Zion In The Forest (June 1956 | Volume: 7, Issue: 4)

Zion In The Forest

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Authors: Roger Burlingame

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June 1956 | Volume 7, Issue 4

There is a legend about Roger Williams that is exceedingly popular among Americans. There is also a truth which is slowly emerging from the welter of fancies. The truth is less simple than the legend, for most legends are oversimplifications. But it has some even more dramatic aspects than the beloved myth and it accords better, too, with the mental development of the normal human being. If it dims the halo of this pioneer of American liberty, it gives him a warmth, a nearness to ourselves that we could hardly feel while he stood on the pedestal.

The legend is that he came as a dedicated saint into the hard, bigoted theocracy of Massachusetts Bay. He came, according to the story, imbued with a passion for freedom of conscience in religious belief. This concept was thought to be original with him, and because he insisted on so unheard-of a doctrine before the stiff-necked Puritans of New England, he was banished. His banishment has been held to be one of the terrible injustices of history and to have placed an eternal stigma on the “Bible Commonwealth.” Having been thrown into exile, however, he founded the colony of Rhode Island, in which he became a great social and political leader, and out of his genius for organization came a peaceful, ordered community which was a model for other colonies. Many generations of American school children have cherished this tale.

The truth, uncovered by such industrious Puritan experts as Professor Perry Miller, is quite different. Actually, Williams went to Massachusetts Bay because he had a “call” to it at the time of its founding when there was a shortage of ministers. He was happy to accept, as he belonged to the Puritan band who were being persecuted by Archbishop Laud of the Anglican Church. When he arrived in Boston, however, he was anything but liberal in his views. Almost immediately he accused the Boston church of not being sufficiently separatist and refused its pastorship on the ground that it still clung to the pretense of being a “purified” part of the Church of England.

This was Roger Williams’ first offense in the sequence of his difficult behavior. His second was to maintain that the civil government had no right to enforce the first four commandments, all of which were strictly religious injunctions and therefore wholly under the jurisdiction of the church. In other words, he advocated the separation of Church and State. As the whole basis of the Massachusetts Bay Colony was an identification of Church and State, this seemed like blasphemy and treason.

What power was left to the magistrates if they could no longer punish the heinous sins of sabbath-breaking, profanity, and the worship of false gods? What would happen to a community in which such criminal conduct could be punished only by excommunication? Would not the pure and holy commonwealth soon be crawling with papists, Jews, Quakers, and heathen?

But on the heels of this subversion came