Roger Williams’ "Lively Experiment"

Our royal will and pleasure is that no person within the said colony, at any time hereafter, shall be in any way molested, punished, disquieted, or called in question, for differences in opinion in matters of religion . . . but that all and every person and persons may, from time to time, and at all times hereafter, freely and fully have and enjoy his and their own judgements and consciences in matters of religious concernment. -Rhode Island Charter of 1663

Roger Williams was a Puritan’s Puritan. Well, actually, the rest of the Puritans didn’t think so, but it was true.

We are accustomed to thinking of Williams as the radical advocate of religious freedom in the early years of the settlement of New England, and he was, but not for the reasons that most people think.

Williams was not a liberal. He was, paradoxically, more exclusive than inclusive. He was more conservative than the conservatives. But his conservatism and exclusivism led him in some very surprising directions. Some of those directions we might even call inclusive and liberal. Perhaps his most lasting legacy is his support for freedom of conscience at a time when almost no one thought it was a good idea.

Roger Williams arrived in New England in 1631 and almost immediately became a burr in the side of the Puritan authorities. Practically his first act on arrival, though he had no other prospects, was to refuse the prestigious pulpit of the newly gathered church in Boston. The reason, he said, was that the Boston church was not clearly enough separated from the Church of England.

Williams was a separatist who believed that the Church of England was too corrupt to be purified and that the only solution was a complete and total separation from it. He especially detested anything that smacked of a "national" church. Most of the other Puritans thought that it was still possible to reform the Church of England, but Williams did not. It was only the beginning.

Williams didn’t believe in swearing oaths with the words "so help me God." For what if the swearer didn’t believe in God? It was meaningless, and a sham, and he dared to say so.

Unlike the majority of his contemporaries, Williams felt that government should have absolutely nothing to do with religion. As Edmund S. Morgan has written, quoting Williams, "To suppose that a government had either a right or a duty to enforce true religion was to assume ‘that every Common-weale hath radically and fundamentally in it a power of true discerning the true feare of God, which they transfer to their Magistrates and Officers.’ And such an assumption was palpably absurd." Williams also rejected the commonly held idea of the divine origin of government.

Williams believed that the government should protect people--widows, orphans, the mentally ill--not save souls, and he denied that wars could ever be holy. He argued for a complete separation of civil power from spiritual activity. We can imagine that he would be unimpressed by the words "God bless America" on the lips of contemporary politicians. And it is interesting to speculate about what he would think of governmental support of "faith based initiatives." He wouldn’t like them.

Long before Madison and Jefferson, Williams argued that "one must keep a wall or a hedge between the secular and the sacred" [Edwin Gaustad]. But he did so to preserve the church from worldly contamination--not to protect the state from the effects of religion.

In a fine distinction, he said that the government could establish morality, but not religion. But he believed--like religious liberals after him, though he wasn’t one--that not only Christians and Church members could act morally: even non-Christians and unbelievers could. Even the Indians could.

In a recent biography of Williams, Edwin Gaustad has noted that "Williams was especially troubled by the use [by the government] of the Christian religion to do a very un-Christian deed: namely, depriving the Indians of their own property without due compensation or negotiation."

Driven from the Mass Bay Colony for these and other views, and not least for his stubbornness in holding to them, Williams began a friendship with the Indians that was to last almost to the end of his life. He came to see colonization from their point of view. In 1643, he published the remarkable A Key to the Language of America, certainly one of the first books about the language, behavior, and practices of the native Americans. He believed that all of humankind was one, and that only God could determine inferiority or superiority.

Uniquely among his contemporaries, he did not seek to convert the Indians. He said famously that "Christenings make not Christians." He believed that religious ritual and sacraments ought to set our lives on a different path, and since he didn’t see much evidence that they did so, he was skeptical about the whole enterprise of religious conversion. He believed that one should come into the church only through voluntary consent. Church membership must be a deliberate choice. That’s why he didn’t believe in infant baptism, and why he eventually became a Baptist.

Williams was especially concerned about the greed he detected among his fellow Puritans, particularly when it came to what he called "God Land." Williams himself refused to amass lots of land, seeing it as a false god and an idol. He also saw security and prosperity as false gods. He said that "The nearer Christ’s followers have approached to worldly wealth . . . the further and further have they departed from God. . . ."

