Roger Williams: Listen to the Man!
The First Amendment to the U. S. Constitution opens with: “Congress shall
make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free
exercise thereof….” It is far less ambiguous than the Second Amendment, which
much of the American public treats as if it’s actually one of the Ten
Commandments. Why, one wonders, do so many Americans support religious bodies
seeking to dismantle the wall between church and state? The words of the
Constitution point out danger–any group imposing its desires in the public
realm would be a de facto establishment of a state religion that would jeopardize
the free exercise of others’ beliefs.
Earlier in the week I spoke of my youthful interest in
theology. Somewhere along the line I read about Roger Williams, the founder of
Rhode Island colony and the spiritual father of the Northern Baptists. Williams
is generally viewed as the first Colonial figure to advocate true freedom of
religion, what he called “liberty of conscience.” Among the biggest myths in
American history is that colonists came to the New World to practice freedom of
religion. Rubbish! They came to specific places to practice their religion, but they respected no
others. The Puritans–a dissenting group within the Church of England–came to
Massachusetts Bay because they were persecuted in England, just as the Pilgrims–officially
known as Separatists because they had bolted the C of E–settled in Plymouth for
the same reason. Once ensconced, neither tolerated those who followed another
religious path. The New World was like Europe, where the established pattern
was “religion follows the crown,” meaning that the only countenanced faith was
that of the ruler–the very thing the First Amendment aimed to avoid.
Roger Williams (and later, William Penn) did not argue for
religious tolerance because he was a wooly-headed liberal or a moral
relativist. Williams was convinced that his own Anabaptist views were correct
and that most of those who followed other religions were hell-bound. In truth, Williams
was an astute political thinker. Williams held that all liberty, not just of conscience, was linked to tolerance and
that unless broad forms of thought, doctrines, and practices were allowed, few
things could be practiced without
persecution, bloodshed, and chaos. In a nutshell, if any religious group
whatsoever controlled public policy, repressive theocracy emerged in its wake.
Few listened to Williams in the 1630s, but the Founders heeded his lesson 150 years
later. These days, Roger Williams sounds like a prophet.
Think I’m an alarmist? You cannot name a religious group that
has not been persecuted at some point
in American history. In fact, many of today’s would-be oppressors are
yesterday’s oppressed. Southern Baptists, for instance, were beaten and jailed in
17th century Virginia, when the colony had a law requiring
attendance at Anglican (C of E)
services. Maryland was originally founded as a haven for Roman Catholics, but
the law was repealed in 1649, and only the C of E was legal. The colonies, with
the exceptions of Rhode Island and Pennsylvania, had regional theocracies: most
of New England was for Puritans and Separatists, the Chesapeake region was for
Anglicans, the backcountry South was for Presbyterians (especially Ulster
Scots), the Delaware Valley was for Lutheran Swedes, Quakers went to
Pennsylvania, and swaths of New York and New Jersey settled by the Dutch were
dominated by Dutch Reformed Calvinists who quarreled with most other
Calvinists. Stray outside of your region without converting/conforming and you
were in trouble, like the four Quakers hanged in Boston between 1659 and 1661. Lest
we forget, Williams founded Rhode Island after having been kicked out of
Massachusetts by both Puritans and Separatists. Most of New England also
outlawed Methodists, Presbyterians, and Unitarians until 1760. Had any Catholic
been so foolish as to tread Boston’s cobblestones, the kindest fate at the
hands of good Puritans would be corrective measures such as cutting off his ears
and nose. As for pagan beliefs, three words: Salem witch trials.
The American Revolution did not end religious disputes.
Methodists were periodically roughed up in the Northeast, Methodist women were
beaten by mobs in the South, and those welcoming slaves into their ranks or
taking up the abolitionist cause were sometimes lynched. Congregationalist
(former Puritans) abolitionists were fair game for racist mobs in North and
South alike. When Joseph Smith founded the Mormons in the 1830, his sect was
chased from New York to Missouri to Illinois to Nebraska before making its way
to Utah in 1847. A trail of death was left behind. Once in Utah, Mormons fought
a war against the United States in 1857-58; they also murdered westbound
non-Mormon emigrants that strayed into their territory. Only Roman Catholics
and Jews rivaled Mormons on the victimization scale, and they had the good
sense to avoid massacres of their own or they would be annihilated. The Ku Klux
Klan targeted all three groups after the Civil War and well into the 20th
century. Anti-Semitism was the official norm until after World War II and
remains a cancer in American society. As late as 1960, John Kennedy had to ward
off suspicions of his Catholicism and he remains the only Catholic president. Mennonites
have been jailed for their pacifism. More recently, American Muslims were the
targets of post-9/11 wrath, as were Hindus and Buddhists at the hands of those
too stupid to know they weren’t Muslims. Mitt Romney’s Mormonism was a
prejudicial factor in the 2012 election, especially from evangelical
conservatives who refused to support a faith they call a “cult.” And there’s
the entire “Obama is a Muslim” nonsense!
In short, America can ill afford to be a religious nation!
It’s one thing–and not a good one–for a homogenous land such as Saudi Arabia or
Iran to be a theocracy, but such an attempt in the United States would result
in a bloodbath that would make Margaret Atwood’s The Handmaiden’s Tale look like a fairy tale by comparison. Many of
the Founders were non-Christian Deists, but it wasn’t theology that led them to
write the First Amendment; it was the ghost of Roger Williams. He is as right
today as he was in the 1630s–all of us must have freedom of conscience, or none
of us do. If you are religious, you should insist that your faith stay out of
political debate. If you can’t do this for the sake of liberty, do it to keep your
ears and the padlock off your house of worship.