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Roger Williams (ca. 1603-1683) and Seventeenth-Century Rhode Island Government
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Allen
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Dec 18, 2019 04:21PM
This sounds like a talk I would certainly attend if I were in the Pittsburgh area. It is unfortunate that I do not. I hope there will be some kind of video or audio recording that will allow me to hear the talk after it is done.
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Yes, PFC normally does videos of the lectures and publishes them on their website afterward. I'll post a link to the video when it becomes available.
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MAY 27, 2020 VIRTUAL (ZOOM) LECTURE ON ROGER WILLIAMS
On May 27, 2020, I will present a virtual (Zoom) lecture titled “The Architect of Freedom of Conscience and Church-State Separation: Roger Williams’s Life, Political Action, Writings, and Influence.” The following is the official notice of this lecture:
Roger Williams (ca. 1603-83) revolutionized thinking about the role government should play in religion. Banished from the Massachusetts Bay theocracy for his controversial views, he founded the town of Providence and later co-founded the colony of Rhode Island on the basis of full liberty of conscience and complete separation of government and religion. Williams also insisted, contrary to the prevailing orthodoxy, that Europeans could acquire American land only through voluntary transactions with Native Americans.
This lecture will present the story of the dramatic life, thought, and work of a man who refused to accept the conventional wisdom of his time and who forged a new way of thinking that came to characterize the best in the American tradition. Among other things, it will discuss the influence of Roger Williams on later theorists (including John Locke), the US founding generation (including Benjamin Franklin, John Adams, Thomas Jefferson, and James Madison), certain US Supreme Court justices, and other thinkers and writers up to the present day.
Alan E. Johnson, the author of The First American Founder: Roger Williams and Freedom of Conscience (Philosophia, 2015), will present this lecture, based on his book, for the Pittsburgh Freethought Community (PFC) on May 27, 2020, at 7:00 p.m., US Eastern Daylight Time. Attendance is open the public at no charge, but attendees who are not members of PFC will need to RSVP here at least 24 hours before the event in order to obtain the Zoom link.
Please note that attendance of persons who are not PFC members is limited, by Zoom parameters, to 50 people.
Thank you Alan, I enjoyed today's presentation. It was interesting to learn of Wiliams's influence on his contemporaries and for those who came after him. As you said, Williams lived a remarkable life, and his contribution to the founding of the US cannot be denied, especially after hearing your presentation on the topic.
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Thanks, Allen. I'm glad you enjoyed it.
For those of you who didn't attend, the lecture and discussion following the lecture were recorded. I'll post a link to the recording when I have it.
Alan, like Allen, I enjoyed it. Williams was a vague idea in my mind and I had no notion of how this idea landed in Rhode Island. I now see him in terms of concrete particulars.
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Thanks. Roger Williams is one of my heroes. In some ways, he's my favorite hero! I wish I could have the opportunity of having a long discussion with him now about political philosophy, ethics, and religion.
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On May 27, 2020, I gave a Zoom lecture for the Pittsburgh Freethought Community (PFC) titled “The Architect of Freedom of Conscience and Church-State Separation: Roger Williams’s Life, Political Action, Writings, and Influence.” A video recording of this lecture has been posted at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nuSHk.... The recording (which includes the lecture but not the follow-up Q&A) lasts 52:28 minutes. This lecture is based on my book The First American Founder: Roger Williams and Freedom of Conscience.
I misspoke on a couple of occasions that are worth noting:
1. At 47:36, I used the word “established” when I should have said “adopted,” i.e. adopted at the 1787 Constitutional Convention.
2. At 48:13, I said “Williams” when I meant “Madison.”
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A YouTube video recording of our June 25, 2020 meeting can be accessed here.
Alan,This is more-than-a-bit off-topic, but here goes.
I finally finished the second volume of my essay, and now have some time to read the Kindle version of "The First American Founder". Comments on it will be forthcoming eventually in the earlier thread in the other group.
