Religious liberty has unchained the Bible, scattered the darkness of superstition, flooded our continent with light and blessing. It has toppled selfish autocrats from their thrones, it has unlocked the shackles from the feet of millions who were living in spiritual and physical slavery. Religious liberty opens the doors and lets God’s sunlight of truth enter to warm and bless the world.

To Roger Williams and the historic Baptist denomination we turn for the story of the genesis and growth of this great blessing in America. There is an effort, in evidence in the secular and religious press of America, and, in some sections, in many of our public schools, to rob both Williams and the Baptists of their crown of glory. In certain quarters both Protestants and Catholics are attributing the honor of giving birth to religious liberty to communions which centuries ago persecuted our Baptist forefathers unto banishment and death.

The early American Colonies can be divided into three classes. One class included those who sought for uniformity in religion. Exile and death were resorted to to make that religious uniformity possible. Baptists were martyred in Massachusetts and Virginia. Another class included those who granted a toleration to other Christian religions, but who denied political privileges to Jews, infidels, or Unitarians. Maryland and Pennsylvania, although far advanced from the persecuting spirit of some of the colonies, belong to this second class. There was another class, represented at first by the smallest of the colonies, little Baptist Rhode Island, which gave full, absolute, religious liberty. No political privilege was dependent on religious belief. The attitude of the early colonists to the Jews is the acid test of their claim to priority as the advocates of soul-liberty in America.

Hebrew scholars and statesmen do not hesitate to give their tribute of honor to Roger Williams and the Baptists. The Hon. Oscar S. Straus, twice American Ambassador to Turkey, Secretary of Labor and Commerce in the late President Roosevelt’s Cabinet, and President of the League to Enforce Peace, said on January 13, 1919, on the eve of sailing for Europe and the Peace Conference:

If I were asked to select from all the great men who have left their impress upon this continent from the days that the Puritan Pilgrims set foot on Plymouth Rock, until the time when only a few days ago we laid to rest the greatest American in our generation—Theodore Roosevelt; if I were asked whom to hold before the American people and the world to typify the American spirit of fairness, of freedom, of liberty in Church and State, I would without any hesitation select that great prophet who established the first political community on the basis of a free Church in a free State, the great and immortal Roger Williams.... He became a Baptist, or as they were then called, Anabaptist, because to his spirit and ideals the Baptist faith approached nearer than any other—a community and a church which is famous for never having stained its hands with the blood of persecutors.

CONTENTS

Page
I.The Apostle of Soul-liberty[1]
II.The Founding of Providence[27]
III.The Historic Custodians of Soul-liberty[57]
IV.Soul-liberty at Home in a Commonwealth[79]
V.From Soul-liberty to Absolute Civil Liberty[103]
VI.The Torch-bearers of the Ideal of Roger Williams
Until Liberty Enlightened the World		[119]
VII.The World-wide Influence of Roger Williams’
Ideal		[137]
Study Outline of the Life and Times of Roger
Williams		[145]
A Selected Bibliography[149]
An Itinerary for a Historic Pilgrimage[151]

ACKNOWLEDGMENT

The author desires to express his indebtedness to the John Carter Brown Library, Providence, R. I., to the “Providence Magazine,” to the Rhode Island Historical Society, to the Roger Williams Park Museum, and to the New York City Public Library, for valuable assistance rendered in securing illustrations for this book.

LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS