Academics: Historiography USA: Roger Williams under the microscope

Roger Williams: 

The Great Separationist

By JOYCE E. CHAPLIN

Published: December 30, 2011

New York Times

Should you find yourself in front of the Rhode Island Statehouse in Providence, look up and east, and tip your hat — real or imagined — to Roger Williams. A 35-foot statue of the Protestant theologian (1603?-1683) stands high in Prospect Terrace Park, with right hand extended, as if blessing the city he founded. The beatific image does not quite resemble its cantankerous model, for reasons that John M. Barry explores, if only partly, in his new biography, “Roger Williams and the Creation of the American Soul.”

Barry is the gifted author of several historical works that examine the early 20th century, most notably “The Great Influenza.” He had begun working on a biography of a figure from the same period, the American evangelist Billy Sunday, but his curiosity about the longer history of religion in public life whisked him back in time and to Williams, long regarded as the original American proponent of liberty of conscience and the separation of church and state.

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refWrite comment: In her NYT review of John M. Barry's new book, Roger Williams and the Creation of the American Soul:  Church, State, and the Birth of Liberty,  Harvard historian Joyce E. Chaplin probes her counterpart's latest study and finds it wanting.  People interested in iconizing Roger Williams (1603-1683) will find plenty to whet their appetites in Barry's new work.  However, too much is claimed, by both historians Barry and his critic Chaplin, too much for the founder of the British colony of Providence Plantation in North America in the department of church and state relations as far as historical consequences are concerned.   

Although he took Holy Orders in the Church of England, he had become a Puritan at Cambridge, forfeiting any chance at a place of preferment in the Anglican church. After graduating from Cambridge, Williams became the chaplain to a Puritan lord, Sir William Macham. He married Mary Barnard (1609–76) on December 15, 1629 at the Church of High Laver, Essex, England. They had six children, all born in America. Their children were Mary, Freeborn, Providence, Mercy, Daniel and Joseph.

Williams was privy to the plans of the Puritan leaders to migrate to the New World, and while he did not join the first wave in the summer of 1630, before the end of the year, he decided he could not remain in England under Archbishop William Laud's rigorous (and High church) administration. He regarded the Church of England to be corrupt and false, and by the time he and his wife boarded the Lyon in early December, he had arrived at the Separatist position.

The ignorance of Joyce Chaplin in regard to "separation of church and state" (a key doctrine of Williams), is palpable and ideological, a leftwing and ACLU corrupted historical interpretation, and little else. It does not enter into the language or purpose of the First Amendment of the USA Constitution, where the wording "make no law concerning ... establishment of religion" pertains only to the federal government.  Almost all of the colonies and the states that followed them had established churches, which states eventually abolished the establishments, altho they didn't have to do so under the USA Constitution.  You cannot get this from Chaplin's review and it makes suspect what she says otherwise regarding Barry's historiography at hand.  A much better formulation may be found in Wilkipedia: 

When Roger and Mary Williams arrived at Boston on February 5, 1631, he was welcomed and almost immediately invited to become the Teacher (assistant minister) in the Boston church to officiate while Rev. John Wilson returned to England to fetch his wife. He shocked them by declining the position, saying that he found that it was "an unseparated church." [Unseparated from the state and from the Anglican Church which was tied to the Crown. New England's established Churches considered themselves Anglican Congregationalists, rather than Anglican Episcopalians. - Owlb] In addition he asserted that the civil magistrates may not punish any sort of "breach of the first table [of the Ten Commandments]," such as idolatry, Sabbath-breaking, false worship, and blasphemy, and that every individual should be free to follow his own convictions in religious matters. Right from the beginning, he sounded three principles which were central to his subsequent career: Separatism, freedom of religion [as a matter of indivudual conscience], and separation of church and state.

As a Separatist he had concluded that the Church of England was irredeemably corrupt and that one must completely separate from it to establish a new church for the true and pure worship of God. His search for the true church eventually carried him out of Congregationalism, the Baptists, and any visible church. From 1639 forward, he waited for Christ to send a new apostle to reestablish the church, and he saw himself as a "witness" to Christianity until that time came. He believed that soul liberty freedom of conscience, was a gift from God, and that everyone had the natural right to freedom of religion. Religious freedom demanded that church and state be separated. Williams was the first to use the phrase "wall of separation" to describe the relationship of the church and state. He called for a high wall of separation between the "Garden of Christ" and the "Wilderness of the World." This idea might have been one of the foundations of the religion clauses [is there more than one? I had thawt not. - Owlb] in the U.S. Constitution, (although the language used by the founders is quite different) and First Amendment to the United States Constitution. Years later, in 1802 Thomas Jefferson, writing of the "wall of separation" echoed Roger Williams in a letter to the Danbury Baptist Association.

