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What I’m Reading Now 19

Posted June 20, 2010 by Patrick Young, Esq.

What I’m Reading Now: In the Devil’s Snare by Mary Beth Norton
What I Just Finished Reading: Roger Williams: The Church and the State by Edmund Morgan published by Norton (1967)

The Puritans did not think that men’s works, their good deeds, could save them. But they did think that you might be able to discern if a man had been “elected” by God for salvation by the evidence of his good acts. The Puritans believed that a man on the road to salvation began his path by responding to the preaching of the Word. Edmund Morgan writes in his beautiful intellectual biography of Roger Williams that:

If God meant to save a man, he always exposed him to his Word. By the Word a man could comprehend the full perfection of righteousness that God demanded and measure the failure of his own achievement. The result that followed was an overwhelming sense of remorse and regret, which might be divided into several stages, including conviction (a recognition of guilt), humiliation, contrition, and repentance. All these a man might experience and yet go no further… If however, he was one of God’s elect, at some point in his grief the Holy Spirit would enter his soul, bringing saving grace.”

Roger Williams was a devout Puritan. So devout that he became a Separatist, like the Pilgrims who would later settle in Plynouth. Puritans tried to purify the Church of England. Separatists said there was no point in purifying it because it was not a Christian church at all. Morgan tells us that “it was acknowledged by all Protestants that the Church of Rome [the Catholic Church] was the church of Antichrist; and under Mary Tudor, from 1553 to 1558, the Church of England had been the Church of Rome…On the accession of Elizabeth…this Antichristian body had been proclaimed a church of Christ. A church, the Separatists believed, could not be made so casually…Neither clergy nor laity had made so much as a show of repentance for their years of service against Christ…Such a people were no church, but still the tools of Antichrist.”

The greatest fault of the Church of England, in the eyes of the Separatists, was that it let anyone in. The Separatists said that the church was supposed to be a gathering of visible saints, and not a place for sinners. They demanded churches that ministered only to the saved, and admonished members who fell from the path of the righteous. They also insisted that sinners be excommunicated.

By and large the Separatists did not try to recruit new members from the general population. Instead, they confined their conversion efforts to the strictest of Puritans.

Roger Williams was from this extreme wing of English Protestantism. When he arrived in the New World in 1631, he was so strict that it would have been hard to predict that he would found a colony known for religious freedom.

How annoyingly strict was Williams? When he arrived in Boston he would not serve as a minister of that city’s church because, while it was functionally separate from the Church of England, it would not issue a statement accusing the English Church of being Antichrist! Williams thought Separatist Plymouth would be more to his liking, but left there when the Church of the Pilgrims refused to excommunicate some members who had attended a Church of England service during a vacation in the old country!

Williams was a true Separatist. While the Puritans and Pilgrims barred those who were not “visible saints” from communion, but allowed them to attend the rest of the service, Williams prohibited anyone who was not clearly saved from attending his services at all. He even told his followers that they should not say prayers over dinner with their families because their spouses or one of their children might not be saved.

Williams would have been a natural anti-Catholic, but with no Catholics allowed in the colony, he devoted himself to attacking other Protestants. And he did not confine himself to the living. For example, he accused Martin Luther, the father of Protestantism, of “gross abominations”. He demanded that his Salem church break ties with the other Protestants in New England because they were “still fastened to the Pope himself”, a charge that must have seemed absurd to the bigoted anti-Catholics of Boston.

Williams also challenged the validity of the baptism of anyone christened at an Anglican church. Since nearly all Puritans had been baptized in Anglican churches this was the same as saying they were not really Christians.

Williams famously became so pure that he refused to hold services with anyone but his wife. And after a while he began to have doubts about her as well.

The New England Puritans believed that they had entered into a special covenant with God. This must have been great for their self-esteem, but Roger Williams correctly pointed out a flaw. The Bible was, Puritans agreed, the unerring word of God. If the Puritans were, as they believed, the successors to the Jews in a divine covenant and if New England was given to them to erect a city on a hill, then why wasn’t any of this in the Bible? Similarly, attempts to use the Bible as the New England law code or to compel belief by force were not authorized by God.

Williams believed, says Morgan, that:

Israel was unique in the history of the world and unimitable because while God had for a time placed his government and his religion on earth in the safekeeping of the people of Israel, he never again entered into a covenant with any nation. [N]one was authorized to act on His behalf. :Moses could weild the sword for God with righteousness…But no body of men who now employed force in defense of religion…could claim the name of Chrisitan. Any religion that could benefit from the use of force was by definition not Christian.

Williams acknowledged that governments were necessary, but he denied that they could claim divine assistance, guidance or authority.

The notion that the English were special in God’s eye was part of the Puritan worldview. Morgan writes that “One of the obvious casualties of Williams’ onslaught was the conception of Englishmen that they constituted an elect nation. ” Williams wrote, reminding his fellow countrymen of their own sordid religious history: “Who knows not that within the compasse of one poor span of twelve years, all England has become from half Papist, half Protestant, to be absolute Protestants; from absolute Protestants to absolute Papists; from absolute Papists [back] to absolute Protestants.”

Roger Williams was the guardian of the uncomfortable news that there was nothing special about England or New England or America in the mind of God.

Williams was also critical of the New Englanders fanaticism about rooting out heresey and witches. He warned that the Bible was much more concerned with injustice and oppression than with incorrect belief.

And while he was at it, he reminded the Puritans that nowhere in the Bible had God authorized them to steal the land of the Indians.

The colony that had tolerated him as a religious fanatic could not tolerate him calling the whole Puritan project into question. And he was cast out into the wilderness. Rhode Island.

Edmund Morgan notes that the Puritan notion of election of America by God has remained a part of our national credo long after the Puritans faded. He says “it adds an ingredient of self-righteousness to every enterprise Americas undertook as a people.”

Williams was not a modern liberal. But he was a man who constantly examined his own beliefs and the accepted wisdom of those around him. His intellectual journey took him from the extremes of Protestantism to toleration of differences. The questions he asked of religion should still trouble us today.

What I’m Reading Now are occasional blogs that I post when I start a new book. They are not always immigration related. Here are some other notes I’ve written on books I’ve finished since September 2009:

18. Night by Elie Weisel.

17. Mayflower by Nathaniel Philbrick.

16. Champlain’s Dream by David Hackett Fischer.

15. American Jezebel: The Uncommon Life of Anne Hutchinson by Eve LaPlante.

14. The Sovereignty and Goodness of God by Mary Rowlandson.

13. Einstein by Walter Isaacson

12. The Possessed by Elif Batuman.

11. Apostles of Disunion by Charles Dew

10. The Renaissance At War by Thomas Arnold

9. Lincoln and Douglas: The Debates That Defined America by Allen Guelzo

8. Lincoln: Speeches and Wriitings 1832-1858 by Abraham Lincoln

7. Lincoln: The Biography of a Writer by Fred Kaplan