In his heart of hearts he believed that a life of poverty was the only appropriate one for all true Christians: spiritual prosperity was the only kind that mattered. He said that the "Godly in this world were more apt to wear a crown of thorns." As Edmund Morgan has written, Williams’ ideas seldom brought him comfort. But he refused throughout his life to compromise them. He never changed his mind.

It was perhaps his protection of freedom of conscience that got Williams into the most trouble, and was his crowning achievement. Almost no one believed that people should believe whatever they wanted. But Williams believed that "conscience" was the voice of God in man. What mere mortal should judge of it, wrong though it might appear to be? And he believed that government not only could, but should protect the free exercise of conscience in matters of religion. He believed that "liberty of conscience is the right to be wrong."

He believed the Quakers were wrong and he told them so on no uncertain terms. But he did not prevent them from living and thriving in his Rhode Island colony. He sought liberty of conscience not only for himself, but for all humanity. "How is it, Williams asked, that persons speak so tenderly of their own consciences yet have ‘so little respect, mercy, or pity to the like conscientious persuasion of other men?" [Gaustad]

According to Edwin Gaustad, Williams believed that "religious persecution was an utter violation of the Christian spirit and of fundamental humanity" and that forcing conscience was an evil deed and further that it was the cause of most of the bloodshed in the world. Williams firmly believed that the "Christian church does not persecute."

What Williams ultimately argued for was what he called "soul liberty." Religious freedom was for all: not just for Christians. He believed, in Gaustad’s words, that "The sanctuary of the soul should never be invaded by sheriffs or jailers, by judges of soldiers."

Because he believed that the true church would never be restored until the Second Coming of Christ, Williams was loathe to criticize anyone’s faith. He believed that as long as a person acted in a morally acceptable fashion, he or she should be left alone.

Remarkably, and due to his never-flagging efforts, Williams’ ideas about freedom of conscience eventually found their way into the royal charter of his colony of Rhode Island in 1663. The charter spoke of Rhode Islanders "having it ‘much on their hearts (if they be permitted) to hold forth a lively experiment.’" As Edwin Gaustad writes, "That experiment was designed to test the proposition that a civil society could actually flourish even with (possibly because of?) a full liberty in ‘religious concernments.’" The charter said in part,

Our royal will and pleasure is that no person within the said colony, at any time hereafter, shall be in any wise molested, punished, disquieted, or called in question, for difference in opinion in matters of religion, [that] do not actually disturb the civil peace of our said colony; but that all and every person and persons may, from time to time, and at all times hereafter, freely and fully have and enjoy his and their own judgments and consciences in matters of religious concernment.

I think that Roger Williams would be amused by those Christian groups who in recent years have claimed that our government is prejudiced against them, for he believed that the government should be completely neutral in religious terms. I think he would be skeptical about efforts to re-infuse religion and God into government, and about any group that considered itself to be the "true" religion. I think he would be adamantly opposed to efforts to break down the so-called wall of separation between church and state. He would be the first to scoff at the notion of our country being "a Christian nation" (that would be a non-sequitor), and he would warmly welcome the religious diversity of contemporary America, even as he argued against those with whom he disagreed in religious matters. After all, that very diversity came from God!

He first care and concern would be with how people acted, with what they did and with how they treated others, since no one could know for sure what God thought about them, at least not until the Son of Man returned in all his power and glory. I suspect that he would argue strongly that government has a moral responsibility to look after the least of those among us.

All in all, I think that Roger Williams would be happy with where his "lively experiment" of freedom of conscience has led, but I also believe that he would be the first to step forward to see that that experiment was not undermined in any way. Freedom, as someone has famously said, is not free. Nor is it as simple as some would have us believe.

As in his own day, I am convinced that Roger Williams would be most opposed to those who make the greatest claims on behalf of religion. He would have no truck with those who believe they already possess the answers. I think we could use his voice in the contemporary debate about the role of religion in the public sphere.

So may we keep in our thoughts this morning all those who have dared to speak words of truth to power, and may we never take our freedom of conscience for granted, remembering that others have made great sacrifices that we might be enabled to carry on the lively experiment. May it be so, now, and in days to come which we can only imagine. Amen.

The Rev. Harold E. Babcock