Nor was it intended to be. Read on….

Roger Williams, a Puritan, believed the “garden of the church” should be separated “from the wilderness of the world” by means of a wall of separation. “Wilderness for them was a place of danger where evil lurked. So when Roger Williams talked about separating the garden of the church from the wilderness of the world, he was eager to maintain the integrity of the faith lest it be corrupted by too close an association with the state.”

In 1625 Charles I had little tolerance for those who wanted to purge the Church of England of all Roman Catholic elements, or, as they became known, Puritans. Charles empowered church authorities to persecute those who deviated from church policy. The year 1629 became one of decision for many Puritans. John Winthrop was given an opportunity to lead an organization called the Massachusetts Bay Company. 

In early April 1630 Winthrop led a party bound for Salem, Massachusetts, followed by Roger and Mary Williams eight months later. Along with 20 other passengers on the vessel Lyon, they landed at Nantasket on February 5, 1631. Winthrop was glad to greet them. In his journal he referred to Williams as “a godly minister.”

Upon his arrival in Boston, Williams was offered the  top pastorate in New England. To Winthrop’s surprise, Williams turned it down, because the church was still affiliated with the Church of England. Williams believed in a fully separated church, one untainted by compromise with the state religion of the king’s church.

Without hesitation Williams expounded on the idea that church and state should be separate. He questioned the right of the civil authorities to enforce religious edicts. Williams denied that the state could enforce religious commandments to love God, avoid blasphemy, or keep the Sabbath. These are matters of conscience, he believed, which the state must leave to the church.

This was too much for the Massachusetts authorities. Dissenting religious views were not tolerated. Winthrop sent a warning to Williams to flee the colony. Although he disagreed with Williams, Winthrop believed him to be a well-intentioned Puritan and did not want to see him die on a harsh winter voyage to England. Instead, in January 1636 Williams left Massachusetts. Abandoned by Puritans, he lived only by shelter of the Indigenous people. Williams lived with Native Americans of one tribe or another for 14 weeks until spring and settled in what is now Providence, Rhode Island. He was joined by his wife and children and faithful like-minded friends to settle Providence with land he purchased from the Narragansett tribe.

It was in Providence that the first government in the Americas was established with full religious freedom. The church and citizens’ religious opinions and commitments were completely separate from the civil government. 

Their first governmental agreement, written and agreed to in 1638, was simple and relevant “only in civil things.” The agreement did not require any religious test or creed: “We , desirous to inhabit in the town of Providence, do promise to subject ourselves to all such orders or agreements as shall be made for public good of the body by the major assent of the present inhabitants, incorporated together into a town—fellowship, and such others whom they shall admit unto them, only in civil things.” The citizens of Providence committed themselves again to religious liberty in a more complex 1640 Agreement, affirming: “We agree, as formerly hath been the liberties of the town, so still, to hold forth, liberty of conscience.” 7 With this simple phrase, the colony at Rhode Island agreed to conduct civil business without regard to the religious views of the citizens.

When Claiborne Pell, senator from Rhode Island, dedicated a national park in honor of Williams in Providence on October 8, 1984, he said that in 1636, 13 families came together to create “the first genuine democracy—also the first church-divorced and conscience-free community in modern history.” What an incredible story! Surely it’s one that should be told alongside the story of the Puritans coming to a new land to seek religious freedom for themselves.