Book Review: "Roger Williams and the Creation of the American Soul"

Roger Williams and the Creation of the American Soul by John M. Barry (Viking, 2012), hardcover, 480 pages

The relationship between religion and the political state in the United States is a complex issue.  While some cite a line from a Thomas Jefferson letter advocating a 'wall between church and state' as a guiding (and amusingly, sacred) text, the issues consistently overlap in American life.  However, the legal protection for freedom of religion that developed in the United States was a radical departure from the government control of religion in Europe over the preceding centuries.

So, how did the idea of religious liberty become so influential in the United States?  Many probably imagine that it came with the Puritans, who saw the ways that both government and the church could become corrupted and emigrated to New England in search of freedom.  Less well known, however, is that they wanted the freedom to create a similar system where the government could legally uphold the orthodox church -- political ways to preserve the purity of their envisioned "City on a Hill."  Instead, it was dissidents to these Puritans, including Baptists, Presbyterians, and Quakers, who sought legal protections for religious liberty so they could practice their faith without fear of punishment.

Ironically, a few Puritans themselves sought religious liberty too when their ideas were deemed unorthodox -- and thus illegal -- by officials in the Massachusetts colony.  The most famous of these was Roger Williams, a Puritan theologian who, after refusing to recant some of his teaching, was banished from Massachusetts and ended up founding Rhode Island.  Throughout his life, he would not only practically seek religious liberty for himself, but he would provide the theoretical and theological argument endorsing such liberty.

The ways that life, education, experience, and a confluence of significant historical events shaped Williams and his thinking about religious liberty is the subject of John M. Barry's Roger Williams and the Creation of the American Soul: Church, State, and the Birth of Liberty.  Barry, a historian who has written well regarded accounts of the 1917 influenza outbreak and the 1927 Mississippi River flood, argues that Williams is the central character in shaping America's unique relationship of church and state, with its protection of religious freedom.  While such an argument is an oversimplification of a very complex story that has evolved over four centuries, the biography of Williams certainly highlights almost all of the main parts of that larger story.

In some ways, Williams is a tragic and inspiring figure.  Despite his influence, he sacrificed an easy life to live out his beliefs about government and religion, and he passed opportunities for financial gain for the sake of the larger good.  Through his connections in British government, he was able to attain British protection of the nascent Rhode Island colony and its unique religious liberty; through his careful leadership in Rhode Island, he turned a rather rag-tag group of inhabitants into a group who, by majority rule, would uphold religious liberty even in trying circumstances.

Barry writes the story of how Williams came to espouse such beliefs and how he lived them out in his life in an overlapping account.  The early sections detail his education -- both formal and informal education -- in his native England, making particular note of the influence of Edward Coke on Williams' thinking.  Roger Williams was a stenographer for the brilliant jurist who famously opposed Francis Bacon.  Coke's arguments about the importance of the law itself, as opposed to the whims of the rulers, greatly shaped Williams ideas not only about the limits of rulers and the authority of laws properly enacted, enforced, and adjudicated but also about the nature and limits of religious authority.

In time, Williams would trade on his influence with such leaders in Oliver Cromwell's era to gain British sanction for his experimental government in Rhode Island.  He also would write letters, pamphlets, and books espousing his ideas on such matters, which likely influenced the key political philosopher just coming of age during that period, John Locke (who in turn would greatly influence the key generation of America's founders, especially Thomas Jefferson).

More exciting, though, was Williams life in New England, first through his efforts to be part of the Massachusetts colony and then, after his banishment, through his formation and protection of the Rhode Island settlements.  Barry details episode after episode where Massachusetts leaders try to undercut Williams, force him to change, and then, after he established Rhode Island, try to wrest control of the land away from him.  Barry also recounts some of the key internal challenges that the nascent colony faced, including the influence of some people more interested in personal profit than religious liberty or any of Williams' other ideas about government and law.

Occasionally, Barry is repetitive, and some might tire from his sometimes lengthy explorations of the philosophical and legal strands of Williams' thought (though I certainly did not), but otherwise this is a fine volume in which a single biography becomes the means for teaching about a larger historical narrative.  Williams was an influential figure who lived in a tumultuous time, shaping life around him and leaving an outsize legacy.  Most readers will be amazed at how eventful Williams' life was and how meaningful it was for the United States.