Roger Williams : The Life Of Roger Williams And Religious Freedom

Unlike Chesapeake, the New England colonies were founded by a strict puritan named John Winthrop who stayed in the New England region. These colonies faced a few rebellions by two different activists with different ideas, causing waves throughout the community. One, a man by the name of Roger Williams believed in separating church and state to keep religion pure. The second, a woman by the name of Anne Hutchinson refuted the validity of some of the ministers. In a less gory fashion, both were

William Bradford wrote Of Plymouth Plantation to inform readers about his journey to the new world. Bradford joined the Puritans when he was a young boy, which he later on separated from. Bradford came to the new world in search of religious freedom. The Puritans

The Unreedeemed Capitive discloses the story of John Williams and his family becoming captives of the French and Mohawk Indians and after their return from Canada, pursuing to “redeem” Eunice Williams, John William’s daughter, back to a puritan lifestyle. Starting at Deefield, Masschusetts, October 1703, “Reverend Mr” John Williams writes a letter to the governor Joseph Dudley of Massachusetts Bay of the apprehension of being attacked by the French and the Indians and a request to abate the taxes to help rebuild a fort.(p.11) On February 28, Deerfield was attacked. After the massacre, John Williams, his family and other residents of Deerfield became captives of the French and Indians. They now had to march to Montreal in the snow on a unknown

To set the stage for the narrative history book, Unredeemed Captive, on a day in late February of 1704, the town known as Deerfield, Massachusetts was raided by Mohawk Indians. They captured and killed many individuals as well as families, then sent them on approximately a two-month long and snowy journey to Canada. One family in particular was a prime target of the Mohawks. John Williams, the Reverend of Deerfield, was married with five children. He and his family were targeted because of his value and importance to the community. Deerfield was holding a French man by the name of “Captain Baptiste,” who was of equal value and importance; therefore, Williams was needed to make a trade for this man.1 Eventually, Williams was able to provide

Both Roger Williams and Anne Hutchinson were banished as a result of their opposing views of the Church. Williams praised freedom of religion and the separation of church and state. Hutchinson was a female who disagreed with some of the Puritans viewpoints. The Puritans wanted to set an example and make their society free of opposition, adding the the idea of a “city upon a hill.” This probably discouraged others from speaking out against the Church.

Also, he was a supporter of members of the Free Will Baptist movement. He was kicked out by the Puritan leaders because they thought that he was spreading ideas which threatened the fragility of the Puritans. So, he began a colony known as Providence Plantation which was a refuge for religious minorities.

During the early colonization of the East coast of North America, many groups of people of Europe came to the New World such as the Puritans and Quakers. Both the Puritans, led by John Winthrop, and the Quakers, led by William Penn, were escaping persecution from England but each they had their own views and goals in religion, politics, and ethnic relations. Being on the native land of the local Indians, both Penn and Winthrop had to face issues and negotiations with the Indians. Penn and Winthrop had their own separate approaches to politics but they both sought a more just system than the one in England. After being persecuted, both Penn and Winthrop wanted their people to be free worship, but Penn and Winthrop each had their own

The political and religious leader Roger Williams (c. 1603-1683) is best remembered for founding the state of Rhode Island and advocating

Anne Hutchinson held meetings at her house on Sundays to recall what had been said during the church sermon as well as to add her own ideas and thoughts on the topics that were being discussed. At first this seemed very normal but when her teachings began influencing people to pull away from the other Puritans, Winthrop recognized this as a problem. Anne Hutchinson taught others of her numerous propositions, which opposed the purpose of this excursion to New England. Morgan states that, Mrs. Hutchinson’s beliefs, “…threatened the fundamental conviction on which the Puritans built their state, their churches, and their daily lives, namely that God’s will could be discovered only through the bible” (Morgan). Anne Hutchinson was in fact an Antinomian, she opposed the fixed meaning of God’s moral law that Winthrop had worked so hard to teach these people. As a result, Mrs. Hutchinson was causing a huge threat to the settlers. She was trying to manipulate others to share her religious beliefs. Winthrop would not tolerate such behavior, as she was behaving sinfully, she must be punished accordingly or else as Winthrop believed, they would all suffer from God’s wrath. Winthrop took Mrs. Hutchinson to a court hearing and after a long, battle it was decided by the court that Mrs. Hutchinson was to be banished from Massachusetts. Mrs. Hutchinson was set as an example for the others who may

