The Rise and Fall of Religious Liberty in America
By C. M. S.
The Making and Meaning of Rhode Island THE story of the establishment of Rhode Island without the story of Roger Williams’ connection therewith, would be like the story of America with the Declaration of Independence omitted. Roger Williams was Rhode Island’s Declaration of Independence; and from the constitution of the State which he founded, the great Constitution of the United States drew many of its most vital and valuable principles. It is, therefore, well worth while to study some of the experiences which led to the founding of that lone State in the woods of the Narragansett Indians. Mr. James Bryce, present ambassador from Great Britain to the United States, in writing the introduction to a book on Rhode Island, says: “The enormous changes which have passed over America during the last sixty years do not diminish—indeed, they rather increase—the value of a study of the days wherein the foundations of this mighty edifice were raised.” Mr. Bryce is the author of a work entitled “The American Commonwealth,” and the study which he has made of America and American institutions, makes the above quoted remark a particularly striking one. There have been great changes going on in America. Strong influences are at work undermining the foundation principles of this great commonwealth—the very principles which made it possible for it to achieve its present greatness. The principles of church-and-state union, against which Rhode Island was an eloquent protest, are being again insidiously woven into the fabric of our national and State governments. Since 1863 an influence has been at work, constantly increasing in power, which proposes to bring the nation back to the principles that dominated the Massachusetts, New Haven, and Connecticut colonies. They were all established upon a kind of theocratic basis—God ruling through the magistrate, and all the observances of the ruling church made obligatory upon all persons dwelling within the realm. This was carried to such an extent that even the mere holding of opinions was penalized if those opinions did not harmonize with the creed of the established church. It is the changes, Mr. Bryce says, that make essential a study of the fundamental principles of our government at the present time. If the changes were for the better, Mr. Bryce would not have considered so essential a study of the fundamental principles. The date of Roger Williams’ birth is not definitely known, but he was born in England about the year 1603. The years of his youth were years of great theological debates and strong theological feelings, for in those days it was a costly and generally a dangerous matter to hold to opinions that were contrary to the creed of the established church. It mattered not how clearly those opinions could be proved from the Word of God, if they were contrary to the creed, they were dangerous heresies; and the more easily they were proved the more dangerous they were—to the established church. Those were the days of the Anabaptists, the Menonites, the Separatists, the Pilgrims, and the Puritans. The first two named stood for the complete separation of church and state; the Separatists separated from the state church in order that they might find in their conventicles and prayer-meetings the religious refreshing which they did not receive in the meetings of the established church. The Pilgrims were Separatists who removed to Holland in 1608 and twelve years later came to America. The Puritans were members of the established church who desired a simpler and purer form of worship in that church than that which obtained there. With the established church—the English Catholic—persecuting all these nonconformists, or dissenters, in England, and with the Presbyterian establishment doing the same for all dissenting from its creed in Scotland, with the Roman Church outlawed throughout the realm, Roger Williams had an excellent opportunity to study the benefits and the disadvantages of the church-and-state system. His early espousal of the principles of soul-liberty soon made him persona non grata with the establishment, and his biographers indicate that when he left England, there were reasons of a very personal and imperative nature for his doing so; viz., to escape the wrath of the officials of the established church for the opinions he held. A sample of the conditions existing in England at the time when Roger Williams left for America is seen in the treatment given to one Leighton for publishing his “Plea Against Prelacy.” For that act he was committed to prison for life, fined ten thousand pounds, degraded from his ministry, whipped, pilloried, his ears cut off, his nose slit, and his face branded with a hot iron. It was in 1631 that Roger Williams landed in Boston. He had come to America for freedom of belief and worship; but he found a church there as truly established and as truly despotic as the establishment in either England or Scotland. He refused to join the church of Boston because it still held communion with the Church of England, from whose oppressive jurisdiction he had fled. He thought it his