraint on Roe but unambiguously upholding and ratifying Roe. Pro-life culture with its militant anti-abortion belief and practice obviously goes well beyond the modest reasoning and effect of Casey. But sound public policy in favor of the states’ right to regulate might find an independent and well-grounded basis, not merely a religious basis. Establishment Republicans have generally done a good job moderating between these two poles: (1) the more extreme political impulse of the Republican voter base to force a religiously grounded and religious sounding policy on the whole country, on the one hand, and (2) the moderating political impulse of civil servants and conservative policy experts to find and promulgate an independent and secular basis for a mildly religious sounding policy, that allows the policy to move forward subject to all the various political, legal, and administrative processes that guarantee its legitimacy. In a pluralistic society, Christians are allowed to vie for their view of the public interest, but should not expect an establishment of religion generally or of any particular religion to give them an unfair advantage. To clarify, loss of privilege/standing under the liberal enforcement of the First Amendment is not the same thing as persecution, but Trumpians have so conflated the two.

Civic religion is an elaborate and elegant field of study, which is bifurcated from the way that the history of “freedom of conscience” has been dealt with as a political norm that we want built into our state and federal constitutions. Our civil religion is multilayered and complex, ranging from the formal and informal influences of freemasonry with its deistic, science, humanitarian, and astrological views, various and manifold expressions of Christianity (some of which enjoyed established status in the old world), Judaism, and various expressions of secular and religious humanism, to name a few. Native and African religion probably deserves mention too.

Rather than treating the state as “neutral” and like a secular Switzerland non-aligned among the panoply of modern and ancient religions, the existence of a diverse civic religion should be accorded its due, among which Roger Williams deserves an exalted status no doubt. Validating the existence of this diverse civic religion may be a challenge, as everyone tends to view things through their own cultural lens, but there in that topic lies a kind of antidote to militant exclusivism.

That’s how I look at the goal of welcoming the contributions of culturally conservative white Christians, while also figuring out ways of moderating the extreme elements. Integration/engagement of conservatives is not easy when it involves their extreme, exclusionary, inhospitable, unstable or uncooperative views and policy prescriptions. But we should try to help them formulate their prescriptions in a way that makes the interests of other groups and society as a whole more transparent to them in the process.

This hopefully makes more clear how I deal separately with the constitutional question of religious freedom or freedom of conscience and the question of how to construct good public policy that is generally inclusive and recognizes and honors our diverse civic religion.

I do agree that Trumpism – as a cultural and political force that has both invaded and satisfied the demands of the politically active majority contingent of white conservative evangelicals – violates the spirit of our civic religion and of the First Amendment on multiple grounds. And this is partially the consequence of their structural alienation from the mainstream of American culture and politics. It will take time to see a reconstitution and reassertion of our Democratic norms as a protective barrier to the impulses of Trumpism. The political parties have fragmented and lost an organizing hold on how candidates emerge and are selected. Until there is either a reassertion of the traditional role of parties or a general resurgence of Democratic norms and values, we are going to have to hold on and zealously advocate for the greater democratic good. It’s going to be bumpy.

Another thing that stands out in your article is the tribute you pay, especially in the footnotes, to the dissenting malcontents of evangelicalism. This gives your writing a distinct flavor, to elevate the voices of dissent from the emerging Trumpian order. Well done and enlightening. It leaves me with a desire to understand better.

I could say more! As far as periodicals in which you could publish, I feel very ill-equipped to make a recommendation. I like theroot.com as an emerging online publication. I would look at Southern Baptist and Evangelical periodicals, underground periodicals, besides established periodicals like the National Review and the New Republic. The Wall Street Journal op-ed might also be worth a try because it crosses over to conservatives. I’m naming conservative tinged periodicals because it seems like you are attempting to engage and provoke on that end of the spectrum. I probably need to think about it more and research it.

Thank you for seeking my opinion. Give me any feedback or response as you wish!

Joshua to Bob

On Oct 1, 2018,
Hi Bob,

I enjoyed reading your response very much. I spent most of the day researching the life and writings of Roger Williams to try and satisfy the point under [1] evidence that Roger Williams or Rhode Islanders used especially NT scriptures to support their advocacy of freedom of conscience, “soul liberty” as you have referenced their phrasing. I’ve only just finished the Bibliography and scraped the surface of his life and writings, so I don’t consider this task completed. Understanding your case-in-chief very much depends on understanding the life, thought, and times of Roger Williams.

