Thursday, August 8, 2024

It is the 8th of August 2024. Welcome to the Christian History Almanac, brought to you by 1517 at 1517.org; I’m Dan van Voorhis.

 

Today, we get to look at a figure in church history who checks a number of boxes for me in this season:

1. A major figure in church history
2. An underrated figure in American history
3. This person's name has just made the studio whiteboard list of “Possible Weekend Edition Topics”.

 

He was Roger Williams- a name you may have heard. You might associate him with the Pilgrims or religious dissent, or perhaps Rhode Island… we’ve discussed him on the show before, but he has not been given full treatment on this show- how could this be? His birth records were destroyed in the Great Fire of London, and his idea led him to end his life in relative obscurity such that we have just a general idea as to when he died.

So, who was this man I contend to be vital in both church and American history? Roger Williams was born in London around 1603 (once again, the fire destroyed the records) to a merchant tailor of some means. He would have been a young man during the public executions of Puritans, and he attended Cambridge after attracting the famous jurist Edward Coke and becoming his protege.

At Cambridge, he came to espouse Puritan beliefs and could have come to the Massachusetts Bay colony with that first expedition but decided to stay. By 1630, and the new reign of Charles I, Roger decided to leave and, in 1631, was in Boston. He found that group of Puritans too close to the Anglicans and left for the Massachusetts Bay Colony. He would bounce between Salem and Plymouth on account of his radical views until he was finally arrested in 1635.

While on house arrest through the winter, the magistrates came to his home in the Spring of 1636 to find him had disappeared. He had fled and met the Narragansett tribe, from whom he purchased land and founded Providence and the colony of Rhode Island.

In those turbulent years, Williams found himself agreeing mostly with the Baptists (he was rebaptized) but finding points of disagreement with most. He ended up with a small gathering that met in his home and he was a farmer for subsistence until his death sometime around 1683- he may have been as old as 80 years old.

What were his radical ideas? The first was a real separation of church and state. And this is to protect the church. He believed that religious life needed to be officially separate from civic life- not that the two don’t influence one another, but Williams believed their should be no theological contingencies on a political candidate.

We may see this as moderns as obvious, but it was radical for its day.

He believed that the power of the state could only compel the so-called “horizontal” commandments of the 10- depending on your numbering, that would be either 4 or 5 to 10. But when it came to the first commandments- about worship and those pertaining to God’s name and sabbath- the state could not compel any of that. He believed that “forced worship stinks in God's nostrils”. His “The Bloudy Tennent of Persecution” is one of the earliest and most concise arguments for the separation of civic and religious authorities and stint spheres for each. It is hard for a modern person to understand just how radical this idea was.

But it was his view of the natives and their land which was perhaps got him the most in trouble. He didn’t believe the king had the right to grant charters for foreign territories with foreign peoples already living in these places. He condemned slavery and the stealing of land and made sure that his Providence was purchased fairly and he lived as peaceably with the natives as possible.

He wrote a work condemning the English colonists and Crown- these and other views were determined by a court to be dangerous, and the texts in which he wrote these things were destroyed.

Roger Williams can be caricatured as the radical banished to “Rogue” Island or thrown into the jumble of colonists and founders in General American history.

But he deserves to be recognized as a true radical and one ahead of his time when it came to the development of the now standard understanding of pluralism and its benefits to the state.

How did we get this date? Roger Williams was banished on this date in 1635. But he got to stay on house arrest for the winter, and that's when he bolted for his own digs.

 

The last word for today is from the daily lectionary from Romans 15:

We who are strong ought to bear with the failings of the weak and not to please ourselves. 2 Each of us should please our neighbors for their good, to build them up. 3 For even Christ did not please himself but, as it is written: “The insults of those who insult you have fallen on me.” 4 For everything that was written in the past was written to teach us, so that through the endurance taught in the Scriptures and the encouragement they provide we might have hope.

5 May the God who gives endurance and encouragement give you the same attitude of mind toward each other that Christ Jesus had, 6 so that with one mind and one voice you may glorify the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ.

 

This has been the Christian History Almanac for the 8th of August 2024, brought to you by 1517 at 1517.org.

The show is produced by a man who sees that Microsoft Word doesn’t recognize “rebaptize” (it's got that red squiggle line), and ironically, neither does he… he is Christopher Gillespie.

The show is written and read by a man bummed that in 2020 Rhode Island dropped “and the Providence Plantations” and the rights to the sneaky longest state name, I’m Dan van Voorhis.

You can catch us here every day- and remember that the rumors of grace, forgiveness, and the redemption of all things are true…. Everything is going to be ok.