My question is what software or service did you use to generate the ePub version. I have glanced through the first few pages and am most impressed w/ the formatting. I have tried to generate versions for Kindle, both from PDF and DOC files, and am quite unsatisfied w/ the results. (I finally just went w/ Kindle Create and decided to "let the chips fall where they may".)
Any suggestions? (I now do note that the title page rear recites "CreateSpace Independent Publishing Platform". Should I look at it?)
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Any suggestions? (I now do note that the title page rear recites "CreateSpace Independent Publishing Platform". Should I look at it?)
CreateSpace was the Amazon platform for printing paperback books at the time (2015) I published The First American Founder. The Amazon page for this book says the publisher is CreateSpace, but the book itself identifies the publisher as Philosophia Publications, which is my publishing imprint. Amazon made me use their CreateSpace logo in exchange for their making the book available to libraries. The Kindle version was produced through their KDP (Kindle Direct publishing) entity. When I published my book on the Electoral College (2018), I still used CreateSpace for the paperback (under my publishing imprint Philosophia Publications), but Amazon was then in the process of eliminating their CreateSpace program; moreover, they had fired all their professional staff that did Kindle books, and I had to retain an outside vendor (Amnet, in India) to produce a Kindle version that met my requirements (which included extensive endnotes and other complicated formatting matters). CreateSpace has now been discontinued, and everything, including paperbacks, is done through KDP. I did not do an ePub version for The First American Founder, because KDP itself produced the ebook and, of course, they did not create an ePub version. Accordingly, although the paperback of The First American Founder is available on Barnes & Noble, for example, the ebook is not, because Barnes & Noble uses ePub for its ebooks. Although I personally don’t care for ePub, Amnet gave me both a Kindle and an ePub file for my Electoral College book. Accordingly, I published the Kindle file of the Electoral College book through KDP and the ePub file through B&N. But there is no ePub version of The First American Founder.
Kindle Create is for authors of a book. You will not be able to use it for The First American Founder unless you impersonate me, and even then it would not work. Please don’t try, as you may totally screw up my professional relationship with KDP. You could try to use Kindle Create for your own books, if you wish, but I found it useless when I tried to create a Kindle version of my Electoral College book. After many weeks of going back and forth with KDP, I gave up and just had Amnet, the outside vendor, create the Kindle file.
I don’t know how you could generate either a PDF or a DOC file from the Kindle version of The First American Founder. I suppose you could copy every page of the paperback in PDF, but that would be an extremely laborious process, especially considering the length of the book.
I am not aware that there is any way that you can change the Kindle file for The First American Founder to ePub. You can, however, download the Kindle version to a desktop computer and some laptops and cell phones, and you can access the web version from just about any device assuming you have paid for the Kindle book.
Going to the last two paragraphs (and the first 3 sentences of your preceding paragraph) first, I apparently was too vague. My comments about PDF and DOC files was only in regard to the versions of my new book, and the effort to convert it into a format for Kindle; I have a PDF file that I uploaded to B&N for the Print version, and hoped to be able to convert it into a format for both Kindle and Nook. I eventually saved the ODT file, from which the PDF was created, into a DOC format for both B&N and KDP.I _already purchased_ the Kindle version of "The First American Founder" and downloaded the Kindle reading app. (Being an advocate of old-style brick-and-mortars businesses, though B&N isn't too comparable to a Mom-and-Pop Store, I do all my electronic reading on my Samsung Nook reader, eschewing Kindle.) So, I will be reading it on my ThinkPad, and had no intention of converting it to anything else. Don't worry about me being a Loose Cannon.
The preceding paragraphs answered my questions. I likewise find Kindle Create essentially worthless; I afterward confirmed that CreateSpace was discontinued so that this option wasn't available. In contrast the B&N software appears to have converted my DOC file (converted from the ODT file in which the volume was composed (after an import from Scrivener) quite satisfactorily, and perhaps flawlessly; even the bullets before the bullet points display.
I am uncertain though what it would have done w/ all the images you have on the first few pages of your book. I now see how Amnet was essential and such a good choice for you, particularly as the KDP process creates such an inferior product.
