Roger Williams and Religious Liberty

Review and Herald Publishing Association · Tacoma Park Station, Washington, D. C. · Jul 30, 1914

Roger Williams and Religious Liberty

QUOTING Oscar Straus, in his book “The American Spirit,” the Watchman-Examiner of July 16, 1914, gives the following testimonial with reference to the attitude of this faithful minister toward the question of religious liberty:—

Let us tarry a moment in Rhode Island, where the banner of religious liberty was first unfurled. In the midwinter of 1636 a solitary pilgrim might have been seen wandering through the primeval forests of New England, an exile from the territory of the Massachusetts Puritans, seeking a place of refuge from ecclesiastical tyranny, where he and all men might worship God according to the dictates of their consciences. At that time there was no such land in the whole civilized world. This pilgrim, the first true type of an American freeman, the trusted and trustworthy friend of the savage Indian, the benefactor of all mankind, was Roger Williams, who accomplished what no one before this ever had the courage and wisdom, combined with a conviction of the broadest liberty, even to attempt,—to found a purely secular state “as a shelter for the poor and the persecuted according to their several persuasions.” The time, let us hope, is not far off when all civilized people, even in the remotest corners of the world, will recognize the truth and power of the principles that throw around the name of Roger Williams a halo of imperishable glory.