Roger Williams and the Creation of the American Soul: Church, State, and the Birth of Liberty

by John M. Barry

A revelatory look at how Roger Williams shaped the nature of religion, political power, and individual rights in America.

For four hundred years, Americans have wrestled with and fought over two concepts that define the nature of the nation: the proper relation between church and state and between a free individual and the state. These debates began with the extraordinary thought and struggles of Roger Williams, who had an unparalleled understanding of the conflict between a government that justified itself by "reason of state"—i.e., national security—and its perceived "will of God" and the "ancient rights and liberties" of individuals.

This is a story of power, set against Puritan America and the English Civil War. Williams's interactions with King James, Francis Bacon, Oliver Cromwell, and his mentor Edward Coke set his course, but his fundamental ideas came to fruition in America, as Williams, though a Puritan, collided with John Winthrop's vision of his "City upon a Hill."

Acclaimed historian John M. Barry explores the development of these fundamental ideas through the story of the man who was the first to link religious freedom to individual liberty, and who created in America the first government and society on earth informed by those beliefs. The story is essential to the continuing debate over how we define the role of religion and political power in modern American life.

Genres: History, Biography, Nonfiction, Religion, American History, Politics, Theology

441 pages, Hardcover

First published January 5, 2012

About the author

John M. Barry is an American author and historian, perhaps best known for his books on the Great Mississippi Flood of 1927 the influenza pandemic of 1918 and his book on the development of the modern form of the ideas of separation of church and state and individual liberty. His most recent book is Roger Williams and the Creation of the American Soul: Church, State, and the Birth of Liberty (Viking 2012).

Barry's 1997 book Rising Tide: The Great Mississippi Flood of 1927 and How It Changed America appeared on the New York Times Best Seller list and won the 1998 Francis Parkman Prize from the Society of American Historians for the year's best book on American history. His work on water-related issues was recognized by the National Academies of Sciences in its invitation to give the 2006 Abel Wolman Distinguished Lecture on Water Resources; he is the only non-scientist ever to give that lecture.

His 2004 book The Great Influenza: The Epic Story of the Greatest Plague in History was also a New York Times Best Seller, and won the 2005 Keck Communications Award from the United States National Academies of Science for the year's outstanding book on science or medicine. In 2005 he also won the "September 11th Award" from the Center for Biodefense and Emerging Pathogens at Brown University. He has served on a federal government's Infectious Disease Board of Experts, on the advisory board of MIT's Center for Engineering Fundamentals, and on the advisory committee at Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health for its Center for Refugee and Disaster Response.

The expertise he developed in these two areas has involved him in policy-making, risk communication and disaster management strategies, and developing resilient communities, and this work resulted in his induction into Delta Omega, the academic honorary society for public health. More specifically, he has advised the private sector and local, state, national, and international government officials about preparing for another influenza pandemic. He has also both advised officials and taken a direct role in preparing for water-related disasters. A resident of New Orleans, after Hurricane Katrina he was also named to both the Southeast Louisiana Flood Protection Authority, which is the levee board overseeing several separate levee districts in the New Orleans area, and the state's Coastal Protection and Restoration Authority, which is responsible for hurricane protection for the entire state.

His first book, The Ambition and the Power: A true story of Washington, appeared in 1989 and explored the operation of the U.S. Congress, the use of power by Speaker of the House Jim Wright, and the rise of future Speaker Newt Gingrich. In 1995 the New York Times named it one of the eleven best books ever written on Congress and Washington.

With Steven Rosenberg, MD, Ph.D., chief of the Surgery Branch at the National Cancer Institute and a pioneer in the development of "immunotherapy" for cancer—stimulating the immune system to attack cancer—Barry co-authored his second book, The Transformed Cell: Unlocking the Mysteries of Cancer, which was published in 12 languages.

Barry has written for The New York Times, Time Magazine, Fortune, The Washington Post, Esquire, and other publications and frequently appears as a guest commentator on broadcast media.

He has also coached high school and college football, and his first published article was about blocking assignments for offensive linemen and appeared in a professional journal for coaches, Scholastic Coach.

Reviews

[Emily · Rating 4 out of 5]

You know those moments when you realize that the "history" you've believed in not only isn't the whole story, but perhaps is even completely wrong? Yeah. So, you know how the Puritans risked everything to sail across the ocean and colonize America because they believed in freedom of religion? Actually, they left England because the king and those who led the Church of England demanded complete conformity under pain of torture, dismemberment, and death, and they couldn't, in good conscience, conform. However, the Puritans didn't believe in religious liberty; they just wanted the ability to create a community where they could compel everyone to believe and worship the way they (the Puritans) were sure was ordained by God. "Liberty, in the view of [Massachusetts Governor John] Winthrop and his fellow magistrates, in the view of Massachusetts clergy, and in the view of most Massachusetts freemen, was the liberty to live a life which the magistrates defined as good and godly. And it was the responsibility of government to see to it that a godly life was lived." And they were almost as brutal enforcing conformity as those they had left behind in England. And they burned books! Ugh!!

Honestly, after reading this, I cannot fathom why Roger Williams isn't enshrined right next to Jefferson, Adams, and Franklin as one of those Founding Fathers absolutely instrumental to both the individual liberties we enjoy today as well as to the separation between church and state. Roger Williams declared that the state had "no authority to inject itself in any way into an individual's relationship with God" and should be limited to enforcing laws which govern human relationships - an absolutely radical position at the time. The Providence compact, the ruling civil document for the initial settlement of what later became Rhode Island, "did not refer to God in any way," unlike every other founding document up to that point. Williams was "a devout Puritan renowned for his piety" who frequently mentioned God in his writings, but felt strongly that the state should be completely separate from religion to allow for freedom of conscience.

Williams felt it a "monstrous partiality" to maintain a "conviction of one's own correctness and of others' errors" that "presumed that 'so many thousands in the Nations of the World all the world over' who disagreed were, simply and entirely, wrong." He pointed out by "refus[ing] to consider the possibility, any possibility, that it might be he who was wrong," this view essentially "reject[ed] 'all the consciences in the world' but one's own" while ignoring the imprudence of placing power in the hands of the state - to the point of executing those with whom you disagreed - on the rightness of matters of conscience. After all, in a few short years, England itself had gone from Catholic to Protestant to Catholic and back to Protestant again, with thousands of lives lost in the religious conflict.

Williams supported Native American ownership of land and went beyond the lip-service of others that the Indians were also children of God, to recognizing their rights to claim the land they occupied and used, learning their language, and negotiating peace with local tribes as equals. He went so far as to pointedly write "warning the 'proud English' that Indians were 'by birth as Good,' and that the English might well find 'Heaven open to Indians wild, but shut to thee.'"

His writings were instrumental in changing the tide of public opinion back in England and securing the permanent charter that allowed the experiment of civil, non-religious government to continue in Rhode Island. He insisted that the right to rule derived from the people, not a divine endowment, direct from God, which was again absolutely radical for the time.

In the afterword, Mr. Barry highlights how many of the same debates, trying to find the proper balance between individual rights and federal powers, are continuing today. Willams's views, so extreme in the 1600s, are fundamental to our nation today. Fascinating perspective on the birth of basic American beliefs.

For more book reviews, come visit my blog, Build Enough Bookshelves.