Besides the “marking of his bible” and “Verduin’s paper on the First Amendment” as you have referenced, Roger Williams authored at least nine writings by my count. From these writings, we should expect to find his reasoning from first principles, from personal experiences and devastating first hand witness of the state-church model in action, from ethics and law, and from scriptural proofs from his Puritan conception to derive his ideas concerning freedom of conscience. He suffered a great deal personally and spent a great deal of time defensively navigating state religion in both the colonies and in England for want of a colonial charter for Rhode Island guaranteeing freedom of conscience. That he was able to secure the charter on his proposed terms and published four writings in London in the period of his first London trip (1643-4) is an astounding testament to his brilliance, his knowledge of the law, his network of connections, his skill in statecraft, knowledge of Indian languages, raw intelligence gathering abilities, character, and persistence!

I have attached a Bibliography of his writings, which include these nine writings plus two sources containing a collection of his correspondence.

His writings include books, pamphlets, and a recently discovered essay entitled An Essay Towards the Reconciling of Differences Among Christians and notes on geography/medical texts encoded in long-hand and short-hand script from multiple languages in the margins of a rare edition of Eliot’s Indian Bible.

The main work of Roger Williams from which I would expect to see his reasoning from biblical proof texts, metaphorical symbols, allusions, and references would be The Bloudy Tenent of Persecution for Cause of Conscience published in London in 1644. I haven’t found a full text of this work yet online, but there are short introductions in outline form to the work from which you can gather his probing and wide-ranging arguments in favor freedom of conscience. He reflects the influence of Francis Bacon and Sir Edward Coke.

He favors majoritarian democracy over monarchy or aristocracy. Governmental authority is derived from “the people,” not from God. This was considered heretical and radical in its day, but Luther held for a time to something similar, expecting that the domain of the state belonged to the saeculum of this present worldly age separate from the spiritual affairs of the church. Romans chapter 13 verses 1 and following lay out a proof text that the formal authority of the civil magistrate is ordained by God, which compels a general obedience to state authority, but the way to harmonize Paul’s theology [obedience to state authority = obedience to God] is to substitute [“the people” in their general and collective capacity are God’s authority in a democracy] as a minor premise to form a syllogism. “The people” are God’s representative. “The people” by God’s help and providence, choose their government by a written constitution and the designation of representatives to exercise authority on their behalf, for their good, and subject to certain limitations.

Even under state religion, this basic distinction between spiritual and temporal authority was still generally observed. Yes, religious authorities and state authorities found themselves in a kind of eternal struggle for dominance as between yin and yang in the philosophy of Taoism. But, in some respects, this struggle is not absent even where the Constitution formally separates religion and statecraft.

It’s hard to extract Roger Williams’ belief in freedom of conscience from his theology or his political philosophy, which has the flavor of Samuel Rutherford (Lex, Rex) and John Locke (Two Treatises of Government). Under monarchy, the King personally represented God to the people as a divinely appointed intermediary, agent, and steward, which kept civil power very much in line with an approved religious agenda. Whereas powerful kings might have used and abused religion for purposes of statecraft, religious institutions -mainly by way of monasteries – themselves had become during medieval Europe’s descent into barbarian control a principal repository of knowledge, memory, political leverage, and negotiating strength for the old Roman Empire. Williams laments how the marriage of the two devolves into a political religiosity.

The Peace of Westphalia in 1648 ended the many decades of the wars of religion in Europe, established the modern concept of state sovereignty and ratified the peace of Augsburg’s resolution that the prince’s personal faith dictated the official religion of the state and of his realm. Only Catholicism, Lutheranism, and Calvinism were recognized however, which meant that Puritanism was generally forced to go the route of state-religion to survive. The very DNA in the peace of Augsburg was promoted through into the Westphalian system.

Both Coke and Williams favored Parliament, against the crown, the recognition of individual rights and liberties, and the development of the common law of the judges who were independent of the crown, a bulwark for these liberties. An independent judiciary was critical to the enforcement of individual rights and liberties.

Roger Williams also favored fair dealings with the Narragansett, purchasing land, repaying their aid after his expulsion with life-long kindness and fairness. The Narragansett came to be a critical ally against the Pequot. In a twist of fate, even the Massachusetts Bay colony came to depend on Williams and the Narragansett against the Pequot. The Narragansett established their dominance of New England after the Pequot War with the help of Williams. Both fate and fortune were intertwined with Williams’ unjust trial and expulsion from Massachusetts Bay colony. This trial and expulsion figures as a central experience in his early intuition and observation that state control of religion is bitterly unjust.

