Opening Day for the Roger Williams Memorial at Prospect Terrace, Providence, RI 1939
Below: 80th Anniversary Celebration held June 2019.
Moderator: Ms. Wendy Nilsson, Director of the Providence Recreation Department.
Marc Kohler Roger Williams Educational Foundation 168 Armistice Blvd.Pawtucket, RI 02860 401-441-2129 marcwkohler@aol.com Web Site: http://www.marcwkohler.com/?page_id=1662
Thank you for your interest in the Roger Williams Educational Foundation. I hope you received the packet of materials that I sent to you. (Their Links are all at the end of this Application) There is a full list of Pages from our web site: http://www.marcwkohler.com/?page_id=1662, and you can print out any of the pages there.
Introduction In Rhode Island, charitable organizations are created to provide services that enhance, educate, and edify our state and hopefully, the nation. In this case, I believe that Roger Williams has disappeared from Rhode Island culture. In fact, the leaders of the Roger Williams educational establishment have given up on him. They believe that Roger Williams had nothing to do with the Constitution, the separation of church and state, and the First Amendment. Dr. Stanley Lemons said it best in a talk at the Roger Was Here conference held at Smith’s Castle last September: “… He (Roger) was despised by everyone outside of the colony, and then was forgotten by most people in his colony….the exceptions were a few Baptists who would remember him. He is not reborn until the 19th Century. There is no evidence whatsoever that Madison or Jefferson even knew Roger Williams or any other founding fathers used his work to write the Constitution or the First Amendment…”
This is a very sad situation. The goal of The Roger Williams Educational Foundation is to stop the continuation of this situation, and we will bring Roger Williams back to his proper place in both Rhode Island and the all of the country.
As a result of this shift in Roger Williams scholarship, we live in a time where the knowledge and appreciation for Roger William’s life and work has sunk to an embarrassing low level. Most likely, less than 5% of the Rhode Island the population know anything about Roger Williams. The 5% that do know about him know things that are not true, not accurate, and oftentimes demeaning. The last one percent who might know about Roger Williams and the group that lead Roger Williams support in Rhode Island have concluded that there is nothing significant about Roger’s life and work.
For you and the LL Firm, your help will give you, your children, your grandchildren, and their children a rock solid foundation for the history of the creation of Rhode Island, the first totally secular state in modern history. They will also learn the ideas and ideals of the nation’s first advocate of freedom of religion, speech, and assembly as well the obligations of civil state to care for everyone living in the “ship” of the commonweal along with the separation of church and state.
The Roger Williams Educational Foundation will change our world, and help all of us to feel pride, admiration, and appreciation of Roger Williams and his creation of Rhode Island. This will not be easy. The movement to make Roger worthless has the support of many scholars.
There are scholars who disagree with this negative estimation. Alan Johnson, a retired lawyer and historian, in The First American Founder spends many pages in the book “proving” Roger’s importance to Locke, Madison, Adams, and many other Founders. He has a whole Appendix about the influence of Roger Williams on Locke. He also points out that Founders like Benjamin Franklin had two of Roger’s books in his collection. He also mentions Steven Hopkins: “…Hopkins’s unfinished history of Rhode Island, serialized in 1762 and 1765 in the Providence Gazette, is largely an account of Roger Williams’s principles and historical actions.10 In that discussion Hopkins wrote that “Roger Williams justly claims the honor of having been the first legislator in the world; in its latter ages, that fully and effectually provided for and established a free, full, and absolute liberty of conscience.” Alan Johnson The First American Founder, Page 263 (?)
In the middle of these two extreme views, John Barry, author of Roger Williams and the Creation of the American Soul, Church, State, and the Birth of Liberty. He agrees that there is more to this discussion than these two sides. He writes about the many books and pamphlets that mentioned Roger Williams’ name in the years after The Bloudy Tenent of Persecution, for Cause of Conscience. We should not forget that after 1661, all discussions or publications of these issues were outlawed in England by the Act of Uniformity. People mention that one advocate for Roger’s ideas was Algernon Sidney, but they forget that Charles II and the Parliament beheaded him in December of 1683.
John has been helping me, and he finds my commitment to Roger Williams worthy of support: He wrote this recommendation for this Locke Lord application. ’…I’m best known, especially these days, for my book about the 1918 pandemic, but in my view my best book is one on Roger Williams, which apparently has gotten under Marc Kohler’s skin to the extent he is dedicating an extraordinary amount of time to making Williams’s legacy better known. He’s clearly dedicated and is expanding the knowledge of Williams and those around him. I am just writing now in support of his efforts. If you can help, please do…”
Understanding Roger Williams Better The Roger Williams Educational Foundation has a challenge. We need to bring Roger alive. We need to prove that much of what is believed about Roger Williams is not true, that much of it degrades his ideas, and that losing him is a national tragedy.
Here is where we start:
Roger was a minister. No, Roger might have been paid a bit in his time in Salem, but at no other time in his life was he paid or supported by any church, Christian denomination, or organization. The Pembroke College Alumni list him as a Politician, Theologian…and I would add Statesman instead of Politician.