[Tony · Rating 4 out of 5]

(Thank you Goodreads Giveaways!)

We Westerners look at chanting Sunni or Shiite Muslims, filling our CNN screens, vowing death to us certainly, but also to each other and think, what barbarians! And, we think, they have splintered so murderously over such pedantry as right of religious succession or some interpretation of a religious text. What barbarians, indeed.

If you think that, and think we (you) are not like that, especially if you think that because you are Christian, then read this book.

Sometimes the English and colonial governments insisted, upon pain of death, that citizens must read the Book of Common Prayer. Sometimes the governments insisted, upon pain of death, that they must not read it. If you picked the wrong side, you'd be lucky just to have your ears cut off. But if you survived, whatever position you favored would eventually be back in favor. Even Francis of Assisi, Saint Dominic and other men "of the kindliest tempers, the profoundest intelligence, the noblest aspirations" favored death for heretics.

Roger Williams stood out. He had his biases and prejudices regarding other religions and points of view. But he had a vision, based in analytical application of legal reasoning, that differences in conscience must be tolerated. By the time he wrote his great book, "hundreds of thousands of Christians had been slaughtered by other Christians because of the way they worshipped Christ."

Think about that.

For legal history or philosophy geeks, this book starts off with a glorious "Part" about the legal philosophical feud between Coke and Bacon. This is superb. If Due Process applies to things, why shouldn't it apply to people as well? The Fifth and Fourteenth Amendments to the U.S. Constitution owe existence to this dialogue.

But the religious disputes are just as fascinating. An English King who tolerated Catholicism was said to have "committed fornication with that whore." (Sorry, Sister Mary Turtle). But such claims could be made in a country wherein the Bishop of London would say, with apparent resonance, "God is English."

Did you know, by the way, that a form of waterboarding was a common torture in the 16th and 17th centuries?

But on to America, where a leader from England, arriving with a mission to rid the Plymouth plantation of those considered troublesome, found five teenaged boys "discovered to follow practices which were physically and morally injurious to themselves and others" -- i.e. they were masturbators. They were banished back to England. Reviewer's note: I don't think they got them all.

The English treatment of Native Americans is not sugar-coated here. However, even here Williams stood out. Like Champlain and John Smith, Williams attempted to learn the language and treat them with respect. There is a great lesson here, if sadly only in retrospect.

Freedom of thought, Freedom of religion, started here with Williams in Rhode Island. (Did you know the official state name is: Rhode Island and the Providence Plantation?). This is a well-researched and well-told story of how that was achieved.

Two negatives. First, and understanding this is an uncorrected proof, the author's sloppy use of pronouns was confusing at best. For example, I'm not sure, at pages 36-37, if the 'he' he is referring to is Essex or Bacon. It's a wonderful anecdote that's being told there. And it might be important to Essex and/or Bacon which of the two of them is gay.

Second, it demeaned an otherwise superb scholarly work for the author to have taken a few cheap shots at George W. Bush. I'm no apologist for the idiot, but it was glaringly out of place. It's like you have to do that, even when talking about the 1600s, or they will kick you out of the faculty lounge.

[H. P. · Rating 5 out of 5]

If you’re like me, you didn’t know much about Roger Williams before considering this book. Based solely on his status as the founder of Rhode Island, he hardly seems a titan of Anglo history. But Barry makes a very persuasive case that he stands in a direct intellectual lineage from Sir Edward Coke to Williams to John Locke, and that he deserves mention in the same breath as those two titans of the history of liberty. Williams’s contribution was freedom of religion.

Creation of the American Soul is less a biography of Roger Williams (his family is scarcely mentioned) than it is a history that largely parallels Williams’s career. The first fifth of the book deals almost exclusively with Coke. Williams took shorthand for Coke, and Coke was surely a major intellectual influence on Williams, but this section of the book is as important for what Coke does as what later influence it may have had on Williams. When King James tried to assert the divine right of kings in England, Coke stood up against him with little behind him but the common law. His efforts can at best be described as a stalemate, but the rights Coke fought for ended up embedded in the American Constitution.

Coke was not the only historical figure Williams rubbed elbows with. Williams was a contemporary of and knew John Winthrop, Oliver Cromwell, Sir Francis Bacon (Barry describes Williams as a protégé of Bacon, but it appears from the text that Williams was merely influenced by Bacon rather than having the kind of personal relationship he had with Coke), Anne Hutchinson, George Fox, John Cotton (grandfather of Cotton Mather), Benedict Arnold (great-grandfather of the traitorous Revolutionary War general), John Donne, and John Milton.

A Puritan minister, Williams was forced to flee England to escape religious persecution. He did not find the freedom he desired in the Massachusetts Bay colony (called “plantations” at the time). Persecuted again, he was again forced to flee. He then founded the colony that became Rhode Island.

A central theme is the tension between authoritarianism and anarchy. The Puritan-run Massachusetts Bay colony veered very heavily to the side of authoritarianism. Rhode Island threatened to dissolve into anarchy. Williams, though, was no anarcho-libertarian. It is a testament to his charisma and temperament that Rhode Island was able to avoid anarchy.

Barry is a talented writer, and his prose reads easily. However, he does have his stylistic quirks. He maintains a strange lack of biographical distance. When Barry states that the Puritan authorities in Massachusetts committed various heinous acts against nonconformists “out of love,” he presumably means that was their own stated justification, rather than what he actually believes drove them. He also quotes his subjects heavily, creative 17th century spelling and all. The quotes are all in the same font as the main text, which may be why it appears some Us are printed as Vs (these appear in both the Kindle and hard cover editions).

Barry properly downplays Williams’s forward-looking views on the Indians. By the 1800s, his views on religion and politics would have been much less radical relative to his views on Indians. But in his time violent religious intolerance was the rule of the day (dissidents commonly had their ears cut off or worse) and Americans and Europeans had not yet fully developed their nastier racial theories.

Barry explores Williams’s legacy in greater length in the afterword (for example, Williams is one of only ten men honored in Geneva’s Reformation Wall for their contribution to the Reformation), both rebutting his critics and featuring his proponents. Williams was in many ways the right man at the right time (earlier proponents of freedom of religion did not fare so well), but what he accomplished would not have been possible had he not been such an extraordinary man. Nor should his achievements be viewed lightly because his views did not come from secular roots or because freedom of conscience continued to face challenges in England and colonial America.

[Kressel Housman · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book is probably the definitive work on Roger Williams, which means it was well-researched, detailed, and took me a few weeks to get through. It was so chock-full of information, the task of writing a review of it daunted me, but delaying it has only made things worse because now I've probably forgotten even more. But here are two telling reactions: 1) Roger Williams will be the subject of my next Toastmasters speech and 2) I want to visit Rhode Island on my next family vacation and see as many historical sites as I can, especially the Newport Synagogue. The synagogue was not established until after Williams' lifetime, but his policy of allowing people of all religions to settle in Rhode Island made it possible.

The book made me want to stand up and applaud Roger Williams, and certainly I learned many new details along the way, but the main thing the book did was to reinforce the impression I went in with. That came from Sarah Vowell's observation in The Wordy Shipmates in which she said that Thomas Jefferson usually gets all the credit for the separation of church and state that we enjoy in this country, but he built his ideas on Roger Williams'. More than that, where as Jefferson opposed the mixing of religious and political power because he thought it was bad for democracy, Williams, who was a Puritan himself, considered political power corrupting to the church. As a religious person, I was fascinated by that, and that is what drew me to the book.

As I said, the book taught me more details of how Roger Williams translated this belief into his philosophy and into action. First, he befriended the Natives and learned their language because he did not want them converted without their understanding. Second, he opposed the requirement of the Massachusetts Bay Colony leadership that all colonists had to pledge loyalty to the Puritan church. There were British non-Puritans amongst the colonists, most notably Captain John Smith, and Williams considered it a pro forma oath to be a corruption. And everyone agreed they needed Captain Smith. He was the most experienced settler among them. Both the oath and his feelings about Native conversions are reflected in his quintessential statement, "False worship stinks in G-d's nostrils."

In getting to know the Natives, Williams also came to the conclusion that the colony's claim that the land was unused and therefore available for the taking land was wrong. He asserted that the colonists ought to pay for it, but he was forced to recant on that one. He didn't back away from his other views, though, and since he was gaining a following, he was considered a danger and therefore was exiled. . .in the middle of winter. The Narangasset tribe housed him until spring, and then he settled in what would become Providence. His wife and children followed, and soon other Puritans did, too, mostly those, who, like him, didn't exactly fit the mold. One of these was the famous Anne Hutchinson, who seemed perfectly reasonable according to this book, but is portrayed as an illogical mystic in others. In any case, Providence became a haven for religious misfits, and anyone who knows me will understand exactly why that appeals.

There's still plenty to say about Roger Williams, but I just want to reiterate with what I said about the book itself. I'm giving it a 5 because it's a thorough and informative history, but be warned: it's also a pretty slow read.

[B. P. Rinehart · Rating 4 out of 5]

"I desire not to sleep in security and dream of a Nest which no hand can reach. I can not but expect changes, yet dare I not despise a Liberty, which the Lord seemeth[sic] to offer me if for mine own or others peace." - Roger Williams

Is it allowed to man-crush on 17th century protestant ministers? I didn't think so either but I do have to say I have a new historical hero.

Why do guys like him never make the final cut in history class?! Well I think I can answer that question; Texas won't be teaching him any time soon. Of All of America's Founding Fathers, of all of the Puritan Fathers (i.e. Jonathan Winthorp, William Bradford, etc.), he outshines them all.

I furthermore argue that in modern religious and political philosophy in the english-speaking world no one has had a greater impact than Williams. Not Jefferson, not Locke, not even Marx or Smith. It seems everyone who came after him either upheld or refuted his ideas.

The greatest of these ideas is what he called "Soul Liberty" in which he outlines his ideas for how a civil government was to be ran. Now in an age when everyone aspired to be a theocracy of one type or another he dared to not only advocate but successfully create the first government on earth that would not influence or be influenced in any way by religion. He was extremely devout but because of his time spent in London with Edward Coke and Francis Bacon he came to have extremely unique views on faith and government. Namely he believed that if politics and religion were mixed in any way it would foul up religion. He spent his life championing separation of church and state and freedom of religion. This seems like a no-brainer now but in his day it was thought to be lunacy. Fortunately for Williams he was able to establish this democratic and tolerant haven and was able to get it made official not only under Oliver Cromwell's military dictatorship but King Charles II restored monarchy both times the Government ruled as a democracy. So where was this paradise of modern democracy? Rhode Island. Yep, no longer do we have to consider Peter Griffin as the greatest man to emerge from there.

Another fascinating thing is the number of important people he influenced in his day. Oliver Cromwell, Sir Henry Vane, and most importantly John Milton who he mentored personally were influenced by Roger Williams ideas. Even King Charles II who had Cromwell behead after he died was impressed with Williams' ideas and even copied Rhode Island's constitution into the Charters for New Jersey and the Carolinas.

I really recommend this book to all. The state of religion in the United Kingdom, the British Commonwealth, and of course the United States owe a lot to him (and to be fair as far as the US is concerned Jon Winthorp the "City on a hill" man and Williams' main antagonist). Even Geneva, Switzerland (home of John Calvin) Elected him one of only 10 people to their Protestant Hall of Fame Statue design.

I wish I could go into better detail but...just read this book or check out some of Williams' own work like The Bloudy Tenent of Persecution for Cause of Conscience Discussed; And Mr. Cotton's Letter Examined and Answered;, please!

[John David · Rating 5 out of 5]

In the United States, there is a pernicious assumption perpetrated by otherwise well-educated, cynical politicians who actually know better: that we were somehow founded as a Christian nation on Christian principles. Because of its inherent nationalist exceptionalism – something else to which Americans too often fall victim – this assumption has practically become part of an unquestioned national mythos. The more entertaining carnival barkers among them go on to suggest that many of the misfortunes that befall Americans are the result of a deliberate, purposeful decadence and increasing godlessness. In his book “Roger Williams and the Creation of the American Soul: Church, State, and the Birth of Liberty,” John Barry goes far in showing how one man – himself a Puritan divine – sought to ensure that religion was solely the purview of the individual conscience.

Williams was born in England, educated at Cambridge, during a time when the Divine Right of Kings argument was suffering its last death throes. In some of the most interesting parts of the book, Barry details the influence of Edward Coke, one of the most astute jurists of the Elizabeth era, upon him. Coke, an articulate propounder of English liberties, was a profound nuisance to James I whose authority Coke would regularly and unceremoniously throw into question. Coke’s presence in Williams’ life, combined with Williams’ relationship with John Milton whose later prose work like the Areopagitica would directly contradict James’ power to censure, probably had an influence on how Williams began to think about an absolute monarchy.

Williams especially thought that the relationship between the Church of England and the government was corrupt. After expressing sympathies with radical English Protestants, he was in such a hurry to leave that he made his trans-Atlantic crossing in winter – not exactly the most fortuitous time. But luck was on his side and he settled in Plymouth Colony. It is here that not only was Williams’ complex relationships on Church and state were not resolved, but only transmogrified – this time his opponent being John Winthrop, Governor of Massachusetts. It is his clash with Winthrop that serves as the meat of the book.

Winthrop held the traditional Puritan line: God was the ultimate arbiter of justice, to be out of line with God was to be unjust, and therefore it was the government’s job to enforce religious ideas. Williams agreed that God was the ultimate arbiter of justice, but thought that religion was ultimately a matter of personal conscience – which not so much shouldn’t be controlled by the state, but couldn’t be. People will think what they think, and for human beings to pretend like that could ever be controlled is folly.

But Williams’ opinion that men (and I only use that word here because it was in fact men who had anything to do with Puritan governance) should stay out of religion shouldn’t be considered a first step into secularism. Remember, Williams was every bit the Puritan that Winthrop was. The point of divergence occurred because of Williams’ theology. Williams thought only God and his Church were pure; ordinary men were fallen, and therefore bad no business telling the Church what to do. In Barry’s words, “Williams described the true Church as a beautiful and magnificent garden, unsullied and pure, resonant of Eden. The world he described ‘the Wildernesse’ … He then charged that Massachusetts had mixed the two, and he used for the first time a phrase which he would use again in the future, a phrase which although not attributed to him has echoed through American history. ‘When they have opened a gap in the hedge or wall of Separation between the garden of the Church and the Wilderness [sic] of the world, God hathe ever broke down the wall its selfe, removed the Candlestick, &c. and made his Garden a wildernesse.”

