Political Philosophy and Ethics discussion
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Roger Williams (ca. 1603-1683) and Seventeenth-Century Rhode Island Government
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The radical democrat, Arthur Robbins, whose book Paradise Lost, Paradise Regained I mentioned in the Plato thread discussion of The Apology, gives a very complimentary short description of R..."
Massachusetts revoked its sentence of banishment against Roger Williams in 1936. Some political leaders had tried to do so earlier but had been thwarted by "the reverend historians of the theocracy" (the descriptive phrase used by Brooks Adams, the great-grandson of John Adams, in his book The Emancipation of Massachusetts). By 1936, the state was probably dominated by Roman Catholics, who would have been considered heretics subject to execution in seventeenth-century Massachusetts Bay. The Catholics certainly didn't mind sticking it to the old-time Puritans.
Vernon Parrington and his protégé James Ernst promoted a view of Roger Williams as a secular Enlightenment figure. I discuss Ernst, who wrote extensively about Roger Williams, in my book. Although Ernst made some important contributions to scholarship about Williams, he, like Parrington, operated on the premise that Williams's "theory of religious liberty came . . . out of his unique theory of the individual and the state" rather than vice versa. James E. Ernst, The Political Thought of Roger Williams (Seattle: University of Washington Press, 1929), 25. This is not really accurate. Parrington's and Ernst's view of Roger Williams was ridiculed by later twentieth-century historians, who claimed that Williams was motivated solely by religious concerns and, in the notion of renowned New England historian Perry Miller, by his specific theological doctrine of typology. The truth is much more nuanced than either of these interpretations. As I demonstrate in my book, with reference to Williams's own written statements, Williams advanced both secular and religious arguments for freedom of conscience and separation of church and state. It must be remembered that it was impossible for a seventeenth-century American or English writer to ignore religion in his publications. Even Hobbes and Locke had extended theological arguments. But Williams argued, as he explicitly stated, "from Religion, Reason, Experience . . . ."
Williams was probably not a "democrat" in our sense of the terms, as he limited the franchise to certain selected "freemen," at least at the beginning of his town and colony. Nor was he, by any stretch of the imagination, a "freethinker" or a "humanist" (in the meaning of the term as used during recent centuries). He was a devout quasi-Calvinist to the end of his days, albeit a "Seeker" (which was a religious, not a secular, designation). But he believed in complete freedom of conscience (even for atheists and agnostics) and total separation of church and state.
The foregoing is but a brief summary of themes my book addresses in depth.
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Page 8 of the Supplemental Comments also discusses whether President Thomas Jefferson obtained the famous "wall of separation" metaphor in his January 1, 1802 letter to the Danbury Baptists from the visit the same day by John Leland, an explicit follower of Roger Williams. Although my book mentioned this possibility, the Supplemental Comments address an alternative theory, which I discovered after my book was in the publication process, that Jefferson obtained this metaphor from James Burgh's book Crito, published in London in 1767. See Isaac Kramnick and R. Laurence Moore, The Godless Constitution: A Moral Defense of the Secular State (New York: W. W. Norton, 2005), 83. I conclude that there is no historical evidence that Burgh's Crito was in Jefferson's libraries or, indeed, that he had ever read this book.
Page 9 of my Supplemental Comments discusses some additional similarities between the language of Roger Williams and that of John Locke tending to establish that Locke had read, and been influenced by, Williams on the issue of theocracy.
One of the reasons that the endnotes and appendices to The First American Founder: Roger Williams and Freedom of Conscience are so extensive is that Roger Williams has been the victim of historical misrepresentations, deliberate and accidental, for centuries. Moreover, those historical inaccuracies have been committed by both friends and foes of Williams's ideas. Under these circumstances it was necessary for me to return to an intensive study of the primary sources in order to separate fact from fiction. If any scholars or other readers disagree with my analyses, I encourage them to communicate their views to me (in this forum or otherwise) for further discussion.
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Such cultural conflicts still exist in parts of the world. See, for example, a December 1, 2015 article regarding a tribe in the Brazilian Amazon forest.
the conflicts between (Amerindian people) and European settlers generated literal "culture wars" from the seventeenth through the nineteenth centuries.I suppose those culture wars were "won" with rifles, Gatling guns, and the like.
Nowadays, such "wars", fought mostly amongst European successors, generate hurt feelings and outrage but less blood.
Recent exceptions are the ones who play "for keeps". They come mainly from the middle east - even the so-called homegrown ones have recent middle east ancestry (Nichols, McVeigh, and their like excepted yet again).
We call those "warriors" "terrorists".
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We call those "warriors" "terrorists"."
Last week's shootings in Colorado were effected by a terrorist motivated by Christianity, not Islam. An ex-wife of the shooter testified in a former proceeding that the shooter had physically abused her but that he nevertheless insisted he would go to heaven because he believed in Jesus Christ.
The jury is still out regarding today's mass shooting in San Bernardino.
Alan, The following quote is from a history.com entry on Williams:
"His death went mostly unnoticed. It was the American Revolution that transformed Williams into a local hero–Rhode Islanders came to appreciate the legacy of religious freedom he had bequeathed to them. Although he has often been portrayed by biographers as a harbinger of Jeffersonian Democracy, most scholars now conclude that Williams was less a democrat than a “Puritan’s Puritan” who courageously pushed his dissenting ideas to their logical ends.
The Reader’s Companion to American History. Eric Foner and John A. Garraty, Editors."
