Background
Roger Williams was born on December 21, 1602, in Smithfield, England, to James Williams, a merchant tailor, and Alice Pemberton.
( Banished from the Massachusetts Bay Colony for his refu...)
Banished from the Massachusetts Bay Colony for his refusal to conform to Puritan religious and social standards, Roger Williams established a haven in Rhode Island for those persecuted in the name of the religious establishment. He conducted a lifelong debate over religious freedom with distinguished figures of the seventeenth century, including Puritan minister John Cotton, Massachusetts governor John Endicott, and the English Parliament. James Calvin Davis gathers together important selections from Williams's public and private writings on religious liberty, illustrating how this renegade Puritan radically reinterpreted Christian moral theology and the events of his day in a powerful argument for freedom of conscience and the separation of church and state. For Williams, the enforcement of religious uniformity violated the basic values of Calvinist Christianity and presumed upon God's authority to speak to the individual conscience. He argued that state coercion was rarely effective, often causing more harm to the church and strife to the social order than did religious pluralism. This is the first collection of Williams's writings in forty years reaching beyond his major work, The Bloody Tenent, to include other selections from his public and private writings. This carefully annotated book introduces Williams to a new generation of readers.
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Roger Williams was born on December 21, 1602, in Smithfield, England, to James Williams, a merchant tailor, and Alice Pemberton.
Under the patronage of the jurist Sir Edward Coke, Williams was educated at Sutton's Hospital and at Pembroke College, Cambridge (Bachelor of Arts, 1627).
After graduating from Cambridge, Williams became chaplain to a wealthy family. In 1630 he left his post as chaplain to Sir William Masham, which had brought him into contact with such politically active Puritans as Oliver Cromwell and Thomas Hooker, to pursue his by-then completely Nonconformist religious ideals in New England.
Arriving in Boston in 1631, Williams refused to associate himself with the Anglican Puritans and in the following year moved to the separatist Plymouth Colony. In 1633 he was back in Salem after a disagreement with Plymouth in which he insisted that the king’s patent was invalid and that only direct purchase from the Indians gave a just title to the land.
Invited by the church at Salem to become pastor in 1634, Williams was banished from Massachusetts Bay by the civil authorities for his dangerous views: besides those on land rights, he held that magistrates had no right to interfere in matters of religion. Consequently, in January 1636 Williams set out for Narragansett Bay, and in the spring, on land purchased from the Narragansett Indians, he founded the town of Providence and the colony of Rhode Island. Providence became a haven for Anabaptists, Quakers, and others whose beliefs were denied public expression.
Williams went to England in 1643 to obtain a charter for Rhode Island and again in 1651– 1654 to have it confirmed, during which visit he became a friend of the poet John Milton. He was the first president of Rhode Island under its charter and until his death always held some public office. He was of constant service to Rhode Island and neighbouring colonies as a peacemaker with the Narragansett Indians, whose language he knew and whose trust he had earned, although he helped defend Rhode Island against them during King Philip’s War (1675 – 1676). From 1636 until his death he supported himself by farming and trading.
Williams was a vigorous controversialist and a prolific writer. His greatest work was The Bloudy Tenent of Persecution (1644).
Roger Williams died on April 1, 1683, in Providence, Rhode Island. He was buried on his property and his farm turned to decay. Nearly two centuries later, attempts were made to find his grave, but only an old tree root was discovered. It is now housed at the Rhode Island Historical Society.
The political and religious leader Roger Williams is best remembered for his strong stance on the separation of church and state, pioneering of religious liberty and founding the colony of Rhode Island. Besides he organized the first attempt to prohibit slavery in any of the British American colonies. In 1920, Roger Williams was inducted into the Hall of Fame for Great Americans. Numerous parks and universities are named in his honour. Williams was selected in 1872 to represent Rhode Island in the National Statuary Hall Collection in the United States Capitol. Williams is depicted on the International Monument to the Reformation in Geneva, Switzerland, along with other prominent reformers. Williams is honored with Anne Hutchinson with a feast day on the liturgical of the Episcopal Church in the United States of America on February 5.
( Banished from the Massachusetts Bay Colony for his refu...)
(Unlike some other reproductions of classic texts (1) We h...)
(Unlike some other reproductions of classic texts (1) We h...)
( This work has been selected by scholars as being cultur...)
(Hardcover)
At a young age, Roger Williams became an Anglican, he maintained personal beliefs that were more like those of the Puritans. He left England because of his disagreement with English principle of an established state church. Not long after arriving in the Massachusetts Bay Colony, Williams became a separatist, a Puritan who wanted to leave the Anglican Church. Finally Williams founded the first Baptist church in America and never again affiliated himself with any church, but remained deeply religious and active in preaching and praying.
In addition, both enemies and admirers sometimes called him a "Seeker" (Protestant dissenter), first as a smear in England by associating Williams with a heretical movement that accepted Socinianism and universal salvation. Williams rejected both of these ideas.
Quotations:
"The greatest crime is not developing your potential. When you do what you do best, you are helping not only yourself, but the world. "
"The sovereign power of all civil authority is founded in the consent of the people. "
"That cannot be a true religion which needs carnal weapons to uphold it. "
"God requireth not a uniformity of religion. "
Roger Williams had a gift for languages and acquired familiarity with Latin, Greek, Dutch and French.
On December 15, 1629, Roger Williams married Mary Barnard at the Church of High Laver, Essex, England. They ultimately had six children, all born in America.
John Milton was an English poet, polemicist, man of letters and civil servant for the Commonwealth of England under Oliver Cromwell
