God is too Big to be Housed Under One Roof

Roger Williams was born on this day in 1603.

Born Anglican and religiously precocious, at eleven he embraced the Puritan wing of the church. He had a facility for languages, and famously worked with John Milton, teaching the great poet and theologian Dutch in exchange for Hebrew lessons. Graduating from Cambridge he ordained and began serving as the domestic chaplain to a wealthy family.

His puritan sentiments revolted at the ascension of William Laud to Canterbury and so he and his wife immigrated to the American colonies. All his children would be born in America.

The arc of Williams’ religious evolution began to become clear. He railed against the Church of England as apostate. While this was not an uncommon opinion, he preached it with uncommon ferocity. But his serious departure from the normative understanding at the time was his assertion that the civil authority should have no control over what he referred to as the first tablet, that is those commandments which were religious, such as blasphemy. He felt individual conscience was paramount in these matters.

Williams called this idea “soul-liberty,” and he appears to have been the first person to call for a separation between church and state using the specific metaphor of a “wall.”

He served several churches but his increasingly radical opinions caused considerable disruption both within the congregations he served and in the larger Massachusetts colony.

Forced out of his pulpit Williams began to hold private worship services in his home. But this lasted for a brief time. His teachings were so controversial that eventually the court banished him from the Massachusetts colony.

Williams sought to purchase land from the Narragansett people to establish a free colony along the lines of his evolving thought. The Narragansetts appear to have refused compensation, and instead they gave him the land he needed to established the town of Providence, It was unique in allowing for religious liberty. Later he obtained a formal charter for what had become Rhode Island and the Providence Plantations from England. Soon it became a haven for Baptists, Quakers and Jews. (There was some hesitation about congregationalists from Massachusetts, so my own church, now known as the First Unitarian Church of Providence would not be established until 1720…)

In May of 1652 the colony outlawed slavery.

His theological thinking continued to evolve and in 1639 Williams was rebaptised as a Baptist. He appears to have been a founding member of the first Baptist church, although his association with that church was brief.

He ended his days as a “Seeker” unconnected to any organized church.

Roger Williams died in 1683, but his influence both directly and indirectly helped to shape our American nation and our American religious sensibilities.

One of the greats, no doubt…