God, Government and Roger Williams’ Big Idea: The principle that remains contentious to this day- separation of church and state
The separation of church and state is what many would argue, defines the American identity. How did it come about, why did it come about and what would the nation look like without the principle?
There are those who argue there is too much religion in the village square and others who believe there is not enough. For some, no religion acceptable, anywhere at any time. For others, atheists remain nothing more than a collective of immoral provocateurs.
Martin Luther King noted that we ought to be defined by the ‘content of our character’ as opposed to anything else. Believing in God does not make anyone ignorant. Going to Church does not make anyone superior.
Being an atheist is not be the litmus test for being a liberal. There are plenty of Conservatives who do not espouse a particular faith. Being an atheist does not automatically confer a higher morality or add any weight to political ideologies.
There are no good spiritual beliefs that will be undone by man made ones, and there are no good liberal ideals are in conflict with those who believe in God.
Simply embracing an ideology- religious or otherwise- does not in itself endow greater meaning or superiority to any individual. It is in the works and the manifestation in those beliefs that our worth is measured.
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Even the most bitter opponents of Roger Williams recognized in him that combination of charm, confidence and intensity a later age would call charisma. They did not regard such traits as assets, however, for those traits only made the preacher more dangerous in the Massachusetts Bay Colony. With someone like him, they could not compromise.
For his part, Williams was not about to compromise, either, despite his benevolent intelligence and Christian charity. The error, he believed, was not his, and when convinced he was right he backed away from no one.
So the conflict between Williams and his accusers nearly 400 years ago was inevitable. It was also thick with history, for it concerned both the relationship between church and state and defining the very nature of state power. Its repercussions would be immense and reach into the present.
The American part of the story began when John Winthrop led 1,000 men, women and children to plant the Massachusetts Bay Colony in 1630. These Puritans were disgusted with what they regarded as corruption in the Church of England and the tyranny of the crown. Seeking simple worship and personal intimacy with God, Puritan ministers were compelled—upon pain of imprisonment—to wear the surplice and use the Book of Common Prayer, and their congregants were compelled to participate in what they regarded as rote worship. As they set out from England that April, Winthrop reminded them of their purpose, to establish a “citty upon a hill” dedicated to God, obeying God’s laws and flourishing in God’s image as a model for all the world to see.
Williams, who had developed a reputation for scholarship and piety as a clergyman in England, brought his family to the colony a few months later. Winthrop hailed him as “a godly minister,” and the Boston church immediately offered him a post, the greatest such position in English America. But Williams declined, spurning the church as insufficiently committed to the proper worship of God. This astonishing charge would put him at odds with the colony’s leaders till the day he died.
Williams did not differ with them on any point of theology. They shared the same faith, all worshiping the God of Calvin, seeing God in every facet of life and seeing man’s purpose as advancing the kingdom of God. But the colony’s leaders, both lay and clergy, firmly believed that the state must prevent error in religion. They believed that the success of the Massachusetts plantation depended upon it.
Williams believed that preventing error in religion was impossible, for it required people to interpret God’s law, and people would inevitably err. He therefore concluded that government must remove itself from anything that touched upon human beings’ relationship with God. A society built on the principles Massachusetts espoused would lead at best to hypocrisy, because forced worship, he wrote, “stincks in God’s nostrils.” At worst, such a society would lead to a foul corruption—not of the state, which was already corrupt, but of the church.
The dispute defined for the first time two fault lines that have run through American history ever since. The first, of course, is over the proper relation between government and what man has made of God—the church. The second is over the relation between a free individual and government authority—the shape of liberty.