Williams, Roger (1603?–1683), founder of Rhode Island, advocate of religious liberty.Educated for the ministry at Pembroke College, Cambridge, Williams became a Puritan and immigrated to Massachusetts Bay in 1631. During pastorates at Plymouth and Salem, Williams advocated the separatist view that congregations must purify themselves by severing all connections with the Church of England, and this antagonized the colony's nonseparatist leadership. In 1635 the General Court of Massachusetts found his opinions dangerously disruptive. He fled to land purchased from the Narragansett Indians and in 1636 established Rhode Island's first town, Providence. Williams's religious ideas continued their radical trajectory, and by 1639 he had concluded that Christian institutions were so thoroughly corrupted that the true church no longer existed and would not be reestablished until authoritative new apostles arrived at the millennium.
Although he remained an admiring friend of the Massachusetts governor John
Winthrop, Williams believed that Massachusetts had persecuted him for following his conscience. In response, during trips to England in 1643–1644 and 1651–1654, Williams published several polemics, including
The Bloudy Tenent of Persecution (1644), that advocated liberty of conscience and attacked such Massachusetts clergy as John Cotton for favoring state regulation of religion. Since Rhode Island followed Williams's principles of religious freedom, the colony became a haven for diverse beliefs. In this, Williams steadfastly supported the colony, but, because he continued to hope for a purified Christianity, he also denounced error where he saw it and, late in his career, engaged the Quakers in a public debate, published as
George Fox Digg'd out of His Burrowes (1676).
See also
Baptists;
Colonial Era;
Puritanism;
Religion.
Bibliography
Roger Williams , The Complete Writings of Roger Williams, 7 vols. 1963.
Edmund S. Morgan , Roger Williams: The Church and the State, 1967.
W. Clark Gilpin