In other words, Williams gets credit from the angle of the history of ideas for launching the base formulation of separationist thinking, but the influence of that idea became possible in American statecraft only under a radical modification whereby it become a different idea, a different idea which was inscribed in a clause of the Bill of Rights (First 10 Amendments to the Constitution), an idea of a freedom of religion and belief (freedom of conscience but not some absolute freedom of behaviours), a freedom of religion without outlawing establishments of religion in the various states. Indeed, the USA has never had "a wall of separation between church/es and state/s,"  even in regard to the Federal Government.  The absolutistic metaphor of "wall" here is misleading and dangerous.  But in any case, the idea has never been constitutionally enshrined — no matter what Roger Williams or Thomas Jefferson wrote.
Yet, we shoud not begrudge the h+est respect for Williams in regard to his thawts regarding the Native Americans, a point appropriately stressed by both Barry and Chaplin.  I think this is William's real achievement, and it certainly is integral to his notions of freedom of conscience and religion.  Yet, for the Naragansetts and other tribes with which he got along well, there was no separation of church and state.  Of course, we have to look past the lack of differentiation in this respect in Native tribal societies of the time, and discern among them the functions of governance and faith-community without any "wall of separation."  So, what was Williams doing when he explained the Gospel to these folks?  Was he hoping some woud convert and join his utopic community in Providence Plantation where local church and the local state were presumably walled apart?  Wasn't he calling the Native Americans away from their 'benited' lack of such a wall in their own society?  Was Williams calling them to something that woud be disintegrative of their own societies?, so that to become a Christian was in important part to erect a wall of separation between the civil and faith-functions of life.  I prefer, in principle, the constitutional way of communication between the various levels of government and the churches / faith-communities of the society.   Why shoud churches and religions be singled out for non-communication?


All this history feeds into the question of civil religion, civic religious expression.  I'm wondering how today's successor state to the Providence Plantation colony — namely, Rhode Island — handles the walling off of religious expression by its citizenry?  

Wikipedia provides "a  'clarification' of how the Establishment of Religion Clause should be read" , penned in a concurring opinion by Justice Sandra Day O'Connor:

The Establishment Clause prohibits government from making adherence to a religion relevant in any way to a person's standing in the political community. Government can run afoul of that prohibition in two principal ways. One is excessive entanglement with religious institutions ...The second and more direct infringement is government endorsement or disapproval of religion. Endorsement sends a message to nonadherents that they are outsiders, not full members of the political community, and an accompanying message to adherents that they are insiders, favored members of the political community.
This is sometimes referred to as the "Endorsement Test." A law which fails this test is found to be unconstitutional because it "endorses" religion or religious beliefs in such a way that it tells those who agree that they are favored insiders and those who disagree that they are disfavored outsiders. The other side of the coin would be the "disapproval" of religion or religious beliefs in such a way that those who agree with the beliefs are told that they are disfavored outsiders while those who disagree with the beliefs are told that they are favored insiders.

I think this year the quarrel in Rhode Island was over whether a Christmas tree coud not be called such but woud have to follow the usage of Governor Lincoln Chafee by referring to the government's lighted tree as the "Holiday Tree."  A bunch of protesting carol-singing Christians disrupted the ever-so secularist ceremony at Rhode Island's Statehouse

New American (December2,2k11)

Ignoring protests from residents and a resolution from state legislators calling for the state’s seasonal celebratory tree to be called by its Christmas designation, Rhode Island Governor Lincoln Chafee (left) insisted that the blue spruce that graces the Statehouse this year be referred to officially as a “Holiday Tree.”
According to the Associated Press, Chafee, who changed his party designation from Republican to Independent in 2007, said that eschewing the term “Christmas” is in line with the principles laid down by Rhode Island founder Roger Williams that the state would supposedly be a place where religion and government are to be kept separate.

The song "O Christmas Tree" was sung in the protest.


— Owlb