duty to renounce all connection with a church which would imbrue its hands in the blood of the Lord’s people. He made application for the rights of a “freeman” in the colony, but this was denied him because of his refusal to join the church, the rights of citizenship being specifically denied those outside the communion of the established church. It no doubt vexed the righteous soul of Williams to find in the New World the same oppressive conditions that he had fled from in the Old, and without delay or diplomacy he began to combat the principle. In spite of the disapprobation of the general court of the Colony, the congregation at Salem elected Williams pastor. He soon found it conducive to his temporal peace, however, to take up his abode in the Plymouth colony, where a greater degree of toleration existed, and there exercised his gifts as a minister of the gospel. He was again invited to become the pastor of the Salem church, and accepted the invitation, although the magistrates and ministers greatly objected. The majority of the church felt that they had a right to choose their pastor, and held to their choice. At once his opponents began to denounce his teachings, and he was summoned to appear before the court to answer charges brought against his heretical opinions. One of the teachings for which he was called to answer was that the civil magistrate had no right to enforce religion and religious practises. Such teaching, of course, was diametrically opposed to the principles upon which the Massachusetts Bay Colony was founded, and was regarded by the officials as a very serious matter. Three days after Mr. Williams’ appearance in court to answer to these charges, the Salem church was refused legal possession of a certain piece of land for which they had applied, because of their having selected Mr. Williams as their teacher after being admonished by the magistrates not to do so. Mr. Williams and his church then wrote letters of admonition to the churches of which those magistrates were members, setting forth the injustice of their action, and asking the churches to admonish the magistrates of the criminality of their conduct. These letters failed to have the desired effect, and even some of Mr. Williams’ congregation, because of the official pressure, began to waver. The difficulty grew, and finally Mr. Williams withdrew from the church because of the church’s refusal to withdraw with him from the communion of6the other churches. Mr. Williams’ friend, Endicot, was imprisoned for the crime of publicly justifying Mr. Williams’ letter of admonition to the churches, and a Mr. Sharpe was summoned to appear in court to answer for the same. In October, 1635, Roger Williams was again summoned to appear in court. All the ministers of the colony were present. They had already decided that any one was worthy of banishment from the jurisdiction of the colony “who should obstinately assert that the civil magistrate might not intermeddle even to stop a church from apostasy and heresy.” Mr. Williams bravely upheld his teachings, but the following sentence was passed upon him, all the ministers present, save one, approving of the deed:— Whereas, Mr. Roger Williams, one of the elders of the church of Salem, hath broached and divulged divers new and dangerous opinions, against the authority of magistrates; as also writ letters of defamation, both of the magistrates and churches here, and that before any conviction, and yet maintaineth the same without any retraction; it is therefore ordered that the said Mr. Williams shall depart out of this jurisdiction within six weeks, now next ensuing, which, if he neglect to perform, it shall be lawful for the governor and two of the magistrates to send him to some place out of this jurisdiction, not to return any more without license from the court.
Here, then, truth asserting itself had met bigotry entrenched behind the breastworks of temporal power. The Christian, commissioned of heaven to preach the gospel as taught by the Word of God and the Holy Spirit, had met the professed Christian bearing the sword of the civil magistrate, and deciding for himself who shall and who shall not teach and what shall and what shall not be taught. The sword-bearing restrictor of other men’s liberties triumphs for the time; but his triumph is in reality a self-inflicted defeat; for in robbing other men of their liberties, he is robbing himself of his own. In imprisoning other men for their consciences, he is committing his own soul to the chains of soul-slavery. The exiled Williams was defeated for the time; but out of that defeat grew a monument to his name that succeeding generations have learned to revere. The triumph of the party of oppression has crumbled and gone; the defeat of Williams grew into a State that has influenced not the nation alone, but the whole civilized world as well. The experiences of Roger Williams in the actual work of founding the Rhode Island Colony, the attempts of his enemies to frustrate his plans, and the crystallizing of the principles of civil and religious freedom into concrete form in the constitution of the State, will be considered in another article.