Who do you suppose are the "most scholars" to whom this item refers? Based on what I have read of your book so far I don't doubt the "Puritan's Puritan" bit. I read your comment in Chapter 9 that "William's statement implicitly recognized that not all adult male Rhode Island residents (not to mention adult female residents) had the right to vote." And your following quote from Wiliams about "the dutie of every man to maintayne Encowrage and strengthen the hand of Authoritie" does not indicate a man of radical democratic views. What do you think of this History.com clip?
I haven't gotten very far in your book (read ahead to Chapter 9). I am planning a trip to Plymouth Rock and my goal is to finish your book by the time I get there. I may have to take a few months off along the way to do so, however!
Cheers,
Randal
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The following quote is from a history.com entry on Williams:
"His death went mostly unnoticed. It was the American Revolution that transformed Williams into a local hero–Rhode Islanders c..."
Very few historians have bothered to engage with the primary sources regarding Roger Williams. This explains why many secondary accounts are so superficial.
It is true, as I point out in my book, that Roger Williams was not a radical democrat. Like virtually everyone in his age (including the Levellers, per C. B. Macpherson), he assumed that the electoral franchise should be limited in some way. The franchise was not, of course, extended to women, and not all males had the right to vote. See Chapter 3 and Appendix C of my book, which discuss these matters in depth. After the initial founding of Providence, however, Williams supported an extension of the franchise and land grants to a larger democratic field than what most of the other early settlers of Providence were willing to consider. It may be, as argued by James Ernst and others, that Williams eventually supported the extension of the franchise and land grants to virtually all adult males, but this is unclear. Unfortunately, some records and correspondence were lost, partly in the 1676 King Phillip's War and partly by natural disasters as well as other factors. Many documents remained, however, and from these documents we can reconstruct a reasonable, empirical account of most of the major historical developments. And several volumes of Williams's writings have survived, though some of his correspondence and unpublished writings were lost.
"[M]ost scholars" probably refers to the mid-twentieth-century historicist consensus by such famous historians as Perry Miller (who was outstanding in many other ways) that poor Roger Williams was a man of his time, hopelessly confined by his religious views, who hardly had any impact on later developments. I disagree with this view, but you will have to consult my endnotes for the details and documentation of my analysis.
My entire book is, in a sense, a response to the various historical consensuses of previous centuries, but, again, the scholarly details and corroboration are in the endnotes and appendices. I tried to keep the main text of the book accessible to the general reader, though it is populated by a huge number of endnote references.
It is certainly not accurate to suggest that Roger Williams was merely a Rhode Island local hero, though sometime colonial Rhode Island Governor Stephen Hopkins did publish laudatory historical information about Williams as early as 1762 in the Providence Gazette (see The First American Founder: Roger Williams and Freedom of Conscience, page 253). Williams had a very significant influence, for example, on Baptist preachers (who at that time believed in separation of church and state) of the Revolutionary War and early national periods. The most famous of these Baptists were Isaac Backus and John Leland, who never lived in Rhode Island. As discussed in my book (see also my Errata and Supplemental Comments at page 8), it is quite possible that Leland supplied President Thomas Jefferson with the "wall of separation" metaphor used by Roger Williams in 1644 on the very same day that Jefferson wrote his famous letter to the Danbury Baptists employing this figure of speech. Chapter 9 of my book elaborates many details about Williams's influence during this era of American history.
Basically, the historians of previous centuries have tried to disparage or otherwise belittle Roger Williams for various reasons. In contrast, I believe my book is the definitive account of the life, writings, and times of Roger Williams as well as of his influence on later generations. It took me almost three years to research and write it. As I researched the book, I gradually realized that I would have to clear away the unhistorical rubbish of many preceding generations of historians and theologians in order to present an accurate account of Williams. I demonstrate, among many other things, that Williams's views extended, as he said, from reason and experience, as well as from religion.
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I thought I would add the following regarding your reference in post 59, above, to the quotation from Roger Williams about "the dutie of every man to maintayne Encowrage and strengthen the hand of Authoritie" (quoted on page 248 of The First American Founder: Roger Williams and Freedom of Conscience). This statement needs to be taken in context. As discussed on page 248, the immediate context was the need for taxation. The overall context is explained elsewhere in Chapter 10 and in the book generally. Robert Williams (Roger's brother), William Harris, and others advocated what might be termed "Christian anarchism." See especially The First American Founder, 221-30. This was a view, both in England and in New England, that the return of Christ was imminent and that, accordingly, no government, taxation, and so forth were valid because all were equal in Christ and the End Times would occur very soon. (Such Christian millennialism also took in England another form, that of the theocratic Fifth Monarchist movement.) Although Williams pondered over the meaning of the book of Revelation in the Christian Bible many times throughout his life, he thought that dogmatic interpretations of that alleged prophecy were unjustified and dangerous. Whatever may have been the case regarding Roger Williams's brother Robert, Roger Williams observed (as discussed in the book) that William Harris's anarchism was merely an excuse for Harris to claim land belonging to the Native Americans. It was only the government and law of the Town of Providence and the Rhode Island colony that stopped Harris from taking over much of Rhode Island. Harris may have been the original anarchocapitalist. But, as Williams also observed, Harris changed his tune during the times his faction had control of the Providence and Rhode Island governments. His political theory was simply opportunistic.
Alan
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Additionally, three publications have appointed independent reviewers to read and review my book: (1) The Federal Lawyer (which goes out to federal judges and many federal court legal practitioners), which is the publication of the Federal Bar Association; (2) Interpretation: A Journal of Political Philosophy; and (3) The Independent Scholar, the journal of the National Coalition of Independent Scholars (NCIS) (this review will be posted online before its appearance in the volume 3 (2017) of the journal). I will link to the online publications of these reviews as they become available.
