During long historical periods, the church and state were closely connected in spite of the division of their influence on citizens’ life and spirituality. From the point of the US history, Roger Williams was the first to claim that the church and state should be separated to emphasize the personal liberty as the real fact with references to all the aspects of the people’s life.
The Puritans came to form the Massachusetts Bay Colony in the first part of the 17th century, rejecting the principles according to which the church functioned in England during the period. However, the changes in the role of the church in the Puritans’ life were insignificant, and the basic principles of cooperation between the state and church remained the same.
Searching for the new life order and receiving the opportunity to build the community according to some progressive ideas, the Puritans decided to follow the familiar patterns of correlating the power between the church and state. Roger Williams focused on the complete separation of the church and state as the proclamation of the personal liberty, and he had to leave the Massachusetts Bay Colony to found Providence1.
Although Williams’ ideas can be discussed as rather radical, they are significant for understanding the concept of the individual and religious freedom as the basics of the personal life not only in the USA but also all over the world.
It is possible to agree with Roger Williams that the separation between the church and state should be complete because the issue involves the question of the personal liberty. Williams claimed that civil authorities cannot control churches because state affairs cannot be combined with the religious matters. Moreover, persons have the right for liberty of conscience without referring to any civil questions2.
From this point, to be free, a person should live in a state where the church and civil sphere are separated absolutely and where there is no interdependent influence of these spheres on each other.
The next controversial point of Williams’ vision along with the determined possibility to choose the way of worshipping was the idea that the government should be controlled by the citizens.
To follow these ideas and principles, Williams founded Providence where individual liberty and the freedom of worshipping were discussed as the extremely important conditions for organizing the life within the community.
Providing the idea that it is possible to separate the church and state and worship God without references to any institutions, Roger Williams rejected the people’s traditional views, and the reaction was rather strong3.
Although Williams is right in his discussing the exaggerated impact of the political authority on the people’s religious life with references to the church, it is impossible to state strictly that his vision is more significant than the other ideas discussed during the previous historical periods and today.
Roger Williams’ ideas on separating church and state are important for analyzing the role of politics in the religious sphere as well as the role of the church in organizing the state.
Furthermore, it is possible to refer to Williams’ argument while discussing the problem of the state’s controlling the church as the attempt to control persons and their religious visions because the accentuation of the state’s role in preventing errors in religion rejects the principles of the personal liberty.
Bibliography
Barry, John. Roger Williams and the Creation of the American Soul: Church, State, and the Birth of Liberty. USA: Viking Adult, 2012.
Morgan, Edmund. Roger Williams: The Church and the State. USA: W. W. Norton & Company, 2007.
Footnotes
1 John Barry, Roger Williams and the Creation of the American Soul: Church, State, and the Birth of Liberty (USA: Viking Adult, 2012), 223.
2 Edmund Morgan, Roger Williams: The Church and the State (USA: W. W. Norton & Company, 2007).
3 John Barry, Roger Williams and the Creation of the American Soul, 265.