Eventually Winthrop banned Williams from Massachusetts, and he would move on to play a fundamental part in the founding of Rhode Island. Despite almost every single document we have by Williams referencing God in one way or another, the founding document of Rhode Island mentions no God whatsoever. It even explicitly rejects religious tests as a prerequisite for voting. Whether these ideas have their provenance in a strict Puritanism that values individual conscience above all else or a outré relationship between the Church and the state which had only begun to be spelled out with Williams’ help, it was unquestionably a step in the direction of what we consider to be full-throated advocacy for very new way of running a society.

I’m fully ready and willing to admit that this book very much over-sells Williams’ importance in American history. It also seems to have run up against some issues with scholars who find that Barry’s interpretations take far too wide a berth in laying so much praise at the feet of Williams for the “progress” that they allowed. But with these authorial peccadilloes in mind, this book has absolutely everything to recommend it. How often do we get to read an intellectual biography of such an important historical figure that is largely aimed at a popular audience?

[Michael · Rating 5 out of 5]

I am seriously into historical non-fiction and am always looking for history that is news to me. I first stumbled onto John M. Barry when I was looking for information on the great flu pandemic of 1918 and found Barry's book "The Great Influenza: The Story of the Deadliest Pandemic in History." I thought it was just about the pandemic but I found it to be about so much more; the story of the birth of modern medicine. As they say: "he had me at hello" and I've been a Barry fan ever since.

Next came Barry's "Rising Tide: The Great Mississippi Flood of 1927 and How it Changed America." I thought it would be a book just about the flood but it turned out to be so much more. It was a great flood that was a precursor to the mishandling of the Katrina hurricane, it was about corruption in government, it was about the estrangement of blacks from the Republican party (which still continues to this day), about the dynamiting of levees in New Orleans (also charged but not proven in Katrina) and the last enslavement of blacks in America (blacks were forced at gunpoint to work on the levees in Green County, Mississippi).

So, when Barry's latest book "Roger Williams and the Creation of the American Soul: Church, State, and the Birth of Liberty" came out bearing the title of what might be a dry biography, I knew it would be so much more.

In the early 17th century, the English crown controlled religion in the Church of England and dictated worship at pain of punishment or execution by the state. Puritans were members of the English Church who disagreed with certain required practices such as using the "Common Book of Prayer." They were persecuted by the state and many were forced to flee England. One of these latter was a prominent Puritan minister, Roger Williams. Williams fled to the Plymouth Colony and thence to Massachusetts Bay Colony in America. He had a unique point of view; he believed in "soul liberty," the freedom of religious conscience, in effect freedom of religious belief. His views were even too revolutionary for other Pilgrims and he was banished from Massachusetts, fleeing for his life as government officials closed in to arrest him. He was forced to live with a tribe of Narragansett Indians until he was able to buy some land from them in what is now Rhode Island. He proceeded to establish his own colony there and fought to get a charter from England. In the process he established Rhode Island as the only spot on the planet where freedom of religion, separation of church and state, as well as freedom to express religious thought (prelude to freedom of speech) was practiced at that time. Williams was the pioneer of what later became the first amendment in the Bill of Rights to the U. S. Constitution.

Williams aside, this is also an extremely interesting book about the history of the early colonies and their relationship with England and is a book that I would recommend that everyone read.

[Pat · Rating 4 out of 5]

My son, Dave, gave me this book because Roger Williams(1603-1683) is one of our lineal ancestors (my dad was named Roger Williams Dean after an aunt discovered the genealogical connection)...but I've never known much about the man, other than he founded Rhode Island.

This is a great book for those who like reading about American History...and is one of the best I've read on the events leading up to the American Revolution and the founding of our country...

...it is an eye-opener. Williams was THE founder of freedom of conscience for this planet. He escaped from the intolerance of fellow Puritan ministers in Massachusetts who had tried and sentenced him to be returned to England where he surely would have had his ears cut off, his tongue bored, his face branded with a hot iron, left to rot in prison, all for merely speaking his mind privately in his own home, with his neighbors, about his approach to scripture and to the divine. High drama in this bio! America is the envy of the world due to this man's significant contribution. Yet we barely know of him.

Williams, alerted by a friend of his impending arrest, fled 30 miles through a huge snow storm; he found refuge with the Indians for the winter, whose language he already spoke fluently. He soon founded a community, Rhode Island, based upon the lessons he learned about confronting state power in the English court and religious intolerance among zealots here in America...

But of greatest interest to me was Williams belief that...
"There is no regularly constituted church of Christ on earth, nor any person qualified to administer any church ordinances; nor can there be until new apostles are sent by the Great Head of the Church for whose coming I am seeking."
Williams beliefs on separation of Church and State became one of the underlying tenants of the new American government and made it possible for the religious freedom that allowed the restoration of the gospel...

This is certainly not a page turner...but very informative and well written...another great book by the author, John Barry, was The Great Influenza.

[Thomas Watson · Rating 5 out of 5]

Finished reading Roger Williams and The Creation of the American Soul by John M. Barry yesterday. The book is extraordinary in more than one way, not the least of which is its relevance to current events. I've heard of and seen references to Roger Williams and his role in the early colonization of New England, but this is the first work of any kind dealing with him directly that I've read. While reading the book I was reminded very strongly of the old adage about people who refuse to learn the lessons of history being doomed to repeat them. The US is even now reiterating the debate on the separation of church and state that Williams brought into focus more than three hundred years ago.

It's also a marvelous example of narrative history, examining the facts and issues while telling a story as compelling as any novel. Religious oppression in England, the flight of the Puritans to New England, the English Civil War, early colonial America, peace and war with Native Americans, even the rise of the Quakers - it makes quite a story, and Barry has a way with words. I've heard of him (mostly of his book The Great Influenza) but never read anything by him until now. That will change in the future. Highly recommended - and that greatly understates my feelings about this book.

[Matt · Rating 4 out of 5]

The founding of the smallest state and its secular character are directly attributed to him and inspired the Founding Fathers, but Roger Williams is a man from a complex time in both England and colonial America. John M. Barry’s Roger Williams and the Creation of the American Soul: Church, State, and the Birth of Liberty is not only a biography of Williams but a cultural, political, and religious history of his time.

While it takes a while for Barry to focus on Williams and his soon-to-be very revolutionary thinking, he sets the groundwork not only for Williams intellectual and religious development but also the political and cultural context of his life. First and foremost is the political view of the early Stuart monarchs of divine right of kings going up against Magna Carta and Parliament that will eventually set off the English Civil War, and alongside it was the struggle over the Church of England and those Puritans who would not conform to practices that looked decidedly “popish”. It is easy to forget sometimes that England and its American colonies interacted before 1763 and the lead up to the American Revolution, but Barry plainly illustrates that events in each did have an impact on one another whether religiously or politically. Roger Williams’ vision of separation of church and state has come up against John Winthrop’s “city on a hill”, ironically a Puritan version of conform or else mirroring what was happening in England, throughout American history and this was central to Barry’s book even as he followed the live and struggles of Williams. One of the biggest takeaways from the book is that history does not happen in a vacuum as the development of Roger Williams’ revolutionary idea came from a messy political and religious background.

