Williams, Roger (1603-1683)

American Eras

Roger Williams (1603-1683)

Conscientious separatist

Sources

A Man of Vision. A warm, sweet-tempered, and rigid man, Roger Williams followed a spiritual journey that forced him to separate from first one group and then another. In the process he founded and governed the influential colony of Rhode Island, which was the first in America to advocate religious freedom and complete separation of church and state as matters of principle. He is also credited with starting the first Baptist church in America.

Puritans. Within five years of his arrival in Massachusetts in 1631, Williams had become an enemy to the Puritans. He was the son of a poor shopkeeper, but his intelligence so impressed some influential men that they sent him to Cambridge University, where he excelled in his studies, met John Winthrop, and followed him to the colonies. Several churches were interested in calling this brilliant and highly educated man to lead them. He refused a position in the Boston Church because the congregation would not sever all ties with the Church of England and settled in Salem. There he demanded that the church eschew the informal meetings that the clergy had been holding lest they compromise the congregational autonomy that the Scriptures described. He forbade members to worship or pray with any unregenerate persons, even family members. At the colony level he called for complete separation of church and state, arguing that any interference by the state in spiritual affairs only corrupted religion. In his view magistrates should have no power to maintain orthodoxy by enforcing laws, even the Ten Commandments. He threatened the physical existence of the colony as well by claiming that the king had no right to grant Massachusetts to the Puritans because the land belonged to the Indians.

Rhode Island. For five years Gov. John Winthrop and the magistrates argued with Williams, unsuccessfully, and finally banished him in late 1635. They had intended to ship him back to England, but, forewarned by Winthrop, he fled to the South. There he purchased land from the Narragansetts out of his own pocket and founded a colony based on his principles. He evenly distributed land to insure economic equality and instituted a government that was “democratical” under which “all men may walk as their consciences persuade them.” In 1644 he made a trip to England and secured a charter for a self-governing colony, governing it from 1654 to 1657 just to guarantee that political and religious freedoms would continue. Many sought refuge there. Some were seeking complete purity in communal churches, in the tradition of Williams and typified by the Baptists; others were drawn to a more mystical strain which began with Anne Hutchinson and included Quakers.

Baptists and Beyond. In the first church that they organized, Williams and his friends baptized each other, probably by immersion, contending that the Scriptures spoke only of saints as church members and total immersion as the seal of membership. This is generally considered to be the first Baptist church in America. Later Williams condemned adult baptism but only because it was not administered by an apostle as the Scriptures described. Then he began to have doubts about the gracious states of others, finally reaching the position that he could only take communion with his wife. These same doubts drove him to the opposite extreme, and he administered the sacraments to anyone since no human can be certain who is saved. Finally he left the ministry entirely, noting that there was no official scriptural sanction for an organized church or official clergy.

Confrontation. Williams’s tolerance was sorely tested by the Quakers because they seemed to ignore the Bible and the historical Jesus Christ in favor of a mysticism that relied totally on human divinity. When George Fox, the founding father of the Society of Friends, visited Newport in 1672, Williams was determined to confront him in a debate. Although over seventy years old, he dragged his fragile body into a boat and rowed alone the thirty miles to meet him. Fox had already departed, so Williams engaged his associates in a battle of published words. It seems fitting that Williams spent his last years in the midst of this pamphlet war over Christian principles.

Sources

Edwin S. Gaustad, Liberty of Conscience: Roger Williams in America (Grand Rapids, Mich.: Eerdmans, 1991);

Edmund S. Morgan, Roger Williams: The Church and State (New York: Harcourt, Brace & World, 1967);

Ola Winslow, Master Roger Williams (New York: Macmillan, 1957).

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