[Vision2020] Happy 405th Birthday, Roger Williams

[nickgier at roadrunner.com]

Hail to the Vision!

I wrote this column as a companion piece to the one I did recently on the Quakers.  The full version is attached as a PDF file.

Nick Gier

HAPPY 405TH BIRTHDAY, ROGER WILLIAMS

Conscience is the most sacred of all property.
--James Madison

On December 21st 405 years ago, Roger Williams was born in London to a prosperous merchant household.  He was a brilliant student at Cambridge, excelling in languages, the classics, and theology.  

The first turning point in Williams' life was the day that he witnessed the mutilation of a Puritan. During his time in the pillory, this alleged "Sower of Sedition" lost both his ears and his nose.  The letters "SS" were burned into his forehead and he spent the rest of life in prison.

Williams decided that only America would offer him and his wife the freedom they needed for their spiritual lives. In 1631 they landed in Boston only to find that the Christians there were persecuting non-conformists just as badly as the English were.

Williams believed that civil authorities had no right to enforce any religious law or dictate any particular religious belief whatsoever. In a famous simile, he maintained that compelling conversion was like a man who takes his wife to a "forced bed."  Insisting that people believe as you do constitutes "soul rape."

In 1635 the Boston General Court banished Williams for his "dangerous opinions," and he lived for a while among the Indians, learning several of their languages and writing a book about them. He praised their "natural virtue," which he set in stark contrast to the "savage Christians" of Boston.

In 1658 fifteen Portuguese Jews were warmly welcomed in Rhode Island, where Williams had obtained a charter to found a colony based on full religious liberty.  The Jews built the first synagogue in America and lived in peace with Baptists and Quakers who had sought refuge there. Although he did believe in peaceful conversion of the Indians and other nonbelievers, Williams declared that "we must necessarily disclaim our desires and hopes of the Jew's conversion to Christ." 

At least 130 years before Thomas Jefferson, Williams used the exact same language of building "a wall of between church and state," but Williams held that the wall was permeable in one essential respect. For Williams Christians did not have to check their deeply held beliefs at the voting booth.  All that was required was that they suspend their bigotry and ideas of religious exclusion. 

The political sphere should not be morally neutral ground, as some radical secularists appear to believe. Classical liberals such as John Adams meant it to be a place of both liberty and virtue, because the former without the latter is mere license. 

Williams recognized, just as the Apostle Paul did, that all human beings have the moral law "written on their hearts," and their conscience "bears witness" to all their deeds (Romans 2:15)  The fact that one does not need religion to be moral is a lesson that all religious fanatics need to learn.

Williams believed that conscience is the "most precious and invaluable jewel." Although he probably did not read Williams' work, James Madison is definitely following his lead when he declared that "conscience is our most sacred property."  

Freedom of conscience goes far beyond religion itself.  It is involves the right to pursue the truth wherever that search may take us. It is, for example, the basis for the academic freedom that makes the modern university the most successful beacon of truth in the world today.

Williams' most famous work "The Bloody Tenant of Persecution" contains a poignant dialogue between Truth and Peace. Peace is troubled by the fact that some fervent seekers of Truth always seem to disturb the natural harmony of humankind. Truth realizes that if one would concentrate less on possessing Truth and more on the search for Truth and respect all others in that pursuit, Peace would be far less molested.

At the end of the dialogue, Truth and Peace greet the arrival of their sister Patience, "whose desired company is as needful as it is delightful." Truth and Peace will need her counsel because it will be a long while before "it is evident before the whole world that the doctrine of persecution for the cause of conscience is most lamentably contrary to the doctrine of Christ Jesus the Prince of Peace." 

It is significant to note that Williams thought that the Indians that he loved and lived among were the most patient people he had ever met.

Nick Gier taught religion and philosophy at the University of Idaho for 31 years. 

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