Roger Williams and the Creation of the American Soul is not only a book about the life of Williams, but Barry shows how Williams was influenced by not only important personages he came in contact with but also how he influenced them.

[Jay Perkins · Rating 5 out of 5]

One of the most important liberties in the United States has been that of religious freedom. The story of Roger Williams and his fight for what he termed "soul liberty" lay at the root of this freedom. Williams himself was persecuted for his belief in the separation of church and state by the Puritans and Pilgrims who thought that the state should be involved in enforcing church doctrine. There is much here for Christians to learn. What should be our attitude toward state government? Should a nation be Christian and enforce certain "Christian principles"? Williams' conclusions are surprising and helpful.

One aspect of Roger Williams that impressed me was his sterling character. For some reason my previous perception of him was that of a radical, inconsistent firebrand. However, he was actually extremely brilliant, logical, and humble. By many of those around him, including those who banished him from Massachusetts Bay, Williams exemplified what it meant to be a Christian. Several times Barry quotes opponents of Williams stating that he was a very godly man with a sweet spirit. Some from the Massachusetts Bay colony kept up cordial friendship with him for many years after Williams' banishment. Roger Williams had an interest in and a concern for the Indians that outshone many of the other Puritans. The Providence government he founded was the first in the English world to outlaw slavery. He was also theologically robust and personal in relationship to God.

So much of what he wrote, fought for, and believed is relevant today.

Important quotes:

"...his belief in both the purity of the church and the sinfulness of man compelled him to demand absolute separation, "a wall of separation" as he had written earlier, between the Edenic garden of the church and the corrupt world of the state" (page 333)


"But if one believed that the state derived its authority and power from the people, then the state was invested with all the errors of humanity. And it should refrain in any way---in any way---from involving itself in matters of religion. For giving any power to the magistrate over the church meant giving power to the people over the church. 'If no Religion but that which the Commonweal approves,' he argued, 'then no Christ, no God, but at the pleasure of this world'...It meant forced worship, and 'forc't Worshpp stincks in Gods Nostrills.' " (page 336)

"Williams was the creator of the tradition Jefferson continued. Either could have said what Jefferson did: 'I have sworn upon the altar of God eternal hostility against every form of tyranny over the mind of man.'" (Page 392)

[Ben]

In John M. Barry’s 17th-century European and North American world, Roger Williams stands as a pillar of toleration and a lonely advocate of the complete freedom of conscience. Puritanism in the New England colonies is a monolithic block of religious authoritarianism ruled by divinely-empowered magistrates employing various punishments for nonconformity, including banishment, flogging, torture, disfigurement, and execution by hanging. (And burning, too? It’s hard to keep track.) England offers a mirror image, with the Anglican/Royal contingency doling out the floggings and torture to the Puritans and other dissenters. Somewhere along English society’s pendular spectrum of Catholic antipathy/sympathy, the papists get the royal treatment too (pun intended), depending on the political winds. And that’s not to mention the brief interregnum when King Charles loses his head and the Anglicans have their day on the chopping block. (Have I mentioned drawing and quartering, and heads on pikes?) In continental Europe, Catholics and the countless splintering groups of Protestants are on the giving and/or receiving end of all of the above. And the dwindling natives of New England, their level of religious toleration undefined, are busy trying to avoid genocide—via disease or war, take your pick—by negotiating alliances, exacting revenge on English settlers (skin-flaying is fun), or fighting losing battles against superior English weaponry.

Enter Roger Williams, American hero, chased first out of England, and then Massachusetts, for speaking his mind. Driven into the wilderness alone, in the dead of winter, and harbored by Indian friends, he establishes what will become Rhode Island and Providence Plantations, a safe haven for nonconformists, free-thinkers, witches, Quakers, and other English colonists who have managed to peeve the United Colonies of Massachusetts, Plymouth, Connecticut, and New Haven. Williams’s unprecedented new government is both democratic and secular, a radical experiment in both the New World and the Old World.

It’s hard for me to recall reading a biography where I didn’t walk away thinking that this man or woman was my new personal hero. It’s important to remember then, that an author is a bit like a mechanic; most of us are at the mercy of his diagnosis unless we seek other opinions. That’s not to say John Barry doesn’t put Williams into context or doesn’t acknowledge Williams’s influences, allies, and detractors. In fact, the book is not really a biography; it’s mostly context. (Wars, floggings, tortures, banishments, remember?) To quote the author, “I started this book to examine the origins of the debate over the role of religion in public life.” Nevertheless, Williams comes across as Captain America steering the ship towards modern secular USA.

Not that I’m complaining. Who doesn’t love a good hero? But I’m slightly doubtful. The Williams vs. the World scenario is a little too easy. Take the Quakers, for example, whom Barry does introduce, but as bit players. In my uninformed mind they were a meek, pacifistic group until Barry explained that women Quakers would parade naked through the streets of Boston, begging for (and getting) a vicious flogging—a colonial Pussy Riot attack on the religio-political establishment. But where in the Moscow did they come from? Their presence suggests independent thinking parallel to Roger Williams. I know, I know, if you want a balanced view, read more books. By the way, Roger Williams despised the Quakers and their theology. Yet he extended his principle of “soul liberty” to them as well, which does give him bonus points.

In the interest of seeking a deeper story, an enlightening companion book to John M. Barry’s Roger Williams might be Walter W. Woodward’s Prospero's America: John Winthrop, Jr., Alchemy, and the Creation of New England Culture, 1606-1676 (The title alone should convince you). In this fascinating and revealing book, Woodward makes the case for a strain of tolerance within Puritanism, exemplified by John Winthrop, Jr., another great mind of the 17th century and an influential leader in New England. (He was my hero of the month until Roger Williams came along.)

Through the study of alchemical philosophy (which is more than just leprechaun magic), and in communication with a network of alchemists throughout Europe and even the Middle East, John Winthrop, Jr. advanced early medicine, chemistry, and experimental science in colonial New England. He was the first colonial member of the Royal Society. He founded New London, Connecticut as a visionary plantation to “transform New England and make it an example to the world of a society improved by the application of godly science” (it didn’t work out). He served 18 years as the governor of Connecticut. And his leadership more or less single-handedly brought an end to Connecticut’s pre-Salem habit of executing witches. Winthrop’s work with associates of varying Christian sects in the pursuit of pansophism—the embrace of universal knowledge—undermines John Barry’s monolithic Puritanism. Woodward writes: “Winthrop’s willingness to seek alchemical information from . . . other Christians of a variety of sectarian persuasions reflects Neoplatonic views widely held in both alchemical and mainstream Puritan circles.”

Contrast these irenic (Woodward’s word) ideas with Winthrop’s father, John Winthrop, Sr., who was the governor of Massachusetts Bay Colony and the author of the famous “City on a Hill” sermon, which presented the Puritan mission of establishing a “New Israel” in the New World, a society founded upon biblical law and led by God-ordained political leaders. Actually, that is exactly the contrast that John Barry sets up in his book, except that his contrast is between Winthrop Sr.’s “City on a Hill” and Williams’s concept of “Soul Liberty.” The central theme of Barry’s book is that the tension between these two ideas, the Christian founding of America and the separation of church and state, have formed today’s “American Soul.”