Following my message I discovered some other options. One was an extension for OpenOffice/LibreOffice; I however wasn't completely satisfied w/ the result. The other was Google Docs, another non Brick-and-Mortar monstrosity. It allows upload in most versions and then a download in an ePub version; its version was much superior to the others.
So, I went to KDP and uploaded the new ePub file. I'm pretty sure that ePub was one of the acceptable formats, and KDP converted it w/out complaining. Once a Preview is available, we'll see if I'm happier ...
Sorry for all the extra noise from me ...
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Sorry about my misunderstanding of what you were saying.
From your comment, I gather that there have been developments at KDP since my 2018 book on the Electoral College. I am currently working on three new book projects, the first of which should be ready for publication in 2021. I’ll check to see what is available at that time—things seem to change from year to year, if not month to month.
I was quite satisfied with Amnet’s production of the Kindle and ePub files for my 2018 Electoral College book. They did a very good job in a short time period and at a very reasonable price. I hesitated to outsource the project outside the USA, but there were really no viable options. In fact, KDP itself recommended certain vendors (including Amnet), all of which were in other countries. The only alternative to Amnet that I seriously considered was a company located in China, but Amnet seemed to provide a better service at a lower cost and without the complications of international politics. In the event you are interested in communicating with Amnet, their “Contact Us” webpage is here.
Mod
I gather you are referring to the maps at the beginning of my Roger Williams book. At that time KDP still had a professional Kindle staff and was still generating Kindle books without much involvement from the author. (I didn't discover Amnet until 2018, when I published my Electoral College book.) All I had to do was upload the images to KDP, following their detailed instructions, and they reproduced them without any problem. However, by 2018 their professional staff was gone, and they couldn't even do endnotes and a bibliography properly; everything was up to the author. When I kept telling KDP in 2018 that I knew they could do these things, because I had other Kindle books in which they were properly done, they admitted that it was the publishing companies, not KDP, that designed the Kindle files. They pleaded ignorance. But this was after several weeks of going back and forth with them. By then, I realized that they were incapable of doing what I wanted, and I accordingly followed their (late) suggestion of using an outside vendor.
Alan wrote: "Wayne wrote: "Going to the last two paragraphs (and the first 3 sentences of your preceding paragraph) first, I apparently was too vague. My comments about PDF and DOC files was only in regard to t..."A lot of this is probably more appropriate to one of the Indie Authors groups, but since there may be overlap, I'll provide my comments as they might be beneficial to someone. These will be, _in seriatim_, to your paragraphs.
No need to apologize as the confusion may be more attributable to me than you.
You commented on your relative dislike for ePub format; I conclude you are much more knowledgeable than I on ePub, Mobi, or whatever other formats are used for e-books, but I, not knowing the difference, stuck w/ ePub as being a format commonly used. I went this morning to my KDP account since they finally finished processing my ePub version upload (again the one that Google Docs converted from my ODT file), and went to the page to preview it. (KDP is really a pain in this regard as one has to use the "Edit e-book" link to view anything, and thus restart the whole Setup process.) Opening the Preview, the Kindle version now looks exactly like the ODT version I drafted, except for the footnotes now being endnotes - a protocol both Kindle and Nook require; however, as I suppose most e-book readers know, the endnote links did allow switching between them and the text. Thus, one no longer has to use Kindle Create to use KDP.
For sophisticated projects like yours, using Amnet is a good choice. Back in the early 70s I "hung around" a group of graduate students from India to whom an old high school friend introduced me. Most of them were in Engineering and went on to be employed by the automobile companies, though one became a major real estate developer and another went to academia, he currently being the Chair of the Chemical Engineering Department at Howard University. I learned from them that the most gifted students in India went into Engineering and w/ Medicine being for the second tier; Law, interestingly, was well down the totem pole. Unless the priority has changed, I would expect a high level of competence and skill - consistent w/ your experience - from an Indian firm.
On most things I "operate on a shoestring". However I am copying your link and saving it in a URL object or folder for future reference in case I decide later to go more upscale.
