Editorial: The Enduring Legacy of Roger Williams: Consulting America's First Separationist on Today's Pressing Church-State Controversies

Abstract

Roger Williams ranks as one of America's most distinguished thinkers. Curiously, he is also among the least known. Most American history texts, if they mention him at all, note merely that he was a Puri tan preacher who came to Massachusetts from England in 1631, only to be banished four years later for his rebellious and unorthodox reli gious views. Some texts go on to identify him as the founder of the Rhode Island colony, where he lived until he died in 1683, but little else is mentioned. Williams was indeed a prominent, if somewhat controversial, Puri tan preacher, but he is best known for being the first American to ad vance the view that religion and government are separate institutions whose purposes should not be mixed. He was, in other words, America's first church-state separationist. In fact, the of separa tion metaphor, usually attributed to Thomas Jefferson in an 1802 let ter to the Danbuiy Baptist Association, was first used by Williams. In 1644, he wrote that the Bible taught there to be a hedge or of separation between the garden of the church and the wilderness of the world. Scholars are fond of stressing that Williams was concerned about protecting the church from the state, whereas Jefferson felt the wall was necessary to protect the state from the church. While this wom-out distinction is generally accurate, there were far more like nesses than differences in Williams's and Jefferson's views on church state relations. Clearly, both believed that a flexible boundary between the institutions of religion and government preserved the health and integrity of both. In its interpretations of the religion clauses of the First Amend ment, the U.S. Supreme Court frequently looks to history to ascertain