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For additional details, see the "event" description here on my Goodreads profile.
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I was interviewed about this article and about my book The First American Founder: Roger Williams and Freedom of Conscience on Monday, February 29, 2016 on radio station WADK in Newport, Rhode Island. There is no permanent record of this interview.
(Edited 3/2/2016)
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8/5/2017 Note: This review was also published in the NCIS journal, The Independent Scholar 3, No. 3 (June 2017): 61, which can be located here.
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"During the nineteenth, twentieth, and early twenty-first centuries, certain politically active religious movements sought to have the United States declared—officially, if possible, but at least unofficially—a 'Christian nation.' This was an attempt to reverse the church-state separation principles and achievements of such great Founders as Thomas Jefferson and James Madison. Roger Williams, who was more religiously devout than just about anyone living in later centuries, opposed all attempts to call a particular nation 'Christian,' just as he opposed the terms 'Christendom' and 'Christian world.' His arguments included a profound analysis of the importance of separation of church and state as well as a deep religious understanding of what Christianity is."
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Ezra Stiles (1727-95) was a famous member of the eighteenth-century Founding generation. He interacted with such luminaries as Benjamin Franklin, James Manning, Isaac Backus, Stephen Hopkins, and Samuel Ward, among others. He was president of Yale University from 1778 to 1795. Stiles knew about Roger Williams and visited his gravesite on April 30, 1772. His diary entry for that date states:
"30. Rode to Providence [Rhode Island]: visited the Grave of the famous Mr. Roger Williams (once Pastor of Salem [Massachusetts])—there is no inscribed stone or Monument at the Grave. He was buried about ten rods back from the Spring in the main street called Williams's Spring to this day; nigh to which I saw the spot where his House stood. His Grave is on the side of the hill in the lot adjoyning the 14 acre Lot lately purchased by the Congregational Church for a parsonage: it is I should judge 20 or 25 Rods South East from the Church of England."
The Literary Diary of Ezra Stiles, D.D., LL.D., ed. Franklin Bowditch Dexter, 3 vols. (New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1901), 1:230.
Stiles again visited the Roger Williams gravesite on October 6, 1785. Ibid., 3:190.
Although Stiles was familiar with Roger Williams's history, he was not sympathetic to the principles of church-state separation and freedom of conscience espoused by Williams, Backus, Manning, Hopkins, and others. "Stiles was upset and aggravated by the controversy over the founding of a Baptist college in Rhode Island, and by the continuing efforts of Baptists to end the state church in New England, especially Manning's part in an effort to persuade the Continental Congress to stop the persecution of Baptists in Massachusetts." J. Stanley Lemons, "James Manning and His Revolutionary Church," Rhode Island History 73, no. 2 (Summer/Fall 2015): 74. For additional details, see ibid., 74-81.
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The review is very well written and brings out several important aspects of the book. Although the reviewer proved herself to be quite capable of understanding and discussing the more scholarly and lawyerly aspects of the book, she seemed to yearn for a somewhat more popular presentation. That’s fine; there have been many popular books on Roger Williams, most of which have been not quite historically accurate. All in all, her review highlights many important points that I wished to get across to the reader.
The reviewer (whom I do not know) is Neysa M. Slater-Chandler, a native Rhode Islander who is a US government attorney; a graduate of the US Naval Academy, Defense Intelligence College, and Catholic University of America Columbus School of Law; and a Ph.D. student at Virginia Tech's Center for Public Administration and Policy. She is past chair of the FBA's Federal Career Service Division and past vice chair of its Sections and Divisions.
6/12/2016 Addendum: The review in The Federal Lawyer is no longer available to the general public. Members of the Federal Bar Association can access it here (click the "Book Review" section in the right-hand column near the bottom of the webpage).
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“Williams held the novel view that the religious and civil worlds should be completely separate, and that everyone is entitled to freedom of conscience. This view may not seem remarkable in the early twenty-first century, but it is still a view not shared by all, even in the United States, as one can see in the debate over whether marriage is a civil or a religious right, in the backlash against mosques in some neighborhoods, in remaining blue laws that prohibit retail establishments from operating on Sundays, and so on. . . . It is Johnson’s assembly of Williams’s writings on the subject and the presentation of them which make his book so important and a highly recommended read.” John B. Tieder, Jr., in Interpretation: A Journal of Political Philosophy 42, no. 3 (Spring 2016): 559.
Although no separate URL for this review exists, the entire Spring 2016 issue of Interpretation can be accessed and downloaded here. The review is the penultimate item in this issue (pp. 557-62).
I shall not comment on the review, which was mostly favorable, except to note that the allegedly missing discussions either were actually in the book (sometimes in the endnotes) or were not broached as a result of the absence of primary-source material. As the review observes, I declined to speculate on matters for which reliable primary-source material does not exist. Thus, my book is a work of history, not of historical fiction. As for the organization of the book, including the separate appendices, I had my reasons, which need not be elaborated here.
This is the third and possibly last formal review of my book. I am not aware of any other reviews in the pipeline.
(Revised May 24, 2016)
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"The Bible will not become the state of Tennessee's official book.
"A measure granting this designation to the Bible passed both chambers of the legislature but was vetoed by Gov. Bill Haslam (R). The bill, H.B. 615, would have made Tennessee the first state in the country to make the Bible an official symbol.
