The Flag and the Cross: White Christian Nationalism and the Threat to American Democracy

by Philip S. Gorski

Williams’s views differed from Mather’s in at least three key respects. First, he drew a sharp line between Christianity and morality: the one did not imply the other. In his observation, the morality of the natives was often superior to that of the Puritans. Second, he drew a sharp line between religious and civil authority, much sharper even than the Puritans, not because he worried about the church corrupting the state but rather the reverse. Third, because he believed that freedom of conscience was absolute, and that it implied freedom of expression. He rejected the collective authority of the Puritan clergy and, even more, their efforts to silence dissent. In sum, Williams believed that people of the most varied backgrounds could still form a civil society together, so long as they separated religion and morality and church and state and did not force anyone’s conscience or silence anyone’s speech. This he called “meer civility.”11 Sadly, the path of “meer civility” was the road less traveled in Williams’s day. Killing and converting would become the dominant poles of “Indian policy” in the centuries that followed.