WILLIAMS, ROGER
(1603? London. England-March 1683?, Providence, RI). Education: B.A., Pembroke College, Cambridge University, 1727; postgraduate study, Cambridge University, 1627-29. Career: Anglican chaplain to a private family, Essex, 1629-30; minister, Plymouth colony, 1631-33; minister, Salem, 1634-35; founder, resident, religious seeker, and student of Native American culture, Providence (later Rhode Island), 1638-83.
Roger Williams is today one of the most respected of the early Puritanslargely because after a brief sojourn in Massachusetts, he separated from the Congregationalists and wrote America's earliest tracts advocating religious freedom. History has taken the road to toleration; so Williams seems a man ahead of his times. But was he?
Ironically the road to tolerance for Williams began as a journey into intolerance. His judgmental temperament was apparent in 1629 when he sought the hand of Jane Whalley, niece of a Lady Barrington. Williams wrote her ladyship asking for Jane's hand, and was refused-he was a mere chaplain at the time, and hardly an impressive suitor for so well-connected a person as Jane Whalley. Williams, helpless, accepted the verdict, but wrote Lady Barrington in his capacity as a clergyman declaring that it was doubtful that she would get to heaven. At about this time he also came to question whether the Anglican church as a whole could get to heaven. He discussed Massachusetts Bay with John Winthrop* and others, and he became interested in the possibility of creating a more pure church across the Atlantic. In 1631 he migrated to Massachusetts aboard the Lyon.
Arriving in Boston, Williams refused a call to a local church because it had not formally separated from the Church of England. The Puritans were keeping up the pretense of being a reformed branch of the national church, leading the way for others to follow. Williams denounced this subterfuge, preferring complete independence. He ministered briefly in separating Congregationalist churches in Plymouth and Salem and continued to attack the Puritan establishment.
Williams characterized ministerial meetings as a threat to the liberty of the churches. When he also attacked the king, claiming the Massachusetts charter was invalid because the king was not a Christian, the Puritans decided it would be safer to banish him from their colony. In 1636 Williams found his way to Rhode Island, where he purchased land from friendly Narraganset Indians, and was rebaptized a Baptist. Soon, however, even the Baptist church failed to meet his standards of purity, and he withdrew. For a time his demands for perfection were so strict that the only person he would worship with was his wife.
Up until this point he might as justifiably be characterized as the crankiest and most intolerant man in America as be called the father of American religious toleration. But Roger Williams showed a capacity to change and grow. He came to realize that just as he had personal standards of religious purity that others could not meet, so too other men and women might have their own ways of understanding religious truth. Williams decided that all humans could at best be seekers, waiting upon Christ to return to earth and lead the way to salvation. In the meantime, he believed, each individual should pursue truth without interfering with others. The state, which claimed to uphold religious truth, could in fact uphold only one version of the truth, to the detriment of all others.
In this way Williams came to uphold the principle of religious toleration. And he did so with all the vehemence he had once used in asserting his own narrow view of religious truth. Even while in Massachusetts he had claimed that the state should not have power over the church, but that argument had been a kind of footnote to his claims for his own superior powers of discernment in religious matters. Now he came to argue for a general toleration as the essential feature of a healthy society. In particular, he engaged in an exchange of tracts with John Cotton*, in which he characterized persecution as a "bloudy tenent." "God requireth not an uniformity of religion," he argued. His view of the ideal relationship between church and state is suggested by his claim that "the civil magistrate should restrain crime, but never control opinion; should punish guilt, but never violate the freedom of the soul."
Williams made two trips to England (1643-44 and 1651-54) to obtain a charter for Rhode Island. In the new colony men and women of many religious beliefs were allowed to worship freely. Williams did not admire all sects; he wrote a tract, for example, condemning the Quakers for denigrating the Bible in favor of direct spiritual illumination. But Williams did not favor using the power of the state against even Quakers, for they too were seekers. Historians have noted that Williams's admiration for toleration was of a far different order than Thomas Jefferson's. Jefferson was afraid of religion controlling the state, Williams of the state controlling religion. Williams's highest good was a pure and free church, Jefferson's was a pure and free state. But too much can be made of the distinction. The Constitution provides for both kinds of freedom: while protecting the state from religious control, it fosters an atmosphere in which "seekers" like Roger Williams can be free in matters of religion as in other activities.
Williams is justly credited with contributing to the American ideology of religious freedom. He was also in advance of many in his generation in favoring equitable treatment of the Indians. While in Massachusetts he had asserted that the king had no right to claim and distribute Indian land, a plausible but unpopular position. In Rhode Island he befriended the Narragansets, learned their language, and wrote about them. He lived with the Congregationalists for a short part of his life, argued with them for decades, and as history turned his way, became more congenial to their memory in later centuries-long after they banished him from their colony.
Bibliography
A: A Key into the Language of America (London, 1643; Detroit, 1973); The Bloudy Tenent of Persecution (London, 1644); The Bloudy Tenent of Persecution Yet More Bloudy (London, 1652); The Hireling Ministry None of Christs (London, 1652); George Fox Digg'd out of His Burrowes (Boston, 1676); The Complete Writings of Roger Williams, 7 vols. (New York, 1963).
B: AAP 6, 8-21; DAB 20, 286-89; DARB, 517-18; NCAB 10,4-6; NCE 14, 944; SH 12, 369-71; James E. Ernst, Roger Williams (New York, 1932); Samuel H. Brockunier, The Irrepressible Democrat: Roger Williams (New York, 1940); Perry Miller, Roger Williams (Indianapolis, 1953); Ola Elizabeth Winslow, Master Roger Williams: A Biography (New York, 1957); Edmund S. Morgan, Roger Williams: The Church and the State (New York, 1967); John Garrett, Roger Williams: Witness Beyond Christendom (New York, 1970).