"Lawmakers in the state House of Representatives attempted an override but failed on a 43-50 vote. The bill's sponsor, State Rep. Jerry Sexton (R-Bean Station), lamented the failure but said he and his colleagues had 'made history.'
"'There is so much oppression today of Christian beliefs and values it seems it is not the popular thing to do,' Sexton said. 'I stand today to say that I'm a Christian and I'm proud that I am and I'm proud that I live in a country that I have the freedom to do that.'
"In a letter to House Speaker Beth Harwell (R-Nashville), Haslam explained that he vetoed the bill because it violated both state and federal constitutions and 'trivializes' the Bible."
"AU Bulletin," Church & State 69, no. 6 (June 2016): 22.
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Interestingly, that great advocate of freedom of conscience and separation of church and state Roger Williams (ca. 1603-83), who was himself a devout Christian minister, taught that religious liberty could not invalidate secular laws of general applicability that were not designed to discriminate against any particular religious group. As I have written elsewhere:
"[His] Ship of State letter emphasized Roger Williams's recurring theme that government may neither constrain nor restrain individuals regarding matters of conscience. It can neither compel a person to express or practice a religious viewpoint nor prohibit that person from expressing or practicing a particular spiritual viewpoint. However, common laws regarding nonspiritual concerns cannot be disobeyed on the ground that they violate one's conscientious beliefs. Thus, persons may be compelled to assist in the common defense, and they may be compelled to pay taxes to support government. They are properly subject to common criminal and civil laws and orders promoting their common peace and preservation. In a remark apparently directed at his brother's anarchic or antinomian views, Roger Williams emphatically rejected the doctrine that 'there ought to be no Commanders, nor Officers, because all are equal in CHRIST, therefore no Master, nor Officers, no Laws, no Orders, no Corrections nor Punishments . . . .'
"American constitutional law and jurisprudence would later evolve sophisticated legal doctrines regarding conscientious objection to military service and some other religious exceptions to otherwise universally applicable secular laws. These future developments were unknown to Roger Williams. It is difficult to predict how he would have reacted to them. But in the relatively simple and basic political society in which he found himself, he thought that no individual could properly invoke an exception to common civil duties just because that person had a unique religious perspective. Given the military threats from other colonies against the political society he had founded—threats that he correctly perceived to be directed against liberty of conscience itself—Williams exercised his political prudence to insist that no one escape their duties to the secular common good on the ground of religious belief."
Alan E. Johnson, The First American Founder: Roger Williams and Freedom of Conscience (Pittsburgh: Philosophia Publications, 2015), 224-25.
Not sure this is the right thread, but some crony just muttered something to me under his breath about the 'Irish Slave Trade'.See here:
http://tinyurl.com/c99clr3
What is this, conspiracy-theory stuff? Hokum? This sort of website--and the manner in which the article is written-- doesn't inspire me with confidence.
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The English government (including Cromwell) did treat the Irish horribly during the seventeenth century. They may have sent Irish slaves to the West Indies (I don't know), but I am not aware of any Irish slaves in New England during the seventeenth century. The article that you linked doesn't give any primary-source documentation for this alleged fact. Perhaps the book does, but I won't be reading it anytime soon. If someone does read it, perhaps they can enlighten us as to the authors' primary sources. New England considered Catholicism and the pope to be the Antichrist, and seventeenth-century laws in Massachusetts, for example, provided for the execution of Jesuits if they returned to that colony after being banished on account of their religion.
It has always been my understanding that the Irish immigration to the colonies that later became the United States occurred mainly during the nineteenth century and that such immigration was primarily to backcountry areas west of the originally settled areas of the thirteen colonies. Professor David Hackett Fischer, an eminent professional historian, wrote:
"Few Gaelic-speaking people emigrated from Ireland, Cornwall or Wales to the American colonies before the nineteenth century. Celtic Irish immigrants were excluded by law from some American colonies. A South Carolina statute of 1716 forbade 'what is commonly called native Irish, or persons of known scandalous character or Roman Catholics.'"
Fischer, Albion's Seed: Four British Folkways in America (New York: Oxford University Press, 1989, 620.
With regard to Irish and Scots-Irish immigration to the western backcountry during the nineteenth century, see ibid., 605-51. Some Irish Quakers did immigrate to the Quaker Midlands. Ibid., 429-30, 438-39. However, I have never seen any historical evidence showing that any of these Irish immigrants were slaves.
Thanks a heap! I'll keep an eye out for further leads; but your initial reception echoes my gut feeling about this scrap of oddball info. This acquaintance of mine is very big into poorly-documented historical theories...I am not going to place too much weight on this item until I see some more convincing evidence. Really, just the look of that website was enough to raise my eyebrow. Much obliged...!
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I presented Part 2 of this seminar on October 28, 2016. It was entitled "Separation of Religion and Government from the 1787 U.S. Constitution to the Present." Among many other things, this session discussed the continuing influence of Roger Williams during the eighteenth-century founding of the USA and beyond, including references to Williams in twentieth-century constitutional jurisprudence. The course materials for this session of the seminar can be located here. The portion of the course materials for Part 1 (see post 78) that began with the 1787 Constitution and continued to the present was elaborated in substantially more detail in the course materials for Part 2.
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J. Brent Walker, in "Shoring Up Separation: Americans United Ally Brent Walker Reflects On a Career Defending Religious Liberty," Church and State 69, no. 10 (November 2016): 13-14. Walker is an ordained Baptist minister and an attorney. He has served as executive director of the Baptist Joint Committee for Religious Liberty since 1999 and is retiring from that position at the end of 2016.
