Our Founders' Warning. Strobe Talbott

      John Winthrop was one of the most judicious and esteemed conservatives in the New England hierarchy, and Roger Williams—a courageous, passionate radical—was one of the most controversial.

      Before joining the Great Migration, Williams believed that Puritanism needed to be cleansed of corruption and made more inclusive. He had no patience with the idea that Puritans were the vanguard of the Church of England. Much as the Pilgrim separatists, he wanted a clean split from Anglicanism.

      Williams was the ultimate freethinker who scandalized much of the community by openly expressing his personal convictions with ferocious eloquence, particularly when he was railing against efforts to impose how people should pray: “Forced worship stinks in God’s nostrils.”12 He had his God, others had theirs. He joined the Baptist branch of Protestantism, which shared his toleration of other sects.

      Williams was unswerving in his own faith, and he was certain that those of other denominations were destined to hell. But that ultimate judgment was for God to make. He was also convinced that mortals were unable to interpret God’s law wisely; when they tried, they distorted its meaning, stumbling into earthly injustice. From that premise, he opposed—loudly and often—theocracy in general, and any government involvement in religious affairs. He denounced the concept of Christendom, since it was a political domain of the church, and scoffed at the British Crown’s claim to jurisdiction over the settlements in North America.

      He had left England several months after the Arbella flotilla, arriving in Massachusetts in early 1631. He spent five years in the Bay Colony, quickly earning a reputation as a gadfly on many issues, especially the settlers’ cruel treatment of the Native Americans. He chided his fellow Englishmen for bigotry and rejected a law that permitted the eviction of natives from their villages and hunting grounds. He was put on trial for “diverse, new, and dangerous opinions,” charges that amounted to sedition and heresy.13

      Winthrop disagreed with almost all of Williams’s unorthodox ideas and concurred with the General Court’s decision to expel him from the Bay Colony. Nevertheless, Winthrop suggested that Williams turn ignominy into opportunity: he should move to Narragansett Bay, neighboring the Massachusetts Bay Colony, for “high and heavenly and public ends.”14 Williams took the advice and founded the colony of Rhode Island as a haven for those “distressed for conscience.” He stood his ground on expansive religious tolerance:

      There goes many a ship to sea, with many hundred souls in one ship, whose weal and woe is common, and is a true picture of a commonwealth or a human combination or society. It hath fallen out sometimes that Papists, Protestants, Jews, and Turks may be embarked in one ship; upon which supposal I affirm that all the liberty of conscience that ever I pleaded for turns upon these two hinges: that none of the Papists, Protestants, Jews, or Turks be forced to come to the ships’ prayers or worship, nor be compelled [restrained] from their own particular prayers or worship, if they practice any.15

      Williams’s notoriety reached John Locke, who was impressed by this fearless promoter of religious toleration. Locke was a thinker, while Williams was a doer, pushing for colonial laws that embodied liberal values—much to the horror and disgust of his fellow governors.16

      Williams’s own errand in the wilderness carried a stunning portent of America’s destiny. He leaped ahead of the abstract thinkers back in the land of his birth, transforming their ideas into a whole new way of governing. He guided Rhode Island wisely and compassionately, under the authority of a charter to establish religious freedom, the first in the New World.17

      He was an early convert to the cause of abolition of slavery and taught himself several tribal languages to enable him to cooperate fairly with Native Americans. Celebrated and detested, in life and after his death at seventy-nine, he was one of America’s first liberals, long before that hardy skein was woven into the American political tapestry.

      Despite the religious, ethical, and political gulf between Williams and Winthrop, the radical considered the conservative a friend who offered him a new opportunity to pursue his mission. For years after their parting, Williams kept up a correspondence with Winthrop, effusive with gratitude and respect.18

      That Williams could move to another jurisdiction more receptive to his views was an option unlikely to be found in England. This demonstrated yet another advantage of the dangerous, hardscrabble, and vast New World: it was far more accommodating to individualists.