The connection of the religious charge of “heresy” with the crime of “sedition” or “disturbing the peace” makes for a corruption of both state and religious affairs in colonial life. Coerced religion cannot be true or pure, or forces out good people, and the real and true sense of the “peace of the realm” is sadly lost sight of if mere difference of belief could be thought to so easily ruin it. How could a rational and curious mind continue to be ever rational and curious if also always fearful of state authorities whose job it was to guarantee uniformity of belief? The answer seems to be that science and philosophy had to be practiced both excellently and sometimes and to some degree in secrecy, or with great care for political protection and sponsorship. Williams seems to have satisfied all three: excellently, with secrecy, and with great care for political protection and sponsorship. The Rhode Island charter provided that protection, and by excellence, the internal governance of the colony prospered. Secrecy at times accompanied statecraft to secure the charter and to effectuate a policy of war when called for. Benjamin Franklin’s ambassadorship to Britain and France in the next century secured America’s interest abroad much as Williams’ ambassadorship to London secured Rhode Island’s interest in the time of its infancy.

To summarize, I would look at the value of William’s contribution to freedom of conscience beyond his appeal to scriptural proofs. His political and ethical philosophy, his ideas about individual rights and liberties, his views of democracy and the origin of state authority, and his experiences all carve out a pointed view of the central importance of freedom of religion. His spiritual conversion at an early age against his father’s liking; his witness of the martyrdom of many puritans as a boy; his early legal training as an apprentice to Sir Edward Coke; his observations related to the English civil war and the European wars of religion; his slow migration to the status of dissenting separatist from the church of England; his travels and early acceptance into the Massachusetts Bay colony as a preacher; his eventual persecution at the hand of the Puritan authorities and trial and expulsion and bare survival in the wilderness outside Massachusetts Bay colony; his facing a kind of extinction at the hands of surrounding colonies who warred against his commonwealth of religious tolerance; his diplomatic mission to obtain a colonial charter in line with his model of a wall of separation between state and religion; and his written advocacy on behalf of that mission all testify to the practical nature of the problem his writings concern. All of these are the sources for William’s sense of urgency in establishing the centrality of freedom of conscience in Roger Williams’ Rhode Island. Without majoritarian representative democracy and without science, policy cannot truly flow from the individual conscience, liberated from fear and superstition.

I will have more to write on especially points 6 and 7 in the next few days.
Thanks,
Joshua Berndt
-=-=-

Joshua to Bob:

Mon 10/1, 1:55 PM
Canfield, Robert
Bob, it’s a natural stepping stone from much of my undergraduate and graduate work to pursue this. So it doesn’t feel laborious.
…
I am still trying to track down an internet accessible text of The Bloudy Tenent of Persecution for Cause of Conscience. Until I can work directly from the complete Roger William’s text, I have made use of Wikipedia’s summary of Williams’ Scriptural proofs in its article by the same name as the title of the book (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Bloudy_Tenent_of_Persecution_for_Cause_of_Conscience).

Here is my summary in seven points of the Wikipedia summary of Williams’ use of biblical types, texts, and symbols in the style of a complaint and argument against government coercion in matters of faith and conscience:

[1] God’s covenant with historic Israel during the time of the monarchs (Saul, David, Solomon etc) was essentially unique and offers merely a typology to be understood spiritually and allegorically in the contemporary church because Christ, our king and Lord, fulfilled the demands of the “Old Covenant” on our behalf, which makes government compulsion in spiritual or religious/ceremonial matters appropriate only in the limited historical context of ancient Israel’s marriage of civil and religious authority. (This is very much consistent with what would later come to be known as “dispensational” theology.)

[2] While the monarchical blending of civil and religious affairs was appropriate in the historical context of ancient “covenant” [meaning “Hebrew”] culture, the Hebrew kings could still abuse their [religious: “God-given”] authority (Ahab’s confiscation of Naboth’s vineyard in 1 Kings 21). [Notice that the question whether nominally “civil’ authority in specific debated instances can be said to be essentially “religious” can be answered by an argument as to the source of that authority [whether from “God” or from a “human” source] or by an argument as to the subject matter jurisdiction, whether an inherently spiritual or a secular, human subject matter.]