He founded the Baptist Church in America. The Baptist church started in early 1600s in the Dutch Republic. Over the years, the church became associated and disassociated with Anabaptists and Mennonites, and other religions. John Clarke, a good friend of Roger Williams started a Baptist church in Newport the same year that Roger is credited with starting the Baptist Church in Providence. The problem with this story is that Roger met a group of Particular Baptists who had been banished from Massachusetts. He baptized himself, and then the other ten members—-sounds like the start of a church. Within a few weeks after this event, Roger quit the church. Reverend Chad Brown (also known as Chaddus Browne) took over in his stead, operated a trading Post, and progenitor of John, Nicholas, Moses and Joseph Brown. Roger wrote that he became a “Seeker”. He is sometimes credited with creating the known a Seekers as the years passed.
Roger bought the land for Providence from the Narragansetts. This is yet another distortion of history. From the day that Roger Williams arrived in the Bay Colony, he made friends with the indigenous people. Tribes shared dialects of Algonkin, and Roger learned thier language. When he lived in Plymouth and Salem, he ran trading posts. People forget that Roger was a brilliant linguist. As I child, he learned Dutch and French from immigrants around the Smithfield Market. By the time he was twelve, he had learned Latin and taught himself how to do shorthand. By the time he finished Pembroke College, he had learned Hebrew and Greek. Algonkin or Narragansett came to him quickly. In 1643, he wrote the first translation of an indigenous language in A Key into the Language of America known as A help to the Language of the Natives in that part of America called New England. (1643). Even though Roger acquired the land for Providence in 1636, the actual Deed was not signed until 1638. In memories of this transaction, Roger wrote “…I declare to posterity, that were it not for the favor God gave me with Canonicus, none of these parts, no, not Rhode Island, had been purchased or obtained, for I never got any thing out of Canonicus but by gift…” When Miantonomoh was executed, Roger said that he had been in Roger’s house a thousand times. The Miantonomoh ship was commissioned in 1863: https:// en.wikipedia.org/wiki/USS_Miantonomoh_(1863)
Roger and the Quakers I have heard historians discuss Roger and Quakers, and they laugh out loud. To them, hatred for the Quakers is a joke. Everyone today, accepts this group as a valid religious group, and a valid Christian group. If I ask them if they know anything about the beliefs of the Quakers, in all cases, the answer is no. They have no idea that. “…The Friends Quakers’ theological beliefs vary considerably. Tolerance of dissent widely varies among yearly meetings. Most Friends believe in continuing revelation: that God continuously reveals truth directly to individuals. George Fox, an “early Friend”, said, “Christ has come to teach His people Himself.”[Friends often focus on trying to hear God. As Isaac Penington wrote in 1670, “It is not enough to hear of Christ, or read of Christ, but this is the thing—to feel him to be my root, my life, and my foundation…” Quakers reject the idea of priests, believing in the priesthood of all believers. Some express their concept of God using phrases such as “the inner light”, “inward light of Christ”, or “Holy Spirit”…” https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quakers#Theology. Roger Williams possessed a large amount of orthodox (orthodox for him). The Bible is the one and only authority for knowing God, and the “inward light of Christ”, for Roger is not allowed. In fact, the very fact that these historians do not know why Roger hated Quakers means that they understand little of Roger’s theology. This is a recurrent situation in RW studies. They think that his anger violates his own desire for freedom of religion. Yes, he believed you could practice you own religion, but he would complain if you violated every foundation of Christianity. He only wrote and spoke his objections. He never listed a real sword against the Quakers.
Roger and Catholics: From 1529-1534 Henry the VIII plotted against the Catholic Church in England. The divorce from Catherine of Aragon was very real, but there was much more behind it than any religious disagreement. He might even have had the idea of divorcing Catherine when he received the special dispensation from the Pope to marry her. He triggered hundreds of years of Catholic hatred in England. This hatred grew until we saw thousands and thousands of Catholics killed and tortured during his reign. 500,000 Irish people from 1639-1661 were killed, and a million killed during the Potato Famine. This is one of the things that is truly ironic. The whole nation during the Interregnum hated Irish Catholics, but Oliver Cromwell gets all of the blame. It is also odd that few people ever mention that the Church of England mimicked the Catholic church, that Henry hated all of the Protestant reforms. In fact, Henry VI allowed priests to marry in the Church of England. There is a chance. too, that Anne Boleyn was executed with her friends, because she wanted not only that the monasteries to be saved for charitable activities, but that Catholics should not be killed. Thomas Cromwell and Henry VIII knew the kind of wealth that the church properties held, and they wanted it. With all of this hatred for Catholics, Roger insisted that they have freedom of conscience. Jews were welcome into Rhode Island, and Zeta Beta Tau, a Jewish fraternity, celebrates Roger Williams Day on March 22nd! Roger’s tolerance was thorough and all encompassing. That is why Parliament ordered the burning of The Bloudy Tenent. Roger was one of the only persons who believed in this tolerance and America.