Winthrop, Jr. and his pansophic ideas don’t exactly undermine Barry’s two-sided coin thesis, but to me they do suggest a more complicated story than the battle between the Puritan crazies and Williams’s singular radicalism. I suppose it’s just a matter of degree, and Winthrop Jr. falls somewhere in between. Woodward says, “Massachusetts, through its policies limiting the honest exploration of religious belief and by giving churches control over the Bay Colony government, could be seen to be limiting the Puritan movement rather than defending it. . . But if Winthrop criticized Massachusetts’s restrictive religious policies, he did so privately and as a Puritan Neoplatonist, not as a radical enthusiast.”

So, Winthrop, Jr. was a tolerant mainstream Puritan, but he was no Roger Williams. As an example, Winthrop’s intervention to stop Connecticut’s witch-hunt craze is impressive, but he worked within the Puritan legal system to do so. By presiding over witch trials, Winthrop acquitted the accused not (as we moderns might guess) because he demonstrated the absurdity of believing in witchcraft, but because his deep knowledge of occult philosophy convinced him that the average Hartford yahoo lacked the know-how to commune with the devil. Good for him. But, of course, an individual accused of witchcraft could always flee to Roger Williams’s Rhode Island, where you could believe what you like and skip the whole prosecution and occult-rationalizing altogether.

The odd thing about these two books is that neither author connects Winthrop, Jr. and Williams in any meaningful way. How can each of these towering contemporaries, both of whom are examined and celebrated for their degrees of tolerance, independent thinking, and intellectual prowess, and who remained neighbors 60 miles apart, receive barely a mention in the other’s biography? Perhaps Winthrop and Williams truly did operate within their own silos, ships passing in the night as they interacted with the same leadership circles in both England and New England. Perhaps this connection falls too far outside each author’s central thesis. But come on: John Winthrop Sr. was a father to one and a father-figure to the other. Where is match.com when you need it?

John Barry tells a fascinating story, creating a vivid setting of religious conflict in both England and New England between political structures and between people of deep intellectual and spiritual conviction. I reiterate that point because, unfortunately, Barry ends his book with a disappointing afterword that feels like a half-hearted obligatory attempt to connect the story to today’s “issues.” (I imagine the average historian finishing writing his/her book and thinking, “Dammit, now I have to make this relevant to today!”) Barry first provides a brief overview of how historians differ on their assessment of Williams’s influence on American political thought (from insignificant to a superstar, depending on who you ask). This seems irrelevant to the assertion that debates over the spheres of church and state continue today, and I found it distracting, not to mention confusing, since the book has argued unequivocally to this point that Williams was a major influence on the issue. Barry then moves quickly past the Founding Fathers and the Constitution before lamely setting up a conservative (read Republican) versus liberal matchup, and you might guess who falls on the side of those old Puritan religious authoritarians and who stands majestically for freedom and liberty. Rick Santorum is the arbitrary choice for a contextless quote about liberty, morality, and God’s will, Barry’s illustration of how conservatives are somehow uncomfortable with the First Amendment or that they might try to enforce the Ten Commandments if we let down our guard. (George W. Bush also makes a quick appearance as the modern version of the dastardly King James.)

It is a noble task to find connections between the past and the present—otherwise, why does history matter? But this weak, partisan jab—and abrupt leap across four centuries—makes me wonder if sometimes historians should stick with the story and let the dear reader draw his own lessons.

[Jeremy Canipe · Rating 4 out of 5]

John M. Barry finished his M.A. in American history before withdrawing from the Rutgers University Ph. D. program to become a high school football coach before becoming independent historian and free lance journalist. His other books include writing about college football, the deadly 1917 flu pandemic, and the 1927 Mississippi River flood.

This book goes far afield in time and theme from Barry's other writing but is quite well researched and very well written. While Barry ultimately has his eyes on modern America, with an interest on religious freedom and political freedom, his book does a marvelous job of uncovering the early history of these important and central portions of history of the United States and its origins in English, European, and early colonial American history.

While Roger Williams (1603-1683) is the key player and central to this history, the story necessarily does not begin with him. Instead, Barry dives deeply into the intertwined history and power of the national church of England. In a pattern repeated throughout western Christendom, the prevailing assumption was that the monarchy was required to support and uphold the church, so as to ensure correct Christian doctrine and worship were the norm within a kingdom. They believed that the Old Testament example of the relationship between Israel and God applied directly to their kingdoms, so that any failure could lead to God's judgment on their nation.

This fundamental presupposition of the medieval European worldview may help explain, in large degree, the deadly earnestness of the various European monarchs in the context of the outbreak of Protestantism and its myriad varieties of doctrine and practice. In the specific case of England, one might say that the switch from Catholic to Protestant to Catholic and back to Protestant monarchs put this deep theological and political issue in full display. Moreover, within English Protestantism, there was conflict between High Church monarchs and bishops, like Bishop Laud, and low church or Puritan and evangelical believers and leaders of church and state. They believed the very survival of the state and the right church was at stake.

In this context, Roger Williams was born in 1603. He was from a sort of middling family with some notable members, but rose due to the patronage of Edward Coke, a leading judge and advisor to English Kings and member of Parliament. Williams worked for Coke and was his assistant during great conflicts between the law courts of England with King James 1st and King Charles 1st over whether England's monarchs were subject to limits such as Magna Carta or above the law, meaning the divine right monarchy theory.

This background influenced Roger Williams as he went to Oxford and then became a Puritan pastor. He would leave England just steps ahead of a likely investigation by the High Commission and Bishop Laud. Probably prison (which was so unhealthy as to be deadly even for young, healthy men), as quite possibly the sawing off of his ears, and boring of a hole in his tongue were in view. So Williams went to New England with his new bride (having been disallowed to have married his preferred choice, a woman of the nobility, due to not being of gentle birth).

In New England, much of Roger Williams life would be in proud tension and dispute with colonial political and religious leaders. He was eventually kicked out of Massachusetts and eventually founded a new colony, which became Rhode Island. The reasons were his disagreement with certain details of worship and with his rejection of the idea of the government having authority to enforce laws defined in the Old Testament as to correct views of God and how people should relate to God. Williams had concluded that, in the church era, only laws from the Bible about relationships between people and not those pertaining to one's relationship to God were subject to human governmental judgment.

There is too much to detail here about the development of his views on matters of faith and government and his successful protection of "soul liberty" (to use his phrase) as a new experiment in English liberty, much less the more democratic form of government launched in Rhode Island. One fascinating test, near the end of the book, was his views of Quakers. While Massachusetts and others often imprisoned, expelled, and even executed Quakers, William's Rhode Islands did not but he simply tried to debate them and to convince them (and others0 of the Quaker's theological errors).

Moreover, his truly positive and respectful relationships with Native Americans and his rejection of the idea that the English could claim any land in North America not voluntarily sold to them by the Native nation which owned it was quite remarkable for the era.

While as the book suggests it is difficult to confirm the extent of Roger Williams' direct influence on the development of the First Amendment and freedom of religion and of speech, his story is one well worth consideration and study.

