hey there students and welcome back as I continue my lecture on religious freedom in colonial New England and focusing specifically at this point on the religious dissenters in New England Roger Williams and Anne Hutchinson if you didn't see part 1 of this video might want to look at that but then again if you're just curious about Roger Williams you've come to the right place Roger Williams was a separatist minister in the Massachusetts colony now by separatist it's important that you know what that means because there are two terms that are generally used to refer to the settlers of Massachusetts those terms are Puritans and separatists now Puritans were people who are part of a movement to purify the Church of England to take out all of those nasty papist Catholic elements whereas the separatist had a movement to separate from the Church of England that we're not reformers we would like to start our own church and then what did they have in common what they had in common was a commitment to Calvinist theology and principles and I'll discuss Calvinism a bit more in a moment and I've also got a video on Calvinism if you're curious about the ins and outs of the theological doctrines but for this purpose plainclothes predestination all of that other stuff so being a separatist Minister Roger Williams was not a fan of the Church of England he didn't want to reform it he wanted to start a new church that would be along the lines of how he envisioned the primitive Christian Church in the book of Acts in the New Testament now Roger Williams was going to be at odds with the religious and civil leaders of the Massachusetts colony because remember this was not an experiment in American individualism or American religious pluralism this was a religious Commonwealth where people were expected to conform well Roger Williams is a separatist Minister he felt like people shouldn't be forced to worship imagine that how American does that sound and Williams was not happy with this arrangement Williams was an advocate of Liberty of conscience he believed that civil authorities should not be able to enforce religious orthodoxy or support a state church and this is where we see American individualism really rearing its head okay here in the Massachusetts colony we really haven't seen this in this very communal religious Commonwealth until Williams comes along now Williams also believed that the English government did not have the authority to give away Indian land if it had not first purchased that land that the Indians are the rightful inhabitants of this land and you can't just come in and say that it's yours if you did not negotiate a treaty with the Indians so really this is strike two so there are two ways that Roger Williams has come out swinging and the authorities do not like him and they exiled him by Roger all right they they exiled him and he was exiled out of Massachusetts and he went to set up a settlement at what is today Rhode Island now Williams at the time called it Providence Plantations he named this for God's providence which he believed had brought him there the idea of Providence being that God is in control a very Calvinist sort of construct of course that's really a Christian construct that you know God is in control and has kind of set a path for things to turn out all right now the idea of Providence will be shown again in US history when you look at the Declaration of Independence in the very last sentence Jefferson writes and for the support of this declaration with a firm reliance on the protection of divine providence we mutually pledge to each other Our Lives our Fortunes and our sacred honor and Jefferson here is projecting this idea that Providence is on our side that God loves America all right America whoo right doesn't that get you all patriotic and warm and fuzzy inside and the other thing that Williams does consistent with his principles is what I would call speaking of Jefferson the Providence purchase because Williams goes to the local Indians and says hey I want to create a settlement here can I and he negotiates a treaty and they sell him the land so this is consistent with Williams principles that English men and women did not have the authority to just come in and claim land that in Williams eyes belong to someone else and one thing that's very odd about Williams now I've mentioned before that the English did not really have a state-sponsored program of evangelism like the French and the Spanish had but he did not baptize a single Indian which this was seen as offensive by the religious leaders at the time because that should be the goal right to convert these pagans to Christianity but that's not how william saw things that Williams believed that first of all somebody should have freedom of conscience he lived among these Indians but never baptized any because he didn't think that any of them had made a sincere conversion that it's really a burden on the minister not to oh you want to be baptized great come in the church and give us your money but that a minister should really think about is this person sincere do I feel comfortable baptizing this person Williams was a man of unquestionable principle and he went on to found the First Baptist Church in America in 1638 a lot of towns in America at First Baptist churches but Williams founded the very first one and it's still there today and it looks like the pastor is kind of a clever person whoever runs the board I'd love to hear that sermon what sort of thing all right but First Baptist Church America and I think this is a very significant development in American history because when it comes down to it the Baptist faith has been a hallmark in American religion all right it's the second largest religious group in the United States second only to Roman