One early settler in Rhode Island was Roger Williams (a founder of Rhode Island) who was banished from the Massachusetts Bay Colony. He was banished because he spoke out against the Court of Massachusetts. Williams had spoken out against the rule of the Court, he questioned the right of authorities to punish religious bickering, and the right to take away Indians land. Another founder was Anne Hutchinson, who was also banished from the Massachusetts Bay Colony, for religious reasons. Rhode Island officially became a state in 1790 on May 29.

Puritans were a form of Protestants in the sense that they rebelled against the Catholic Church, but they also believed the current system still needed more change. Cotton's two main beliefs were the destructiveness of continuing Catholic influence in the Church of England, and the opportunities for success and religious freedom in America. (D. Crawford, p. 26.) The Hutchinson family, which eventually consisted of 15 children, took the long drive from Alford to Boston (England) often on Sundays to hear Reverend Cotton preach. After 20 years of village life in Alford, the Hutchinsons decided to follow their minister to New England in 1634. One main reason for this move was because Anne wanted to feel free to express her increasingly Puritan views under the leadership of John Cotton. (M.J. Lewis, Portraits of American Women, p. 35.) Unfortunately, Massachusetts turned out to be more religiously constrictive than England for Anne, even as a member of the Puritan church.

One must remember, thought, that in Puritan Massachusetts, the Church and the State were one. This is precisely why Ann Hutchinson is being tried in a state court for crossing Puritan doctrine. Governor John Winthrop is saying that, according to Puritan doctrine, to become acquainted with someone of a religion other than Puritanism, it puts to shame the parents of this sinner and the dishonors the whole Puritan colony. This is quite indicative of exclusion because the Puritans stopped everyone of their faith from friendly interaction with someone of a different faith. The unjust and severe punishment was that they were to be banished from the colony, their family, their friends, and their church. This is what happened to Ann Hutchinson. She was excluded from her whole life all because she quietly questioned some of the Church's decisions and didn't take kindly the spoon-fed Puritan principles.

The influence that Winthrop’s speech had could easily be seen throughout the northern colonies. Because many of the northern colonies were founded for religious reasons, religion played a large role in everyday life during these times. If you were found to violate your contract with god you were kicked out of the colony, forced to live in the woods with the Indians where, more often the not, they would kill you. Roger Williams was an example of this. He criticized many of Winthrop's views on the Puritan society such as the right of the Puritans to seize Native American land (Henretta, 47). Williams and his followers were exiled from the colony, and ended up starting their own colony, named Rhode Island, where inhabitants would have the freedom to practice whatever religion they wanted too. This is yet another example of a colony founded purely for religious purposes. Other colonies were also founded for the same reasons as Rhode Island. Thomas Hooker, for example, founded Connecticut, for almost the exact same reasons Rhode Island

The second, a classic form of separatism, arose most spectacularly in the person of Roger Williams, who thought it necessary for the members of a congregation to "make a public declaration of their repentance for having communion with the churches of England, while they lived there." Thus it was sufficient in his eyes to have banished that Church's errors from Puritan congregations; it was even necessary to renounce the Church. Winthrop understood the danger of Williams's ideas, that they might/must lead one to keep withdrawing further and further from the world and burrowing deeper into oneself, in the ultimately mistaken belief that only one's own vision of God's truth is pure.

During the 17th century, many Puritans set sail for New England in order to escape religious persecution and re-create an English society that was accepting of the Puritan faith. John Winthrop, an educated lawyer from England who later became governor of the Massachusetts Bay Colony, was one of the first in North America to advocate Puritan ideals and lifestyle. Winthrop delivered his sermon A Model of Christian Charity, in hopes of encouraging his shipmates to establish a truly spiritual community abroad. Almost fifty years later, a Puritan named Mary Rowlandson, daughter of a wealthy landowner and wife of a minister, wrote A Narrative of the Captivity and Restoration of Mrs. Mary Rowlandson, describing her 11-week captivity by native