[Margaret · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is an incredible book! Never have I been so riveted by a history book! I thought that I knew a little bit about our pre- revolutionary war history, having been a prolific reader all my life, but I didn't know anything! I also was not familiar with any of Mr. Barry's other books, but I found out that his other books have won more than 20 awards. In my opinion this book will join them on that list. This book looks at the very beginnings of the conflict over the relationship between the church and state and between an individuals rights to religious freedom and the state. Like all births, the birth of our nation and the birth of religious freedom were very messy and prolonged and this book reflects that. At times I wanted to put the book down because the it revealed our painful past in some detail, but I could not because there was too much to learn. My copy of this book contains many underlinings and notes as I read it with a pencil in my hand. By the time that I was finished I felt as if I had completed a semester's coarse on the subject. Thank you Mr. Barry, and thank you Goodreads First Reads for sending me this book.

[Thing Two · Rating 4 out of 5]

When I started this book, I believed the Pilgrims came to the Massachusetts shores because they were seeking freedom of religion; I believed that Thomas Jefferson coined the phrase "a wall of separation"; and I believed that the first amendment was written to keep the church - God/religion, etc. - out of the state. I now know better.

Roger Williams was a Protestant theologian studying under Sir Edward Coke when Coke was imprisoned for ideas in conflict with James I. In order to escape his own imprisonment, Williams boarded a ship in the middle of winter, joining others fleeing religious persecution. When he arrived at the Massachusetts Bay Colony, he discovered his ideas of religious freedom differed significantly from those of his "Puritan" neighbors.

John Barry had intended to write a book about an evangelist after World War I, but found the history of religion in America, and the specific origins of the First Amendment, intrigued him. This lead him back to the Church of England and the Calvinists.

This book was interesting, easy to read and grasp, and challenged my understanding of the role of religion in Government.

[Peter Flom · Rating 5 out of 5]

Review: Although I am not an historian, I think I have a reasonable knowledge of American history; yet, before reading this book, I knew nothing of Roger Williams. This is a shame, because he was a key figure in our history.

Williams was a Puritan in 17th century England. He studied under Coke. He fled England for Massachusetts, running from Archbishop Laud, who wanted to torture and imprison him. But then he fled Massachusetts, again fearing torture and imprisonment, this time from his fellow Puritans.

The Puritans wanted to be rid of him for his ideas, which were original and dangerous. Among those ideas was the separation of Church and State.

Williams then established the colony of Rhode Island; the first place in the western world where the state did not impose a religion.

This is an excellent biography of a man who is much too little known.

[Janet · Rating 3 out of 5]

Thank you John M. Barry. It has been a long time since I have read a book that made me use so much of my brain. I had to get out the dictionary a few times for unfamiliar words. This was a very well researched historical account. I learned a great deal about my country and church. It is amazing that someone's ideas and beliefs still shape current decisions even after 400+ years. I did not remember Roger Williams name from any of my school year's history, but it is evident that he was a great part of our American History. I would recommend this book to anyone who likes history, even casually. This book was very easy to read and held interest in it's "story telling" format.

[Lauren Albert · Rating 5 out of 5]

What I knew about Roger Williams could be summed up in four words: "religious toleration" and "Rhode Island"! But he is a far more interesting and remarkable man than can be summed up so simply. His toleration was astoundingly beyond what even the more tolerant believed in his time. And it was rooted in his belief in human weakness, including his. Error was constant--so how could anyone but God judge others? The state should not judge thoughts and beliefs but acts. And since he believed in an absolute separation of church and state, the acts the state should judge were limited to non-religious matters. Thoughts were for the individual conscience to deal with.

[alex · Rating 4 out of 5]

Rhode Island has a history that is significantly more interesting than its name would suggest. When the Narragansett welcomed Roger Williams after he was banished from Salem with “What Cheer Netop!” part English phrase “what cheery news do you bring” & part Narragansett word for “friend”, blended in service of universal brotherhood, it was a glimpse of a world that could have been. This potential of course was dashed against the rocks of empire and exploitation.

[Pam Johnson · Rating 4 out of 5]

I majored in US History at a New England college, but this book reminded me of how much more there is to learn about history. I especially appreciated the detailed account of Williams' life in England, which so informed his life in New England. This book would be great read with Mayflower, by Nathaniel Philbrick-- in fact, I may re-read that next!

[Joseph Haletky · Rating 5 out of 5]

The author is a college classmate of mine from Brown University in Providence, RI., and I grew up in the Boston area. Thus, both author and subject were of interest to me. Very well written story of one of the more overlooked Founding Fathers.

[Kristen]

I'm so happy to have won this book in the giveaway! Can't wait to receive it and start reading! Thanks!

[Yy]

I won this book for free through Goodreads First Reads. Thanks.

[Ryan · Rating 5 out of 5]

Even though I served part of my mission for The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints in Rhode Island, I first really learned a little bit about Roger Williams while doing my master's thesis on the history of American ideas about Zion and New Jerusalem from the 17th to 19th centuries. He was one of the many fascinating figures whose ideas about the future of Christianity in America and what that would mean for the world were especially intriguing for a Latter-day Saint. Later I heard Elder Jeffrey R. Holland, 10th great-grandson of Williams, talk about Williams' realization that there could be no Church of Christ on the earth without prophets and apostles (see "Prophets, Seers, and Revelators," Oct. 2004 General Conference)--this is a fact that Barry mentions in this book at least a couple of times. Sometime after that, I learned that my own 9th great-grandfather, Thomas Harris, came over to the New England colonies on the same ship with Williams in 1631. (I was really hoping Thomas would get a mention in the book since he also went south with Williams for conscience sake; but it turns out that only Thomas' brother, William--one of Williams' rivals in the new Providence Plantation--got mentioned, a lot unfortunately. I haven't learned where Thomas himself stood in that rivalry.)
All of that was part of why I started listening to this book. The other part--the biggest part, really--is because academically over the years, I have become more interested in the intertwining and intersections of religion with all other facets of American life--culture, politics, etc. So that title of the book sounded very interesting. I was right! Williams is WAY more interesting that I could have imagined before reading this book, and his contribution to the development of religious freedom is WAY more important (Barry addresses and refutes scholarly evaluations to the contrary very effectively) than I had ever learned about in any aspect of my previous education--which tragically never mentioned Roger Williams that I can recall. Anyone who still thinks that the Puritans came here for religious freedom knows little to nothing about how those early colonies were run. It was Williams who was absolutely the vanguard pioneer of true religious liberty and freedom of conscience in the 'New World,' and (spoiler!) created the single-most religiously free place in the world in the 17th century.
This is the first book I've ever listened to/read by this author. It was very good. The writing style was great and the depth of investigation was thorough--very thorough. In fact, I had no idea when I started listening to the book that I needed that much background about English history and the great rivalry between Sir Edward Coke and Sir Francis Bacon to understand what Roger Williams was doing in America--but I absolutely did. Initially, I was a little annoyed that I felt like the book was taking a very long time to getting around to Williams, but once it did and I followed the whole story, I realized exactly why all that back story was so vital. So don't discouraged during those beginning chapters. Barry knows exactly what he is doing, and the weaving of it all together in the end is masterfully done.
Who should read this book? Everyone! Seriously! If you want to know the real genesis of religious freedom in the United States and appreciate the sacrifice that Williams and so many others made to achieve it, this is THE book. I highly recommend it. This definitely goes on my 'one of my favorite books' shelf!

[Jonathan White · Rating 5 out of 5]

Best kind of bait and switch.