Roger’s Christianity This is the area of Roger’s life that truly needs exploration. There is no doubt in my mind that Roger had a Christian orthodoxy that he followed all of his life. I believe that the evolution of his views came from many sources. Alan Johnson believes that Roger attended elementary school at the Holy Sepulcher Church. Many reports say that Roger did not become a Separatist until he was in college, but there are reports that he and his father, James, had fights about religion over his Separatism. We do know that Roger believed in Biblical Typology. This is the belief that events in the Hebrew Testament are “recreated” in the New Testament. In his mind, the nation of Israel was the basis for the Kingdom of God. For Roger, that Kingdom was invisible being made by the Elect Christians and thier actions for goodness in their lives. In fact, in the Bloudy Tenant makes it clear that the Elect will go to Heaven, and all overs will not—-but nothing will happen to either group until the end of the world when Jesus returns. This is why he could not be a member of any Christian sect or denomination. These are just a few of the unique beliefs, and most of them have been hidden to make Roger more “normal” than he ever was!! What is amazing is that such a man who had such unique views could spend forty years negotiating between all the competing interests of the people, the institutions, the religions, the Royalty, and more to consistently build that first secular state in the modern world. This was an endless and difficult task, and I believe that Roger does not get the credit for his work. Too often, he is just the Founder of Rhode Island as if it meant nothing! We need to discover his and Rhode Island’s uniqueness.
Conclusion
In any proposal, the writer needs to explain what we will do, why it will make a difference, and make it clear that we will change the world for better. I hope that I have accomplished that. I need help, for I do not have the resources to fund this kind of effort. I do know that John Barry, Gaetano Marini, and others think that I am on the right track. Below are al of the pages that are available for you to peruse al of the dimensions that I have covered.
ROGER WILLIAMS PROJECT
ARTICLES, ESSAYS, DOCUMENTS & INTRODUCTION TO THE
ROGER WILIAMS EDUCATIONAL FOUNDATION
Compiled and/or written by Marc Kohler
with Temkit Biography
Best Short Biography: https://www.temkit.com/13-Missionary/Roger%20Williams-Brief.pdf Please print this out.
Master Page for Roger Williams Information on my Web Site:
http://www.marcwkohler.com/?page_id=1662
DOCUMENTS and other writings:
Patent for Providence Plantations – March 14, 1643
A Patent (also called Charter) for Providence Plantations – March 14, 1643
1644 RHODE ISLAND CHARTER
http://www.marcwkohler.com/?page_id=1797
Cromwell’s Commonwealth Instrument of Government, 1653 Articles 35,36,37,38 http://www.marcwkohler.com/?page_id=1530
Protestantism and its Political Implications for State-Building in the British Colonies of North America: From the Mayflower Compact to the Federal Constitution of the United States by Massimo Rubboli
http://www.marcwkohler.com/?page_id=1539
Poems by Roger Williams from from A Key into the Language of America or An help to the Language of the Natives in that part of America called New England i
http://www.marcwkohler.com/?page_id=1415
List of Roger Williams’ Works
http://www.marcwkohler.com/?page_id=1994
Roger Williams name in the Pembroke College Registry, Cambridge in 1623
http://www.marcwkohler.com/?page_id=1153
Essays, a Biography and Home Curriculum by Marc Kohler
BULLETED BIOGRAPHY OF ROGER WILLIAMS: 1603-1682
This is work in progress., and I hope that some day it might be posted in high school classrooms around the state. Ranger John McNiff has submitted excellent edits on the whole biography. I am now working on those edits. Author John Barry has approved the use of details, quotes, and events from Roger Williams and the Creation of the American Soul: Church, State, and the Birth of Liberty. If anyone reading this has suggestions, just contact me. I would love to hear them. Here is a shorter version of the Biography written for a Poster: http://www.marcwkohler.com/?page_id=1317
An Introduction to The Roger Williams Educational Foundation
http://www.marcwkohler.com/?page_id=1332
Cranston Herald article about Marc’s talk at the Cranston for “Roving Roger” showing
http://www.marcwkohler.com/?page_id=1572
Roger Williams Home Curriculum
http://www.marcwkohler.com/?page_id=2019
ProJo: Schools should teach about Roger Willliams
http://www.marcwkohler.com/?page_id=1064
Pawtucket TIMES Op-Ed Gaspee and Roger Williams Crucial Lessons for Kids
http://www.marcwkohler.com/?page_id=1082
A Letter to the Editor about Roger Williams, Providence Journal
http://www.marcwkohler.com/projo-schools-should-teach-about-roger-willliams/
Roger Williams Day: Ideas & Suggestions
http://www.marcwkohler.com/?page_id=1320
Reflections Essay written for RI Foundation Carter Roger Williams
Initiative http://www.marcwkohler.com/reflections-essay-written-for-ri-foundation-carter-roger-williams-initiative/
Roger Williams-Oliver Cromwell essay: Roger Williams Reconsidered
http://www.marcwkohler.com/roger-williams-draft-essay/
Letter to the Editor, The Warwick Beacon, A different perspective of Roger Williams http://warwickonline.com/stories/a-different-perspective-of-roger-wA ;
Essays and Letters to the Editor about Roger Williams
http://www.marcwkohler.com/?page_id=150
Blog: Roger Williams: American Hero:
https://rogerwilliamsamericanhero.blogspot.com/
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