Alan ; sitting here with today's Sunday NYT Book Review which includes an article on university presses. (Page 27). Reviewing "Mere Civility;Disagreement and the Limits of Toleration, by Teresa Bejan, the reviewer points out the unique approach to toleration by Roger Williams, whose conception of "mere civility " was based on mutual contempt rather than mutual respect. Bejan compares Williams approach which she describes as one that tried to "keep the conversation going" as opposed to the attempts by Hobbes and Locke to suppress or exclude feelings of intolerance. I'm not doing the review justice but am putting this book on my to read list to continue by exploration and understanding of Williams and the concept of religious and general toleration overall. Not a bad way to address the current trend towards intolerance or suppression.
Charles wrote: "Alan ; sitting here with today's Sunday NYT Book Review which includes an article on university presses. (Page 27). Reviewing "Mere Civility;Disagreement and the Limits of Toleration, by Teresa Bej..."Me too. Dying to hear what Alan thinks of this!
Cheers,
Randal
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Thanks, Charles. Although I subscribe to the digital version of the NYT, I do not subscribe to the paper edition. I'm not finding the review online (see Book Reviews here). Perhaps it will be published online later. Who is the reviewer?
I have been in email communication with Teresa Bejan since 2013 about Roger Williams and related issues. (I was referred to her by a professor at the University of Cambridge.) Bejan has a copy of my book on Roger Williams. I read her Ph.D. dissertation, from which her book Mere Civility is derived. I have also read some of her other writings. I see that this book was published on January 2, 2017. I will obtain the Kindle version when it is available (probably within the next couple of weeks).
I will reserve comments, if any, of my own until I have read Mere Civility. Based on Bejan's earlier writings, I understand that she has a somewhat different perspective, relevant to current academic issues about civility, with regard to Roger Williams. I tend to agree with Bejan on that issue, though the reviewer's apparent language "mutual contempt" in connection with Williams is, I think, a bit strong. But I have not read Bejan's Mere Civility or any draft (other than her Ph.D. dissertation) of it and thus will not discuss the book until I have carefully read it.
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I discuss one of Teresa Bejan's earlier writings on page 367 of my The First American Founder: Roger Williams and Freedom of Conscience:
"Locke scholar Richard Ashcraft also points to Locke’s manuscript notes that apparently summarize a sermon by an unnamed Nonconformist minister on January 20, 1667. These notes reflect an argument for toleration based on the liberty of action that a Christian must have in order to witness to the Christian faith in society.113 Professor Teresa Bejan has stressed the importance of this theme for Roger Williams.114 One wonders whether the minister whom Locke heard had been influenced, directly or indirectly, by Williams."
Endnotes (page 565):
"113 Ashcraft, Revolutionary Politics, 92-94. The notes are dated January 20, 1666, but Locke normally used the Old Style (the new year not starting until March), and January 20 1666/ 67 was a Sunday. Ibid., 92-93n76. If, however, the date was, in fact, January 20, 1665/ 66, Locke was in Cleves when the notes were written. Ibid. Locke described in his contemporaneous letters his church visits while in Cleves, but there is no mention in the extant correspondence of any such sermon.
"114 Bejan, “'When the Word of the Lord Runs Freely,’” in The Lively Experiment, ed. Beneke and Grenda, chap. 4."
I also cite this book chapter by Bejan at another location in my book.
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I also cited Teresa Bejan in the following two other discussions in my book on Roger Williams. (Note: Goodreads apparently does not permit endnote reference superscripts or block quotations; all italics, spelling, and grammar in quotations are as in the original.)
(1)
"Additionally, Williams stated that it should not be 'a crime, humbly and peaceably to question even Lawes and Statutes, or what ever is even publickly taught and delivered.'65"
"65 RW [Roger Williams], “To the several Respective General Courts,” in BTYMB [The Bloody Tenant Yet More Bloody], unpaged front matter (CWRW, 4: 30). Cf. Teresa M. Bejan, “' When the Word of the Lord Runs Freely,’” in The Lively Experiment: Religious Toleration in America from Roger Williams to the Present, ed. Chris Beneke and Christopher S. Grenda (Lanham, MD: Rowman and Littlefield, 2015), Kindle ed., chap. 4."
Johnson, First American Founder, 149, 452n65.
(2)
"Modern accounts of Roger Williams have often fallen into one of two opposing types of errors. Some writers have taken what historians call an anachronistic or presentist approach by treating Williams as a secular rationalist of the Enlightenment or post-Enlightenment periods. This procedure requires a knowing or unknowing suppression of much of Williams’s version of Calvinism, including his adherence to many theological doctrines that are no longer accepted even by most religious people.4 The other type of error is the opposite of anachronism and presentism: treating Williams as solely a creature of his Puritan time and place with little or nothing to say to later generations. The latter error is an example of what is called historicism. [Endnote omitted.]"
"4 See, for example, James Ernst’s doctoral dissertation, The Political Thought of Roger Williams, published in 1929, which cherry-picked quotations from Roger Williams (often out of context) in support of an argument that Williams’s 'theory of religious liberty came . . . out of his unique theory of the individual and the state' rather than vice versa. Ibid., 25. No reading of Williams’s writings in their own context supports such a thesis.
"More recently, Martha Nussbaum, in her 2008 book Liberty of Conscience, presents Roger Williams as a modern-day liberal concerned about 'mutual respect with people whom one believes to be in error.' Ibid., 36. But although Williams taught that government should not discriminate against any religious view and although he himself sometimes exhibited a certain degree of personal respect for individuals of other religious persuasions (including Native Americans), he could also manifest typical seventeenth-century vituperation toward those Christians whose theology he regarded as fundamentally wrong, as is evidenced by his last major published work, George Fox Digg’d out of his Burrowes (discussed in Chapter 8 of the present book). Nussbaum also states: 'Williams . . . nowhere alludes to [his religious] beliefs in arguing for liberty of conscience—nor should he, since it is his considered position that political principles should not be based on sectarian religious views of any sort. It seems to me to be an advantage in a reconstruction of Williams’s thought if it can show him to be consistent with his own principles, and this is easy to do, since Williams does not in fact use his own religious views as premises in his philosophical arguments.' Liberty of Conscience , 43. This ignores Williams’s long, often tedious arguments from scripture in, for example, The Bloudy Tenent and The Bloody Tenent Yet More Bloody in support of liberty of conscience and separation of church and state. As explained in the present book, Williams also had strong secular arguments for freedom of conscience and church-state separation. Perhaps he used religious arguments as a rhetorical device to persuade his Puritan contemporaries, though this would be a highly speculative and questionable conclusion given his deep religiosity. But to disregard totally his religious arguments is to make him a twenty-first-century man, which he was not. Cf. Bejan, “'When the Word of the Lord Runs Freely,’” in The Lively Experiment, ed. Beneke and Grenda, chap. 4; Bejan, Mere Civility: Tolerating Disagreement in Early Modern England and America, forthcoming."
Johnson, First American Founder, 377, 567-68n4.
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Although the article necessarily simplifies Roger Williams's writings and historical actions, it is mostly accurate. For additional details, see Alan E. Johnson, The First American Founder: Roger Williams and Freedom of Conscience. The last paragraph of the article states that there is no evidence that Thomas Jefferson knew that Williams used the "wall of separation" metaphor in the preceding century. Although it is true that there is no direct evidence, there is some rather strong circumstantial evidence to support that conclusion. See First American Founder, 300; cf. my Supplemental Comments at pages 8-9.
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In the above-referenced posts, Charles and Randal mentioned a NYT Book Review (which I cannot access) of Teresa Bejan's recently published book Mere Civility: Disagreement and the Limits of Toleration. I have now read Bejan's book. I am not going to review the book formally, whether on Goodreads, Amazon, or anywhere else. The present comment is, accordingly, meant for the readers of this topic and not for a wider audience.
Bejan's purpose in writing Mere Civility was different from mine in writing The First American Founder: Roger Williams and Freedom of Conscience. Bejan is interested in exploring the concept of "civility" from both a historical and philosophical perspective. Ultimately, she is trying to refute the contemporary academic arguments for some limitations on freedom of speech, especially on campus, in the name of civility. I sympathize with her objective and generally (though not entirely) agree with her treatment of this issue in her discussions of Roger Williams, Thomas Hobbes, and John Locke. I have not read the contemporary academic writings on this subject. Accordingly, I will not comment on them except to say that Bejan's understanding of them is consistent with the few second-hand accounts that I have read elsewhere.
In contrast, my purpose in writing The First American Founder had nothing to do with the concept of civility as such, though I did point out a few passages in Williams's writings that are relevant to that subject. My book also criticized Martha Nussbaum's Liberty of Conscience on much the same grounds that Bejan criticized her. Bejan and I had communicated about Nussbaum before either of our books were published, and she had made similar remarks in one or more articles that she had already published. As noted in posts 85-86, above, I cited Bejan on this and other matters in my book.
Chapter 2 of Mere Civility addresses Roger Williams. I agree with much of what Bejan says about Williams's view of the interaction between civility and toleration. However, to the extent, if any, that she presents Williams as being mainly focused on the concept of civility and the related question of evangelism, I think this is a bit of a stretch. Williams's commitment to liberty of conscience was not limited to attempts to convert people. In fact, given his belief in predestination, he did not have an overwhelming interest in evangelization, as evidenced by his interactions with Native Americans. I can't begin to explain the entire basis of Williams's concepts of freedom of conscience and separation of church and state here; interested readers can find such explication in my book. But Bejan is correct that Williams had a concept of "mere civility" as understood in the seventeenth-century meaning of such terminology. Williams believed in absolute liberty of conscience and church-state separation, and he opposed any legal impediment to freedom of speech and thought. Although he had an ethical concern about people being too opinionated and aggressive in their speech (see the first epigraph to my book), he never supported any law to govern such "persecution of the tongue," even in the context of the vitriolic cauldron of seventeenth-century religious and political speech and writing. In short, Williams—like Bejan later—was not an advocate—as are some contemporary academics and Europeans—of what Bejan calls "legislating civility."
As befits her topic and the manner she has chosen to present same, Bejan does not go into much depth regarding the purely historical facts of Williams's biography. Her book is about civility, not the details of Williams's life, work, and influence. Unfortunately, the result is that some of her factual statements about Williams are inaccurate. She does not cite any source for many of her historical allegations, and she seems to rely mostly on secondary authorities (themselves incorrect) regarding others. To elaborate on this adequately, I would have to repeat a large amount of material and citations from my own book on Roger Williams. If you are interested in pursuing this further, I would suggest comparing Chapter 2 of Bejan's book with Chapters 1-8 of mine, including all corroborating notes in each book. (I'm not sure whether the hardcover edition of Bejan's book has footnotes or endnotes, since I only have the Kindle edition, and the "Look Inside" feature on Amazon is only for her Kindle edition and not the hardcover edition.)