Alan wrote: "Wayne wrote: "I am uncertain though what it would have done w/ all the images you have on the first few pages of your book. I now see how Amnet was essential and such a good choice for you, particu...";=))))
Customer Service certainly does seem to be a Lost Art in almost every arena. Fortunately they did perform for you before their deterioration by recommending Amnet.
And, Yes, I was referring to all of the graphics at the beginning of the book. They are most professional and impressive indeed. I expect that the text will prove likewise, and intend to start reading the Kindle version momentarily. When i will complete it is another story, now switching back and forth between a slew of paper and electronic history works, as well as a number of Great Books volumes; once, at least in my case, one passes the 3/4 century mark he realizes how much less time is available and better pursue and complete his studies forthwith. Now, however, that I have completed the second volume of my essay, I will be able to redirect my focus a lot ...
Mod
When both volumes of your work are available, please give us a brief synopsis of same in the appropriate topic of this group and a link to the Goodreads, Amazon, and/or B&N webpages. You probably mentioned the first volume someplace, but I have forgotten where and also what it is about. I assume these volumes are relevant to political philosophy and/or ethics as we have been defining those subjects in this group.
By the way, Amnet's entire conversion of my Electoral College manuscript to Mobi (Kindle) and ePub files cost less than $100.00, and that included expedited service. I would guess that their prices have gone up since then. I may or may not have Amnet or another vendor also do the paperback versions (files to be uploaded to KDP) of my books going forward, but I haven't made a definite decision on that at this time. Getting my books printed has been the most frustrating part of the authorial experience for me. As I kept telling KDP last time around, I am not a computer geek; that's what they are supposed to do. This is probably the only time in my retirement when I "lost my cool," as they used to say.
Really!! ... When you mentioned using them I never imagined it might be so inexpensive. Even w/ inflation this would conform to my budget. Since in the first volume I had two appendices w/ some JPG graphics which I am not sure were reproduced clearly - being ones I produced from a flow charting application, and perhaps were not artful enough - I think I will contact them to see if maybe they could make them clearer. (Appendix B contains the somewhat-intricate images of suggested early dispute resolution mechanisms w/ flow chart lines, and an argument that I modestly think was fairly original.)On your suggestion, Okay - though I am reluctant as I have never been one to Toot my Own Horn. I have always tried, both in professional and intellectual activities, to develop intellectually consistent and comprehensive arguments, and have hoped that these would be sufficient to exert any persuasion necessary. So, I'll generate a couple comments (one for each) in the appropriate group w/ enough caveats and mea culpas not to disappoint anyone. (I was going to inquire about how to handle links but as I was typing this finally noticed the "(some html is ok)" above this box, and so can copy my html for the links from my About page at my Blog.
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I was contacted a few weeks ago by the Daughters of the American Revolution (DAR) about my book The First American Founder: Roger Williams and Freedom of Conscience. They said they had put this book on their recommended reading list, and they requested that I participate in a public interview regarding the book at their convention during the last week of June 2023. After I determined that the DAR had abandoned their segregationist and far-right political past (a fact also evidenced by their interest in my book), I accepted their offer and will be interviewed by DAR representatives and members on June 28, 2023, in Washington, D.C.
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This above-titled March 30, 2023 AP article (https://apnews.com/article/vatican-in...) states, in the first paragraph thereof: “The Vatican on [March 30, 2023] responded to Indigenous demands and formally repudiated the ‘Doctrine of Discovery,’ the theories backed by 15th-century ‘papal bulls’ that legitimized the colonial-era seizure of Native lands and form the basis of some property laws today.” I discuss such Catholic and Protestant doctrines—and Roger Williams’s opposition to same—in my book The First American Founder: Roger Williams and Freedom of Conscience.
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I have now posted Appendix D (“Roger Williams and John Locke”) to my book The First American Founder: Roger Williams and Freedom of Conscience on Academia.edu at https://www.academia.edu/103480220/Ro....
