Roger Williams and Church-State Relations

I recently finished reading a book, The Wordy Shipmates written by Sarah Vowell, loaned to me by a member of First Congregational Chuch. It is a delightful perspective on the story of the Puritans and, in particular, John Winthrop.

One of Winthrop's challenges as governor of the colony was what to do with Roger Williams. Williams was a thorn in the side to the colony. Eventually, Roger Williams was forced to leave Massachusetts. He, and other like-minded individuals, founded Providence, Rhode Island. Williams became a Baptist and started the first Baptist church in America, which I have visited.

When the small party agreed to live together in community, they agreed to what is known as the Providence Agreement. This covenant outlined how they would be in relationship with each other -

We whose names are hereunder, desirous to inhabit in the town of Providence, do promise to subject ourselves in active and passive obedience to all such orders or agreements as shall be made for the public good of the body in an orderly way, by the major consent of present inhabitants, masters of families, incorporated together in a Towne fellowship, and others whom they shall admit unto them only in civil things.

One of the important things about this agreement was the defined separation of state and church responsibilities. You note that this covenant specified the agreements or orders made by the governing councils in Providence would only deal with civil things and not religious things. Thus, for example, the government of Providence could not punish a person for missing Sunday services as would happen in Massachusetts.

So, on August 20, 1637, a group of colonists on American soil clearly delineated between the civil sphere and the religious sphere. Long before Jefferson's famous letter of 1802 to the Baptists in Danbury Connecticut in which Jefferson wrote: Believing with you that religion is a matter which lies solely between man & his god, that he owes account to none other for his faith or his worship, that the legitimate powers of government reach actions only, and not opinions, I contemplate with sovereign reverence that act of the whole American people which declared that their legislature should make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof, thus building a wall of separation between church and state., Roger Williams put forth the principle.