Roger Williams is today one of the most respected of the early Puritanslargely because after a brief sojourn in Massachusetts, he separated from the Congregationalists and wrote America's earliest tracts advocating religious freedom. History has taken the road to toleration; so Williams seems a man ahead of his times. But was he?
Ironically the road to tolerance for Williams began as a journey into intolerance. His judgmental temperament was apparent in 1629 when he sought the hand of Jane Whalley, niece of a Lady Barrington. Williams wrote her ladyship asking for Jane's hand, and was refused-he was a mere chaplain at the time, and hardly an impressive suitor for so well-connected a person as Jane Whalley. Williams, helpless, accepted the verdict, but wrote Lady Barrington in his capacity as a clergyman declaring that it was doubtful that she would get to heaven. At about this time he also came to question whether the Anglican church as a whole could get to heaven. He discussed Massachusetts Bay with John Winthrop* and others, and he became interested in the possibility of creating a more pure church across the Atlantic. In 1631 he migrated to Massachusetts aboard the Lyon.
Arriving in Boston, Williams refused a call to a local church because it had not formally separated from the Church of England. The Puritans were keeping up the pretense of being a reformed branch of the national church, leading the way for others to follow. Williams denounced this subterfuge, preferring complete independence. He ministered briefly in separating Congregationalist churches in Plymouth and Salem and continued to attack the Puritan establishment.
Williams characterized ministerial meetings as a threat to the liberty of the churches. When he also attacked the king, claiming the Massachusetts charter was invalid because the king was not a Christian, the Puritans decided it would be safer to banish him from their colony. In 1636 Williams found his way to Rhode Island, where he purchased land from friendly Narraganset Indians, and was rebaptized a Baptist. Soon, however, even the Baptist church failed to meet his standards of purity, and he withdrew. For a time his demands for perfection were so strict that the only person he would worship with was his wife.
Up until this point he might as justifiably be characterized as the crankiest and most intolerant man in America as be called the father of American religious toleration. But Roger Williams showed a capacity to change and grow. He came to realize that just as he had personal standards of religious purity that others could not meet, so too other men and women might have their own ways of understanding religious truth. Williams decided that all humans could at best be seekers, waiting upon Christ to return to earth and lead the way to salvation. In the meantime, he believed, each individual should pursue truth without interfering with others. The state, which claimed to uphold religious truth, could in fact uphold only one version of the truth, to the detriment of all others.
In this way Williams came to uphold the principle of religious toleration. And he did so with all the vehemence he had once used in asserting his own narrow view of religious truth. Even while in Massachusetts he had claimed that the state should not have power over the church, but that argument had been a kind of footnote to his claims for his own superior powers of discernment in religious matters. Now he came to argue for a general toleration as the essential feature of a healthy society. In particular, he engaged in an exchange of tracts with John Cotton*, in which he characterized persecution as a "bloudy tenent." "God requireth not an uniformity of religion," he argued. His view of the ideal relationship between church and state is suggested by his claim that "the civil magistrate should restrain crime, but never control opinion; should punish guilt, but never violate the freedom of the soul."
Williams made two trips to England (1643-44 and 1651-54) to obtain a charter for Rhode Island. In the new colony men and women of many religious beliefs were allowed to worship freely. Williams did not admire all sects; he wrote a tract, for example, condemning the Quakers for denigrating the Bible in favor of direct spiritual illumination. But Williams did not favor using the power of the state against even Quakers, for they too were seekers. Historians have noted that Williams's admiration for toleration was of a far different order than Thomas Jefferson's. Jefferson was afraid of religion controlling the state, Williams of the state controlling religion. Williams's highest good was a pure and free church, Jefferson's was a pure and free state. But too much can be made of the distinction. The Constitution provides for both kinds of freedom: while protecting the state from religious control, it fosters an atmosphere in which "seekers" like Roger Williams can be free in matters of religion as in other activities.
Williams is justly credited with contributing to the American ideology of religious freedom. He was also in advance of many in his generation in favoring equitable treatment of the Indians. While in Massachusetts he had asserted that the king had no right to claim and distribute Indian land, a plausible but unpopular position. In Rhode Island he befriended the Narragansets, learned their language, and wrote about them. He lived with the Congregationalists for a short part of his life, argued with them for decades, and as history turned his way, became more congenial to their memory in later centuries-long after they banished him from their colony.
Bibliography
A: A Key into the Language of America (London, 1643; Detroit, 1973); The Bloudy Tenent of Persecution (London, 1644); The Bloudy Tenent of Persecution Yet More Bloudy (London, 1652); The Hireling Ministry None of Christs (London, 1652); George Fox Digg'd out of His Burrowes (Boston, 1676); The Complete Writings of Roger Williams, 7 vols. (New York, 1963).
B: AAP 6, 8-21; DAB 20, 286-89; DARB, 517-18; NCAB 10,4-6; NCE 14, 944; SH 12, 369-71; James E. Ernst, Roger Williams (New York, 1932); Samuel H. Brockunier, The Irrepressible Democrat: Roger Williams (New York, 1940); Perry Miller, Roger Williams (Indianapolis, 1953); Ola Elizabeth Winslow, Master Roger Williams: A Biography (New York, 1957); Edmund S. Morgan, Roger Williams: The Church and the State (New York, 1967); John Garrett, Roger Williams: Witness Beyond Christendom (New York, 1970).