In this year celebrating the 250th anniversary of the founding of the United States of America, it’s important to understand the underpinning ideas in the Constitution and Bill of Rights. In today’s episode, we will be looking at the fascinating “Pre-Founding” Father, Roger Williams. He accomplished many things in his life but here we look primarily at his contributions to the notion of a firm separation of church and State.
To teach us about Williams, LDF host Dan Wotherspoon invited his good friend and mentor Charles Randall Paul (Randy). Randy is a social psychologist who found in Roger Williams someone who embodied firm convictions of his own religious beliefs, but who never forced them on others. He founded the community of Providence (now Rhode Island) in which persons of any faith tradition, and even atheists, were welcomed and learned to live peaceably with each other. What Williams did allow and encouraged in Providence was freedom for anyone to “contest” their beliefs with folks of different religious sensibilities, who in return were able to present fully why their tradition of beliefs were superior to others. In this way, those who differed with others learned to be, as Randy puts it, “trustworthy opponents,” who recognized and honored others’ ideas and commitments, rather than rivals and bad actors. Roger Williams also included Native Americans in this experiment, learning the language of several tribes and publishing the first book detailing their tongues.
Providence offered a model for others its ways of living with others who disagree in good faith. The community organization became known as a “Lively Experiment,” and it deeply influenced the thinking of James Madison and Thomas Jefferson when it came to their arguments for the United States to maintain a strong separation between church and state.
A core sensibility of Williams is his deep, deep belief that people should never be forced to act or believe things that went against their conscience. Interspersed in this episode are Randy’s own beautiful work and thinking that argues the same thing while greatly expanding on it.
This conversation is a must listen, especially for those among us who have been despairing about what is currently happening politically in the U.S. The episode offers hope rather than despondency. Jump in!
Links:
Mary Lee Settle, I, Roger Williams (Norton, 2001)
Martha Nussbaum, “Equal Liberty of Conscience: Roger Williams and the Roots of a Constitutional Tradition,” Berkeley, 2006
Jon Ogden’s organization for teaching children values with or without religious beliefs: Uplift Kids