[3] “Non-covenant” [meaning “gentile”] kings such as the Persian emperor Artaxerxes offered an exemplary practice by extending religious freedom to the Hebrews (see Ezra chapter 7), but those gentile kings like the Babylonian Nebuchadnezzar attempted to coerce Daniel, Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego into renouncing their faith and faced implicit if not explicit sanction by God for such coercion.

[4] By Roger Williams’ exegesis of the passage, the parable of the Tares (see Matthew 13:24-30, 13:36-43) is not a reference to tolerable differences within the church, as Puritans like John Cotton proposed, but rather to vexing differences of belief outside the church that distinguish heterodoxy from orthodoxy. The parable thus sets forth the principle of civil tolerance for all “error,” “disbelief,” and heterodoxy until a future final judgment that only God himself can properly administer. To pull up the tares prematurely would ruin the harvest of wheat, so that evidence of future harvest is a warning yet to leave the tares in place for God’s direct dealings.

[5] The persecutions of Paul, as Roger Williams conceived, at the hands of Jews and gentiles alike, and his appeal to Roman civil authorities to defend and protect his citizenship rights, generally demonstrate sympathy for victims of religious persecution and illustrate that pagan magistrates had a just standard that religious belief alone ought not to be the basis for a deprivation of the rights of citizens.

[6] Paul’s claim in Romans ch. 13 that the civil authorities are “ordained” by God to reward good and be a terror to evildoers only applies to the “second table” of the Decalogue, those commandments that involve the harm of a person against another human person, whereas the commands that involve direct relations with God are reserved for God to directly judge in. These spiritual matters (the first of the ten commandments) are matters of the heart that only God is truly competent to justly judge in a civil context, although internal discipline within the Church in spiritual matters is given to the church as a gift of the Spirit by the authority of Christ’s Word (here Williams cites Eph 6:10-20, 2 Tim 2, and 2 Cor 10 as instances of limiting the church’s authority explicitly to spiritual “weapons” that exclude actual weapons when dealing with unbelievers).

[7] The spiritual and apocalyptic imagery of Revelation chs 2-3 & ch17 refer to spiritual weapons, not actual weapons, and represent the essential characteristic of “the beast” as coercive state churches that martyred true believers and pursued corrupt ends violative of Christ’s express purposes in establishing his church. Roger Williams believed he was seeing the [partial] fulfillment these apocalyptic prophecies in his own day by the abusive treatment and martyring of puritan and separatist dissenters by state churches in England and the colonies.

This list of seven textual/theological arguments against government coercion in matters of faith and conscience as drawn from specific biblical texts and types is a tentative first list extracted from the Wikipedia article summary of The Bloudy Tenent of Persecution for Cause of Conscience, the influential opening salvo in Roger Williams debate with John Cotton. The next step would be to gather and summarize what John Cotton’s response was. Additionally we could cross check Roger William’s subsequent rejoinder, Cotton’s subsequent response, and so forth, and then try and articulate a more comprehensive judgment that makes common analysis of both sides of the argument in relation to where the debate ends up. It remains to be seen how such an analysis could be condensed and integrated into something publishable to a newspaper op-ed length.

This email is just an opening attempt to answer the question of how Roger Williams used the New Testament model of soul liberty and other biblical evidences to justify his freedom of conscience as a civil matter. This exercise is instructive for understanding just how influential Roger Williams has been on the subsequent tradition of religion freedom in Britain and the US.

More to follow!
Yours,
Joshua Berndt

Joshua to Bob

Oct 2
The young Roger Williams held communion with the Church of England in his youth and was trained in the rigor and discipline that came with that vital association. But Williams gravitated towards the Puritan sense of conversion, the Puritan ethic and Puritan community life, which was simpler and more personal, which consequently however disfavored a career in close association with the Anglican establishment.

He then became a “separatist” and finally a fleeing “separatist” essentially by default when it became politically and practically untenable to remain in England.

When he arrived in the “new world,” he initially and happily made common cause with the Puritans of New England. He actually preached and served in a ministerial fashion among their congregations. He was a separating Puritan among other “separating” Puritans who shared enough in common with John Cotton and the leaders of the Massachusetts Bay colony to remain in close relationship and communication with them even after having separated from them.

This separation from them was not on account of anything essential to the faith itself however as far as I can tell, unless Williams was teaching things against infant baptism in favor of an ethic of consent in matters of faith. Williams came under suspicion and finally accusation by the General Court of Plymouth Rock in Boston for teaching things inconsistent with the political philosophy of the Crown, of the Church of England, and of the New England Puritan leadership. I think I lack a sufficient basis for understanding the basis of the General Court’s complaint.

