DRAFT OF JUNE 10TH SMITH’S CASTLE TALK
What do we need to know about Roger Williams?
Talk by Marc Kohler, June 10th, 2021, at Smith’s Castle’s Lecture on the Lawn Series. marcwkohler@aol.com 401-286-2221
I want to thank Dawn Williams for the invitation to talk about Roger Williams. Roger was a great man, and many people today know nothing about him. I discovered him five years ago by reading Roger Williams and the Creation of the American Soul, Church, State, and the Birth of Liberty by John Barry, and it sent me on my journey to discover Roger Williams.
, The one thing that I learned when I studied Roger Williams was that few people knew anything about him Yes, occasionally I found people who knew a few things about him. The things that they knew about Roger were not fully accurate. This is why I created The Roger Williams Educational Foundation, non-profit organization. . Our goal is to increase the knowledge, appreciation, and pride that we have in Roger Williams.
Here are the four statements that I hear about Roger Williams.
1.Roger Williams was a minister.
2.Roger Williams bought the land for Providence from the Narragansett
3 Roger Williams was the sole founder of the Baptist Church of America
4.vvRoger had something to do with separation of Church and State and may have had something to do with the First Amendment.
I want to correct each of these generalizations, and help you discover how great Roger was, and the impact that he had on Rhode Island and the whole of America.
1.”Minister” Roger Williams served as a minister for only short periods of his life. In most of these cases, he was not paid, and there was no parsonage. And that is why “minister” is not a good name for him. During his day, people called him a minister, because he was deeply religious., He held worship services in his home. He also spoke and wrote about Jesus Christ, Christianity, Christendom, and the freedom of religion. He was associated with a group of Baptists who followed Anne Hutchinson. After only a few weeks, he left the group. He had decided to be a Seeker. A “Seeker” a Christian who did not join any Christian group. I prefer to call Roger a “theologian” instead of Minister.
2. Roger founded the Baptist Church in America. This is a debated point between those who believe that John Clarke deserves this title, not Roger Williams. and took years and years to be settled. I think that saying that Roger Williams founded the Baptist Church in America is a way of degrading Roger’s life and work. This fact that people believe this defines as a lifetime Baptist. Here is the truth: At no time from the day that he left that Baptist group in 1638, Roger Williams never was a member of any Christian denomination. That is such terrible thing to suggest. It puts Roger and his theology in a box, and his work was much more expansive and unique.
3. Roger bought the land from the Narragansett. We know that he might have given the Narragansett some small payment in 1636, The reason this statement is not good for Roger, though, is that it hides the real relationship that Roger had with indigenous people. Roger learned their language. Roger traded with the tribes at his three trading posts. When Chief Miantonomi died, Roger said that Miantonomi had been in his home a thousand times. Roger wrote aa Algonquin Dictionary—the first in the modern era. Roger knew the tribes, and they knew him. Tribes depended on Roger or all sorts of tasks. “Buying the land” means nothing useful.
4. He had something to do with Church and State and the Fifth Amendment to the United States Constitution. This is one of the great debates about Roger Williams. Did he contribute to the separation between church and state and the First Amendment.? Today, historians do not like the idea of the great man theory of history. Roger was very different from other historic. That is why “having something to do with” is the phrase that I found so exasperating. Before Roger, there was no functioning democracy with freedom of religion in the history of the world. Roger did more than just write books about it, he talked about it, make speeches about it, , and he built the first state in world history to have freedom of religion.
There are two other aspects of Roger Williams that I want to present, and they are pretty much new ideas.
5, In all of your reading about Roger Williams, how much have you read about Judge Edward Coke (Spelled Coke but pronounced Cook. I have been studying him, and I can say, without a doubt, if you know nothing about this judge, then you will know nothing about Roger Williams. In short, Coke was a massively important man for his era. He is credited with creating common law, the Petition of Right, “Your home is your castle”, Habeus corpus, precedent as the rock foundation of our laws. I can go on and on and on. He wrote thousands of pages in his Reports and his Institutes. Lawyers all know him well, and he speaks to the ages. The trouble, though, is that people ignore the kind of life crisis that happened while Roger was a stenographer and amanuensis. What is odd is that Coke had many stenographers, and he sent them to all the courts in London, so that he could write about the cases in his Reports. To, there are things about Coke that if we ignore, we understand Roger less. Judge Coke was an evil judge and prosecutor. Many times, he destroyed defendants, and destroyed their lives with no apology ever. In 1616, Coke loses his position as the Lord Chief Justice of England, and in November 1616 he is removed from the King’s Bench and has no court to sit on. Roger would have been 13. In 1617, he kidnaps his daughter to force her to marry Buckingham’s brother. The marriage is forced, and Mrs. Coke ends up in prison. Roger was 14. Through all these years, Coke works tirelessly to end the High Commission. This was a clerical court in existence to punish church law breakers. So, it is not accurate to say that Coke was just a regular member of the church of England. Why does this matter? Well, Roger knew the law better than all lawyers, He had seen it from judges and Coke for six years. And here is the point: At no time in his campaign for freedom of conscience did Roger use the law. He used religious documents and bible scriptures. Yet, he had the best training to campaign with the law at his side. Further, give this some thought, Judge Coke was a very evil and mean man. Would you not think that Roger would have acquired some of his ways? He never did, and through his life, even his greatest enemies considered him to be one of the nicest people that they had ever met. Remember, too. That Judge Edward Coke sent only two of his students on to the best colleges in England, The Sutton’s Hospital which became Charterhouse, and Pembroke College at Cambridge. He knew that Roger deserved the best!! On more note: you will read that Roger learned Latin in college. We forget that Roger had to know Latin because Coke used it. His pamphlets were in English and Latin.
6. My last point has to do with influence of Roger on our constitution. People tend to point out that Stephen Hopkins and Rev Isaac Backus knew the founders and influenced them to look at Roger’s ideas. The Hopkins writings are at the RI Historical Society. On the other hand, Backus was the leading Baptist minister in New England for decades. When he began his ministry, there were 18 Baptist churches in New England. When he retired decades later, there were 300. In 1764, the forty-year-old Backus became a member of the Board of Trustees of the
College of Rhode Island which today is known as Brown University. Backus served as Board member for thirty-four years. The point I want to make here is that Backus knew the founders and the founders knew him. Year after year, Backus started new churches, and year after year he harangued the founders from Massachusetts about their laws against freedom of religion. Backus became one more great voice in that battle. He wrote A History of New England: With Particular Reference to the Denomination of Christians Called Baptist: Volumes I & II. These two books have 1263 pages. There are over 80 mentions of Roger William in these two volumes. Backus makes his points over and over again. Roger set down the foundation, and Backus was going to see that foundation become part of the Constitution.
I will close here and remind all of you that we will meet here one year from today, June 9, 2022. We will meet here at Smith’s Castle in North Kingstown, RI at 7:00. Dr. Bob Geake, President of the Cocumscussoc Association which manages Smith’s Castle, has invited The Roger Williams Educational Foundation to use the Castle for our meeting.