Appendix D explores in depth the historical and philosophical influences that Roger Williams’s seventeenth-century writings on freedom of conscience had on the evolution of John Locke’s views on toleration a generation later. It elaborates both the surprising historical connections between Williams and Locke and the fact that Locke’s famous Letter Concerning Toleration (1689–90) as well as some of his earlier unpublished writings adopt many of Williams’s ideas, sometimes almost verbatim.
An ongoing discussion of the above-lined Academia post is at https://www.academia.edu/s/2c28ff1704.... You are welcome to join the discussion if you have an interest in this subject.
I am cross-filing the present post in the “Roger Williams,” “John Locke,” and “Theocracy and Erastianism” topics of this Goodreads group.
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On June 28, 2023, I was interviewed at the annual convention of the Daughters of the American Revolution (DAR) in Washington, DC, about my book The First American Founder: Roger Williams and Freedom of Conscience. From their website and from my conversations with them, it appears that the DAR has totally changed from their segregationist and far-right positions in the early twentieth century. They are now welcoming to people of all races and political and religious (and nonreligious) views.
This DAR session was not recorded, but, in response to questions, I stated, among other things, the following:
• Roger Williams wrote in his most famous work, The Bloudy Tenent of Persecution, that he was making arguments from religion, reason, and experience. He had to make arguments from religion for two reasons: (1) all the then-current arguments by theocrats were based on religion, and (2) seventeenth-century England and New England were dominated by religious thought such that hardly any book or pamphlet would have been published in that century in those places that was not based, at least in part, on religion. Even Thomas Hobbes, who had a (justly deserved) reputation for being an unbeliever, had to make religious arguments in his writings. Williams, unlike Hobbes, was actually religious, though his religious views evolved during his lifetime to a point that they were not at all conventional. And Williams, unlike Hobbes, always supported absolute freedom of conscience and church-state separation.
• Williams also made secular arguments for liberty of conscience and church-state separation that were based solely on reason and experience.
• I was asked what my view of Williams’s greatest strength was and also what I thought was his greatest weakness. I answered that Williams was that exceedingly rare person who was both a politician (a founder and leader of a political society, in his case) while being, at the same time, deeply ethical in both speech and deed. His greatest weakness occurred in his old age when he participated in a four-day theological debate with Quakers. Although he always recognized that Quakers had an absolute political right to believe, communicate, and practice their religion, Williams’s debate with the Quaker representatives was marred on both sides by petty ad hominem and other vituperative arguments. This was rather typical of seventeenth-century theological debates.
One of the questioners from the audience said she is a descendant of Mary Dyer, who was hanged by the Massachusetts Bay theocracy in 1660 because of her Quaker religion. Massachusetts Bay also hanged three male Quakers for their religion at about the same time. My book discusses those and many other such events as well as Roger Williams’s reaction to them.
Alan E. Johnson
Independent Philosopher, Historian, Political Scientist, and Legal Scholar
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I have posted Appendix B (“Theocracy in Seventeenth-Century New England and Sixteenth-Century Geneva”) to my book The First American Founder: Roger Williams and Freedom of Conscience (Pittsburgh, PA: Philosophia, 2015) at https://www.academia.edu/124733346/Ap....
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I have posted a PDF replica of the paperback edition of “The First American Founder: Roger Williams and Freedom of Conscience” by Alan E. Johnson at https://www.academia.edu/13797615/Ala.... This book is also available on Amazon.com in Kindle ebook ($2.99) and paperback ($22.95) editions. The PDF does not support toggling between the endnote references in the text and the endnotes themselves, as does the Kindle edition.
This book is about Roger Williams (ca. 1603-83), who was banished from the colony of Massachusetts Bay for advocating freedom of conscience, separation of church and state, Native American rights, and related matters. He founded the town of Providence in what became Rhode Island on the basis of full liberty of conscience and complete separation of religion and government.
For Errata and Supplemental Comments, see the separate document uploaded at https://www.academia.edu/34149040/Err....
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You're welcome. If you or others have any questions or comments about the book, please don't hesitate to communicate them.