Initially, it seems that Roger Williams accused the Crown and the colonial governors in a December 1632 tract alleging that the colonial charters granted by the King were deficient in some instances for lacking proof of a fair purchase of Indian land. I don’t know yet what the name of this tract might be and whether it would have survived destruction as by burning for example. What is the protocol for including a writing in a bibliography for which we potentially have no extant copies of and do not know the name of? Williams accused King James of a “solemn lie” for claiming “that he was the first Christian monarch to have discovered the land,” as Roger Williams’ wikipedia page describes it. His Summons to appear before the General Court was issued in December 1633. From this time until his October 1635 trial and conviction on charges of sedition and heresy, it seemed he would plausibly appease the General Court and skirt official sanction, for he still had wide support in the colonies. This wide support only melted away when the Court ordered he be removed from his church position and “refused to seat the delegates from Salem at the next session” for failing to do so. This was the raw power of the crown’s mis-appropriation of Native land without adequate payment, and it’s remarkable that Williams was charged, tried, and convicted for sedition and heresy for ostensibly protesting the manner of land acquisition.

Williams submitted to trial, was convicted and banished (which means deportation back to England), but was too sick to make the journey immediately with winter approaching. When he is recovered sufficiently and about to be deported, he escapes in a blizzard to Raynham, Massachusetts, to receive aid from the local Wampanoags, effectively making him a “fugitive from justice.” He soon established the colony at Providence with land from the Narragansett, and – I’m speculating here – the intelligence support he offered the Massachusetts Bay Colony against the Pequot acted as a kind of waiver of and release from the liability of his outstanding warrant before the General Court. But his success as a mediating leader between Rhode Island, the Narragansett and the other colonies put him in the cross hairs of the other colonies, Massachusetts, Connecticut, and Plymouth which formed a military alliance called the United Colonies to over run and overthrow the “heretic settlements.” And this threat to Rhode Island’s and the Narragansett’s survival prompted William’s mission back to London to procure a charter.

Williams assisted Dr. John Clarke in 1639 in founding the First Baptist Church of Newport, Rhode Island, and with it the Baptist faith in America. He had been baptized himself by Ezekiel Holliman in late 1638. The basic premise of “the baptist faith” at least as these earliest Baptist forerunners were concerned seems to have been a rejection of infant baptism. It may be that Williams had run afoul of the General Court for the civil law implication of making faith an independent matter of conscience and free consent. Maybe this seems too plausible to reject as anything other than the truth of the case. But it seems that William’s defense of the interest of the native tribes had also caused problems with the General Court, threatening to undermine what would seem to be the Crown’s patently coercive land acquisition policy.

Was there a genuine intramural church dispute over doctrine that brought about the separation of Williams from his New England brethren? Or was it a dispute over essentially civil matters, that left him in a state of being artificially divided from the broader Puritan family? Freedom of conscience, for example, is now typically discussed as if it is a civil matter, a constitutional legal doctrine known under the current phrase of “freedom of religion” and “separation of church and state.” But Baptist theology and the rejection of infant baptism are the doctrinal correlates of this civil/constitutional policy position.

My interest in pursuing the life trajectory of Roger Williams from the Anglican fold to a separated Puritan Baptist “heretic” is to try and abstract the sense of progressive divergence while trying to retain a pure form of adherence to the original tenets of Christianity. The word “separatist” is a harsh word to my ears, as maybe the word “liberal” is a clanging word to my conservative brothers today, but maybe it was not a word Williams favored? The sense I have today is that we stand outside the majority of Evangelicals calling them to a purer expression of both Christianity and a properly salted (read: ethical) politics. But this standing “outside” and calling to those “inside” seems not really very different from what Knox, Calvin, Luther, Wycliff, and Hus were doing in their day. That Roger Williams should have found himself in the position of a ‘separatist’ vying strenuously for survival and an independent colonial prerogative against his Puritan brothers seems ironic and paradoxical in least but somehow instructive in a way that escapes easy formulation.

I don’t have a firm answer for you about how to present and adorn the blog by way of a marketing orientation, but i’m slowly coming to a greater appreciation for how Roger Williams and Rhode Island offer an intellectual haven and parentage for liberal evangelicals today.

I guess I’ll have more to say on the question as I wrestle with these questions.