Introduction
Roger Williams has become for many Americans almost a
legendary figure--a symbol of the struggle for religious liberty. On the other hand, the Puritan establishment
in Massachusetts that expelled him is generally considered to exemplify the
faults that conventional wisdom says necessarily accompany too close of a
partnership between church and state.
The titles of the most prominent works that arose out of that
controversy are well known in Christian circles today, and
many of Williams' arguments are still used to support both religious toleration
and separation of church and state.
Although the political and religious climate is not likely to allow an
established religion or church in America any time soon, the controversy over
the place of religion in politics continues.
As a key contributor to the debate, Williams deserves careful
study. In order to understand and
evaluate his work, it is necessary to also consider his chief opponent, John
Cotton. A careful examination of their
argument reveals that the central issue between them was whether the state
should favor any one religion or system of belief.
Historical Background
Williams' controversy with the Massachusetts Bay Colony at
first centered on the issue of Separatism.
He refused to accept the call of the Boston Church to be its teacher on
the grounds that the church recognized the Church of England as a true church. During the course of this controversy, he
also argued that the authority of the civil government did not extend to
matters of religion, i.e. the first four of the Ten Commandments. The Salem Church intended to call Williams as
an assistant to its ailing minister, but was dissuaded by a remonstrance from
the government of the colony. After a stay in Plymouth, Williams returned
to serve the Salem church in an unofficial capacity. During that time, conflict with the
government of the colony came to a head.
Williams vehemently denied the validity of the colonial charter, because
he did not believe the king had the right to grant lands in North America. He also argued that it was unlawful to call
on unregenerate people to take an oath, which frustrated the government's
attempt to require an oath of loyalty of citizens in a time of public danger
from the mother country.
The civil government was ready to take action against
Williams, but some of the ministers asked the magistrates to wait until the
ministers had tried to persuade Williams. While the ministers were talking with
Williams, the pastor of the Salem Church died, and Williams was elected to take
his place. The magistrates viewed his
election as a contempt of their authority, and they admonished the Salem Church
for it. When the town of Salem later requested a
grant of land from the government, the government refused to consider it
because of the election of Williams. The Salem Church wrote the other churches in
the colony, protesting the government's action and asking for the
excommunication of the magistrates. The
Boston Church and the Assembly responded sternly to this move, and the Salem
Church expressed contrition and a desire to resolve the government's grievances. At this point, Williams demanded that the
Salem Church withdraw its fellowship from the other churches of the colony. When they refused, Williams resigned his
position as teacher and withdrew from the Salem Church.
With Williams' renunciation of the churches, there was
nothing further that the churches could do to delay his prosecution. There was a public trial and debate, and
Williams refused to change his position.
He was then banished from the colony.
The court argued that this was a punishment for purely civil offenses,
not for religious offenses. Williams disagreed, and portrayed the events
as persecution for conscience' sake.
Rightly or wrongly, his narrative has come to be the generally accepted
one.
Ironically, Williams also put the colony and its ministers,
preeminently John Cotton, in a position of having to defend the principle that
the government has authority to legislate and impose penalties in religious
matters. Cotton and most other
Congregationalists stressed religious unity in the faith and held that it was
right for the state to protect and promote the church's purity. This put them at odds both with
anti-establishment people such as Williams and with the Presbyterians in
England, who wanted not merely unity but state-enforced uniformity.
The Argument
The central disagreement over the state's neutrality in
religion and belief drove Williams on the one hand to condemn all involvement
of the state in religious matters (especially when it involved coercion) and
drove Cotton on the other hand to insist on the involvement of the state in
religious matters (which sometimes required coercion). Williams' first major work in the debate with
John Cotton started with a question that Cotton had answered in a private
letter to a prisoner at Newgate. This
letter was later published without Cotton's permission, and
Williams used it as the starting point for his argument against religious
coercion by the state. The question the
prisoner had asked was "whether persecution for cause of conscience be not
against the doctrine of Jesus Christ, the King of kings." Cotton's answer was that persecution for
conscience' sake was wrong, but that if someone persisted in an error "in
fundamental and principal points of doctrine or worship" after being
admonished twice, the erring person was not acting out of conscience but
sinning against conscience. In such a case, Cotton believed the guilty
person deserved to be punished. He also
said that someone might be punished for maintaining even a lesser error
"with a boisterous and arrogant spirit, to the disturbance of civil peace." Williams' point-by-point refutation of Cotton's
letter led to a full-blown debate on the proper position of the state relating
to matters of religion.
The State's competence to Judge in matters of faith
In response to Williams' argument that the authority of civil
government only extended to the second table of the Ten Commandments, Cotton
argued that God would not leave civil government without guidance as to its
duties. Since the role of government is to reward
good and punish evil, and
since the New Testament does not specify what good and evil it is to concern
itself with, Cotton held that the precedent of Old Testament Israel is still
binding. Williams tried to make a
complete dichotomy between civil affairs and religious affairs, but Cotton
represented the legislation and discipline of the state and the church as
distinct yet overlapping. The same person might be subject to the
punishment of both church and state for
different offenses, or he might be subject to the punishment of one but not the
other. Certain offenses--namely
blasphemy, heresy, and idolatry--were
of themselves offenses that could be punished both by the church and by the
state if they were committed by church members. These were capital offenses. Blasphemy was
also a civil offense for non-Christians outside the church, and so was seducing
professing Christians into heresy or idolatry.