Roger Williams is the main character of this book only insomuch as he is its interpretive key. Really "The American Soul" is the main character. However, that sounds pompous and tiresome and I probably wouldn't've read the book if the author had led with that.

I recently read and loved Peter Marshall's book "Heretics and Believers" about the English Reformation (in which the country went from Catholic to Protestant to Catholic to Protestant, with much ensuing bloodshed). However, that book left me quite disappointed as I searched its pages for "one honest man" who, after having gained access to the levers of power without immediately calling for burning "the other guys" at the stake.

So I came to this book hoping to find a nascent argument for the current arrangement of separation of church and state and freedom of conscience. It did not disappoint!

The rough outline of the narrative is:
+Roger Williams was a bright young English-born Puritan.
+He apprenticed with Edward Coke, the principle defender of English common law who is known for arguing that "the house of an Englishman is to him as his castle" (and the accompanying legal precedent of Habeas Corpus Act 1679.
+From Coke and his adversary Sir Francis Bacon, Williams became convinced of the importance of rigorous due process and legal precedent for a society to remain free.
+Under threat of persecution, Williams took his family to America in 1630
+Upon arrival he quickly became alarmed at what he regarded to be sloppy legal precedent being set by over-zealous churchmen who were blurring their power as ministers and their de-facto (or actual) status as the civil magistrates. His main complaint centered around corporal punishment for nonconformity with the leaders' personal interpretations of religious duties. Basically, the Puritans were committing the same overreach that forced them to the new world in the first place.
+Later he added to his concerns the concept of the King of England being able to give land-grants by fiat. He argued for treating with the Indians. This was very unpopular and the author makes a convincing argument that despite this being left off the list of "crimes" for which Willams was banished from all Puritan colonies (intended to be a passive aggressive death sentence) it was the biggest motivator for the proceedings.
+Williams was saved by the natives. He learned their language and became a trusted friend. Eventually, they gave him the land grants that became Rhode Island. He described this whole process as being "fed by ravens" (1 Kings 17).
+His most famous work "The Bloudy (Bloody) Tenent of Persecution for Cause of Conscience" (published in 1644) brought him to the attention of many powerful men involved in Oliver Cromwell's government, including John Milton- whose views were profoundly shaped by Willams.

There's so much more than I've summarized here (and I focused more on Williams himself than the book actually does). But if you're interested in any of the following, I highly recommend the book:

-Genesis of the modern western ideal of religious toleration
-Early coloring of the distinctly American version of Democracy
-Church polity, governance, and authority
-Messy Puritan in-fighting
-Early arguments for a more humane policy towards the Native Americans

[Kirsten · Rating 5 out of 5]

A refreshing primer for 2025 patriots.

As a kid who was not raised in any religion, I always felt personally insulted every school morning, pledging allegiance to our country as "one nation under God," in a country that ostensibly upheld the separation of religion from government. I started quietly omitting the phrase. Then, I found out that it was never part of the original pledge from 1892 at all: the God phrase was added in during 1950s anti-Communist McCarthyism.

Interesting, right?

Well, say defenders of the new phrase, we are founded as a Christian nation, so no biggie.

OK, hold up. That's only kinda/sorta the story. This is where I would say Americans need to follow that idea a bit further into history...

Yes, Protestant Puritans fled (ahem) religious persecution from a Catholic divine ruler king in England. But then they turned around and founded their colony using the same ruling model they fled--they believed their government should be their religion's leaders.

That didn't sit well with anyone who ever wanted to go their own way--in worship or in free thought in general. (Ahem, enter banishments, deportations, branding, whipping, excessive fines, land grabs, and hangings, witch stuff, etc.)

This book dives into how one lawyer-nerd Protestant, Roger Williams, wanted something better than the Puritan's "city on a hill" in Boston. He wanted people in charge of the state to preserve the purity of God's laws--and your soul's conscience--to be honored as separate from the state's laws of man.

For this, he was banished from Massachusetts and nearly arrested to be sent back to a sure death in England. But he escaped through a 5 foot blizzard and slogged his way to Rhode Island, where he would eventually create what would be considered the freest place in the the world in 1642.

Ahem, why Rhode Island? Well, Roger Williams had earlier taken the time to learn the Indian language--and even had the notion that the English colonists should pay Indians for their land. So, the Indians sheltered him. And, they agreed to sell him the area of Providence.

What happened next to successfully separate church from state in the soul of Americans? This freedom did not happen easily, and it took a wild ride through decades of colonial and English political turmoil. But ultimately, Rhode Island's open minded experiment with the chaos of a truer democracy prevailed.

This "truth," of religious freedom was a hard-won freedom--and should never be given away... as Roger Williams warned over 150 years before the founding of the United States.

[Aolund · Rating 2 out of 5]

This is a look through the rose-colored glasses of a white man writing about the early colonial US. While the parts of the books discussing the cultural climate of England--including Roger Williams early life and the evolution of his legal, political, and religious values-- are fascinating and useful, the book quickly falls prey to anachronistic and apologist representations of early colonial life. Through overly simplistic statements about the relations between Indigenous people and settler-colonists, Barry often obscures the complex and unpleasant reality of the early New England colonies, and his pessimistic assumption of manifest destiny ("The Indians could not have sustained a victory. The English would have eventually returned and eventually taken the land...The Indians could not have ultimately succeeded in keeping the English out of the region" (236)) is useless and an act of imaginative cruelty.

While the book as a whole is well-researched and attempts even-handedness, it ultimately falls short of presenting as realistic and useful work of history as it could have done.

[Tom Brennan · Rating 5 out of 5]

Barry's work is of the excellent variety that combines placing his subject into his own day while at the same time showing us his relation to ours. As a Baptist pastor, I had, of course, heard of Roger Williams before picking up this book. What I did not realize was the extent to which he was influential in both English/American politics and English/American religion. Nor did I realize how that influence has descended down to our day, forming a substantial part of what it means to be American. I do not like revisionist history books that tear down their subjects, reducing them to the size of modern day midgets as the historian hurls metaphorical judgment at their head. By the same token, I do not like puff pieces either, those books that might as well have Joseph Goebbels as their author. I like balanced books, but especially books true to history. This one is, and well-written to boot.

...and, best of all, it will make you think. Read it.

[Timothy Smallwood · Rating 5 out of 5]

Little known hero of liberty

Being a lover of history, especially church history, I found this book to be most intriguing. I had heard of Rogers being championed as a Baptist. There is a short account of him being baptized into the Baptist church, but leaving it when he could not rectify the perpetuity of Christ’s church as they had claimed. He was ultimately a Puritan with radical beliefs. His claim to fame, and the reason I call him a hero, is his instituting of religious freedom in the colony of Rhode Island. When all around him, his peers were advocating for the Church of England, he allowed all faiths to settle within their borders without any threat of persecution. This liberty would become the foundation of freedom of worship in the coming United States of America.

[Steve Lacey · Rating 5 out of 5]

Roger Williams and the Creation of the American Soul

This is a typical John Barry masterpiece. I have previously read Rising Tide and The Great Influenza and all three have the same style. A very important underappreciated subject is chronicled deeply and beautifully, but only after extremely detailed and rich background occupying 1/3 to 1/2 of the book ahead of the ostensible subject. I loved it so much.