Catholics it's the largest Protestant denomination and 15 percent of Americans identify as Baptist and one-third of Baptists live in the United States and there is something about this religious mindset that I think is uniquely American all right because it is not prevalent anywhere else in the Western world like it is in the United States you think about 1/3 Baptists live in the US and most of that other 2/3 it's a product of missionary activity and that sort of thing and so the Baptist's I think you know they they've really found fertile ground here for three reasons all right that it is a very American religion first of all the individuals have the ability to interpret the Bible there is not the expectation that your individual interpretation of Scripture must fall in line with the church like several other religious denominations have for example in the Catholic Church you have the Catechism and it basically lays out the doctors of the church for you but Baptists believe that your views of God in the Bible and theology that's really up to you first and foremost autonomous congregations that are governed democratically so in a Baptist Church the pastor is not sent by the bishop or another Church authority the congregation hires and if they want to fires the minister and they have full control over what happens in their congregation and then finally a believers baptism that Baptist reject infant baptism they believe that baptism should be a product of someone's personal decision not a product of your parents deciding for you that you are going to be a Christian so I think that the the individualism of the of the Baptist the way that they even in groups want to control things locally and that decisions are made by the individual I think a lot of this explains why the Baptist religion is so much more prevalent in the United States than it is in other Western countries and here are a few quotes from Roger Williams to shed some more light on his religious views now first of all a couple hundred years almost before Jefferson used the term wall of separation in a letter it was Roger Williams who wanted to build a wall between the church and the state he wrote when they have opened a gap in the hedge or wall of separation between the garden of the church and the wilderness of the world God hath ever broke down the wall itself remove the candlestick and made his garden a wilderness as it this day so for Roger Williams the church is a garden and it should be protected from the state it should not mingle with the wilderness of the world so to speak so why should there be a separation of church and state - Roger Williams well the state even a democratic state is based on majority rule when we have an election the people who lose the election have to suck it up and deal with it but the church in Williams view is not based on hierarchy and it is not based on majority rule instead it is based on liberty of conscience this is a place where no one can overrule you or your judgment and so that needs to be protected that is sacred now Williams didn't necessarily even remain a good Baptist all his life his writings later on show a belief in what we would call restoration ISM this idea that the church as we saw it in the book of Acts in the New Testament that that church at some point ceased to exist alright that that church was led astray and that church no longer exists you know God has just let it go into the wilderness so to speak and so restoration ISM is this idea that the church one day will be restored at a time of God's choosing and through agents of God's choosing Williams wrote there is no regularly constituted Church of Christ on earth nor any person qualified to administer any church ordinances nor can there be until new apostles are sent by the great head of the church for whose coming I am seeking so Williams believed that this early church had no longer existed than it had ceased to exist and this is really consistent with other religious groups that will spring up in America in the 19th century such as the Latter day Saints otherwise known as Mormons that the idea that new apostles will be necessary to clarify Christ's original meaning in creating the church and you see that Williams is writing this a couple hundred years before Joseph Smith has his revelations in New York in 1644 Roger Williams finally gets a chart I discussed in another lecture how these charters worked in it before you had a charter you really didn't have the protection of the English government so now in 1644 Williams is legit and Providence Plantations otherwise known as Rhode Island is an actual English colony and these islands here say it all one last look at Roger Williams that I think is really telling about his view of things and it's very encouraged and I find this guy the more I read about him the more interested I am in Roger Williams but he named islands yeah Rhode Island is not an island but there are islands around there so let's look at these islands the larger islands here he named patience and prudence after Christian virtues and then when we look at this other Island we see that this is Hope Island now next to Hope Island is a much smaller island known as despair Island so to Roger Williams despair may seem like it's goddess at the time but hope is always greater almost like the story of Pandora's box and I hope you'll stick around for the next segment in which I'm going to focus specifically on and chanson the other religious dissent earth at Anne Hutchinson and Roger Williams together are responsible for the beginnings of religious pluralism and religious toleration as we know them today in America so I hope you'll click through and continue watching with me as we continue to explore religious freedom in colonial New England it's always a pleasure