Bejan's Mere Civility does cite my book, among others, on one occasion: see note 2 to her Chapter 2 (Kindle loc. 4606-7). The subject of that note is 'the relationship between Williams and Jefferson and the 'wall of separation' in his 1802 'Letter to the Danbury Baptists' . . . ." Ibid., Kindle loc. 4602-3.
Apart from Roger Williams, Bejan's discussion of the historical evolution and philosophical meaning of "civility" is, as far as I know (I'm not an expert on this subject), very good. She might also be correct that one of the ways Williams used the term "civility" was the modern sense, though I think that his primary use of the term was to distinguish between "civil" matters (those, not including religion, that are properly within the state's jurisdiction) and private matters (including religion). But I was not focused on Williams's precise meaning of the term "civility" when I wrote my book, and I would have to restudy Williams to ascertain my exact position on this. I did, however, state the following:
"These thoughts about the nature of civil society led Williams to a profound understanding of the concept of civility:
"'And notwithstanding these spiritual oppositions in point of Worship and Religion, yet heare we not the least noyse (nor need we, if Men keep but the Bond of Civility) of any Civil breach, or breach of Civill peace amongst them: and to persecute Gods people there for Religion, that only was a breach of Civilitie itself.'75" [citing Williams's Bloudy Tenent, 26 (Complete Writings of Roger Williams, 3:74) (italics, spelling, etc. as in the original)].
The First American Founder, 151 (Kindle loc. 2638-42).
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Alan E. Johnson
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Harrington states that Williams "first stuns his readers by noting that the Narragansetts’ language and customs (anointing with oil, giving of dowries, etc.) echo those of the ancient Israelites and Greeks, suggesting the nomadic movement of tribes centuries before science would do the same." Actually, Williams noted the similarities between the Narragansetts and the ancient Jews in such practices. He added that "I have found a greater Affinity of their Language with the Greek tongue." Williams prefaced this discussion with the statement that "I shall present (not mine opinion, but) my Observations to the judgement of the Wise." Williams did not here speculate on whether either the ancient Jews or the ancient Greeks were the ancestors of the Narragansetts. Instead, he said "I dare not conjecture in these Uncertainties . . . ." (Williams, "To the Reader" in A Key into the Language of America . . . [London, 1643]; repr., The Complete Writings of Roger Williams, 7 vols., ed. Reuben Aldridge Guild et al. [Paris, AR: Baptist Standard Bearer, 2005], 1:83-85 [italics in the original]).
Williams wrote and published his Key in 1643. Several years earlier, on December 20, 1635 (after he had been sentenced to banishment from the colony of Massachusetts Bay but before he removed to the settlement he founded and named "Providence"), Williams wrote to Thomas Thorowgood, in response to the latter's inquiry, that he suspected, based on certain similarities in their customs and religion, that the Native Americans were descendants of ancient Jews. (Williams to Thorowgood, December 15, 1635, in The Correspondence of Roger Williams, 2 vols., ed. Glenn W. LaFantasie [Hanover, NH: University Press of New England / Brown University Press, 1988], 1:30). Editor LaFantasie observes in a footnote: "As RW gained more knowledge about Indians, largely derived from his firsthand experience with the Narragansetts, he grew more doubtful about their Jewish origins." (Correspondence, 1:30-31n4, citing the above-referenced quotations in the Key as well as a letter from Williams to John Winthrop Jr., ca. February 15, 1654/55, reprinted in Correspondence, 2:429).
In the article linked above, Harrington suggests that Williams was referring to "the nomadic movement of tribes centuries before science would do the same." Although I am generally aware of various scientific theories, based on archeological evidence, about the migration of peoples to North and South America, I am not aware of any scientific evidence that such migrants included Jews. Nor am I aware of any genetic proofs of similarities between Jews and Native Americans. (If anyone is aware of such evidence, please let me know.) However, I do understand that the Church of Latter-Day Saints believes, as a matter of revelation during the nineteenth century to Joseph Smith, that the American Indians are the ten lost tribes of Israel. For a discussion of this alleged revelation, see Zvi Ben-Dor Benite, "Mormon Scripture and the Lost Tribes of Israel," Bible Odyssey, accessed September 7, 2017.
The foregoing discussion has taken me away from ethical and political philosophy to some extent, but it is relevant to understanding the views of Roger Williams, who, as Churchill noted, "was the first political thinker of America . . . ."
For more on Williams's life, political actions, and writings, see my book The First American Founder: Roger Williams and Freedom of Conscience.
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Roger Williams was an astute and careful thinker who, though he apparently at first glance saw some superficial similarities between Native American and Greek and Jewish cultures, was wise enough to abandon the notion when facts at his disposal did not bear it out.
I don't think the article's author intended to imply a migration from the Mediterranean to Early America. Rather, he was saying that Williams' first suggestion that such a migration was even remotely possible indicated Williams' open-mindedness in contrast to his contemporaries.
Semi-related question, tied to the history of the 'original thirteen' US colonies.Is it true that the colonial governments at first embraced a communalist economy, which supposedly failed because of (for convenience's sake) something like the Pareto Principle? In other words, more work was done by 20% of the colonists while 80% of the colonists took advantage, did far less work, and freeloaded? 'Communalistic distribution of goods' as a system of colonial economy was for that reason abandoned?
Thanks...
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Is it true that the colonial governments at first embraced a communalist economy, which supposedly failed because..."
