City on a Hill

Roger Williams: A Liberal Baptist Ahead of His Time!

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In this episode, we discuss Roger Williams's contribution to our understanding of church and state and how he shaped the liberal imagination.

NOTES:

Bonus fact: Our wives are descendants of Roger Williams! So we have a vested interest in his story.

  • Here is the book that Aeric read: Roger Williams and the Creation of the American Soul: Church, State, and the Birth of Liberty 
  • Find out more about Roger Williams here or here or here .

    • RECAP/TAKEAWAYS:

    • The church argued over things that seem to us as minor things. Chances are someone will say that about our arguments in years to come!
    • Colonists fled an established church and created another in Massachusetts Bay. It was all they knew!
    • Roger Williams' key ideas were the separation of Church and State and the Freedom of Conscience. Because you could not coerce someone's conscience in matters of religion he felt the state could not require religious affiliations. It would, in his mind, compromise the genuine nature of a religious belief.
    • This fostered liberalism as we know it. The individual is supreme.
    • The legacy of this freedom of conscience has bred a fierce individualism so that in matters of the state, or church, or other institution, the individual is central and most important.
    • We should all humbly recognize that our ideas, even our good ones, can bring about outcomes that are not good.

      • GET IN TOUCH:

      We'd love to hear from you. Please send us an email or question at [email protected].

      MUSIC:

      Little Lily Swing, Tri-Tachyon, Attribution-Noncommercial 4.0 International, https://freemusicarchive.org/music/Tri-Tachyon/the-kleptotonic-ep/little-lily-swing

      Sorry, Comfort Fit, Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Germany (CC BY-NC-ND 3.0 DE),

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