As to the character or faith of the magistrates, even here
Cotton and Williams disagreed. Cotton
held that even a pagan ruler might legitimately intervene in some religious
matters. For example, based on the words
of Paul and his accusers in Acts 25, he rejected Williams' claim that Paul was
on trial before the Roman authorities in Judea only for civil offenses, and not
for religious offenses. Since Paul's life was in jeopardy and he
could not gain a fair trial in a religious court, he appealed to the secular
court, even to Caesar himself. However,
in a state that was designed to promote Christianity, the voters and the
magistrates would be Christians and church members. In Cotton's view, this was civil government
that was fulfilling its calling.
Williams believed that the government derived its power from the
governed,
and that therefore both voting and civil office should be open to
non-Christians. This would make any
attempt at Christian government, which he thought was futile anyway,
impossible.
The final objection Williams had to the secular authorities'
competence to judge religious matters was the great likelihood of making a
mistake in religious cases. History had shown governments taking widely
different views on religious belief and practice, accompanied by efforts to
impose first one and then another form of religion on the people. Rather than risk persecuting someone for
disobeying a bad law, why not just keep the government out of religion
altogether? Cotton, however, though he
believed in the fallibility of man's judgment, also believed in the perspicuity
of Scripture. He held that the government had both a clear
standard and a Scriptural mandate for religious legislation. Governments would commit sins and make
mistakes in many areas, including matters of faith and worship, but that did
not automatically absolve them of the responsibility they had to reward the
good and punish the evil.
The importance of religious questions
In theory, Williams and Cotton agreed on the ultimate
importance of fundamental religious beliefs.
The eternal destiny of man depends on being right about these
doctrines. However, the conclusions that
Williams and Cotton drew from that premise were radically different. Williams held that only spiritual
instruments--preaching, admonition and, if appropriate, church
discipline--should be used to prevent spiritual danger. This was because encouragement or
discouragement from the state could have no positive effect on a person's
spiritual state. The only kind of people
that state-sponsored religious uniformity could produce were hypocrites. Cotton replied that first, the punishment of
religious offenses in the state was not so much to reclaim the offender as to
deter others, and secondly, that there was indeed a lesser kind of spiritual
life that the unregenerate had and could lose. He held that for a state to willingly expose
its subjects to pernicious influences was to sin against the gospel.
Further, Williams denied that the state need fear temporal
punishment for tolerating false religion.
He saw no connection between the temporal fortunes of nations and their
religious and moral character. He pointed to examples of flourishing anti-Christian
states and to misfortunes suffered by the best states. True, God might punish nations for religious
sins, but it would be a spiritual punishment of the people's souls, not a
temporal punishment in their bodies and estates. Cotton replied that once the church was set
up in a nation, the peace of the state depended on the state's care for the
churches. He also believed that the risk of violence
from dissenters was worth a right religious policy in the state. Though sometimes a state might legitimately
be forced to grant religious toleration in essentials, this was no different
from its being forced by circumstances to permit certain people guilty of civil
crimes such as murder to
remain unpunished.
As to the health and survival of the church, Williams held
that the survival of the church was of no more concern to the state than that
of any non-religious association (a business corporation, for example). Cotton denied the prudence of both a laissez
faire approach to corporations in general and to the church in particular,
since it is that society for which the world itself exists.
One popular argument that Williams made for religious
toleration was that the persecutors of today frequently become the persecuted
of tomorrow. Cotton acknowledged that true Christianity
has its ups and downs, yet his answer was to trust in God and obey Him, which
Cotton believed included establishing Christianity by law when in a position to
do so.
Conclusion
The controversy between Williams and Cotton displays
Williams' main concerns. This overview
of the controversy allows a more detailed assessment of Williams' influence and
significance. Williams would no doubt
have approved of the Establishment Clause of the Constitution, as well as of
the prohibition of a religious test for office.
Outlawing a religious establishment, however, has not removed religion
from the sphere of politics. While
religious affiliation may not prove a legal advantage or disadvantage to
holding public office, it can make a huge difference in how many votes someone
gets. Also, the influence of religious
belief on moral and policy choices is prominent in the discussion of various
issues, especially in social issues.
Although most agree in theory that the government should not establish a
religion or interfere with the exercise of religion, in practice, there is
bitter debate over what influence religious groups should have on government
and on what power government should have over religious groups. There is also in serious Christian circles a
general rejection of the idea that God does not visit temporal punishment on
nations for their sins, though people are often cautious about attributing
specific disasters to Divine wrath for particular sins.
Perhaps the area of application in this debate that is most
immediately applicable is actually the area of human rights. The principles of freedom of religion,
freedom of speech, and freedom of the press have been enshrined in civil law in
the West, while they are frequently denied in practice if not in principle
elsewhere. The question that faces us
today is whether Williams' program should be our program. Put another way, when defending civil rights
at home or fighting for them elsewhere, is promoting Western values equivalent
to promoting Christian values? Williams
would say yes, perhaps with some exceptions (abortion and government promotion
of homosexuality were probably not issues in Williams' context). John Cotton and a long succession of
Christians from Augustine to the Reformers to the Puritans would say no. They would have us desire a Christian
government. Williams would want a
secular state.