That occurred in the early colony of Plymouth. It was part of the corporate design of the colony. Needless to say, it didn't work. See William Bradford's History of the Plymouth Plantation, 1620-47 for details. I don't think that it was present in the later New England colonies, who had learned from the Plymouth experience, though there was some common usage of land on an old English/European model. Here is an excerpt from pages 335-36 of Appendix C ("Land Distribution and Freemanship in Seventeenth-Century Providence") of my book The First American Founder: Roger Williams and Freedom of Conscience (Pittsburgh: Philosophia, 2015):
"In contrast to Virginia, where land grants were made to individual shareholders or settlers, the New England colonial legislatures generally granted large parcels of land to groups of settlers, known as 'proprietors' or 'commoners.' Each group of proprietors would then found a particular town, initially holding all the land in common and being responsible for laying out the town and providing basic infrastructure (for example, roads, highways, and mills) for it. In current American land use parlance, we would call such a group a 'developer,' though the seventeenth-century version had fewer responsibilities and more rights than present-day developers. The nature of the distribution of the land from the proprietors to individuals would depend on the regions in England from which the settlers originated. When the settlers were accustomed to open-field systems (land held in common by peasant farmers under manorial control) in England, they tended to adopt a similar common-land system in their New England settlements except that only the 'commoners' or proprietors normally had rights to the common land. When, in contrast, the settlers came from regions in England that used closed-field systems, they became individual owners of parcels of land. As one scholar has observed, 'In the long run, it was this latter conception of land— as private commodity rather than public commons— that came to typify New England towns." An endnote here cited Cronon, Changes in the Land, 72-74 (quotation at 74); Eggleston, “Land System of the New England Colonies,” 27, 50-52; Akagi, Town Proprietors, 2-5, 9-13, 18-21, 46-49, 85-92, 103-114. Full citations of these sources are provided elsewhere in the book.
Thanks very much Alan. So it seems the use of land 'slowly evolved away' from this initial system in Plymouth--fair enough. I'm glad to know about it. But--at the same time, there's no mention yet of any kind of political or philosophical rejection of communalism. I feel the answer above very well-tempered. Great!
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Well, William Bradford (the most famous seventeenth-century governor of Plymouth) clearly expressed his disapproval of communalism in his history of Plymouth. As I recall (I mainly studied the Rhode Island situation), the communalism in early Plymouth was dictated by the corporate investors in England with the sole purpose of generating and maximizing the profits of the investors. This was not some idealistic communist/Christian notion but rather a typically hard-headed English profit motivation. Bradford finally convinced the English investors that communalism didn't work; this is one of many disputes he had with the investors, who had not experienced life on the ground in the nascent settlement.
That said, the Plymouth situation originally involved a kind of communism of all property. This was not the situation in the later colonies of Massachusetts Bay and Providence Plantations (Rhode Island). Although some towns initially adopted a common-land system, they were not otherwise communistic.
Under the common-land situation in the newer colonies, the "commoners" who were entitled to use of the common land were anything but "common": they were the elite. In form, it was similar to the peasants who were permitted to farm the common manorial lands in parts of England. In New England practice, however, only the elite had common-land privileges. (My book elaborates on this situation as it developed in Providence, Rhode Island.) The word "commoners" at that time meant those who were entitled to use the common land, and these were not in the peasant class. Of course, there really was no peasant class in America.
First of all, I'm glad Feliks is talking to some Libertarian friends.I have heard about the failed early American attempt at collectivism before from similar friends of mine (although I appreciate hearing more particulars from Alan).
A few years ago I read a short work by Daniel Defoe, Of Captain Mission, where a gang of pirates sets up a limited liability corporation and founds an American colony.
The editor likewise confused the rules of a corporation with a 'communist utopia.'
In much the same manner and at the same time that John Gay was satirizing Walpole's government in The Beggar's Opera, Defoe began to use his pirates as a commentary on the injustice and hypocrisy of contemporary English society. Among Defoe's gallery of pirates are Captain White, who refused to rob from women and children; Captain Bellamy, the proletarian revolutionist; and captain North, whose sense of justice and honesty was a rebuke to the corruption of government under Walpole. But the fictional Captain Misson, the founder of a communist utopia, is by far the most original of these creations.
(I realize this is tangential to the discussion).
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The Roger Williams Family Association consists of the lineal descendants of Roger Williams (ca. 1603-83). Although I am not a descendant of Roger Williams, the Association has made me an honorary member in view of my book on their great ancestor.
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The notice of this lecture originally posted here has been replaced by the notice set forth in post 103 below.
The radical democrat, Arthur Robbins, whose book Paradise Lost, Paradise Regained I mentioned in the Plato thread discussion of The Apology, gives a very complimentary short description of Roger Williams, albeit in a footnote:
"Roger Williams (1603-1684) was a man of the cloth who was a free thinker, a humanist, and one of the few early democrats. He was primarily a political philosopher rather than a theologian. He was banished from the Massachusetts Bay Colony for his tolerant and forward-looking ideas. He migrated to what is now Rhode Island and set up a working democracy, something likes (sic) Pennsylvania's."
He goes on to quote from Vernon Parrington's book, The Colonial Mind. He says that "Parrington remembers Williams as 'the most generous, the most open-minded, most lovable of the Puritan emigrants' (p.74). His religious tolerance and his democratic ideas made him an enemy of his peers. As of 1927, the commonwealth of Massachusetts had yet to rescind the decree of banishment issued against him." (p. 168 in Robbins's book mentioned above)
Cheers,
Randal