Inspired by Roger Williams

When I first encountered Roger Williams, it was because of his prolific writings and his proximity in time, place and belief to one of my ancestors. Soon his story fascinated me. The Puritans in general are an inspiration. Who else runs away into the woods and walks out having founded Harvard? However, the Puritans also had tunnel vision, antagonizing and destroying the indigenous peoples they meant to evangelize. Roger Williams got kicked out of even the Puritan world into a blizzard, and walked out founding Providence. Roger Williams cared about the people he met and initially befriended them. And yet, he abandoned them at crucial moments, prioritizing obtaining an English colony as refuge for those persecuted by conscience over his diplomatic endeavors. This fascinated me. He walked away from real human relationships — English and Algonquian — in pursuit of principle, over an over. What drove him? Was it good or bad that he did this?

Roger Williams is a prototype for a Christian liberal, a person grounded in scripture and believing that God’s kingdom is meant to come in part in this world through progress. That, even though he firmly believed it could not come completely through progress and that the Puritans would not be successful in building a New Jerusalem as a human city due to our fallen state. In today’s world, liberals are rarely grounded in scripture. I come from a family of mostly liberals, and few are versed in scripture, though their ancestors were. The family members that are familiar with scripture seem to trend conservative, much to the consternation of the others. Yet here is Roger Williams sticking out like a sore thumb — pushing for change with every ounce of his life and doing it from scripture and because of his Christian conviction. Of course there are others like this: Martin Luther before him, and Martin Luther King Jr. much more recently. However, Roger Williams had a reputation as a seeker at best and a possible a forerunner of secular skeptics, unlike them. That is not how is own writing reads — how did that happen?

Roger Williams was entangled in debate with the Puritan leaders of his day — most notably John Cotton and Richard Mather, both grandparents of writer Cotton Mather. Cotton Mather, of Salem witch trial fame, was a prolific writer and not a fan of Roger Williams. I was thrilled to find that not only were Roger…

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