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Roger Williams, New England troublemaker and founder of Rhode Island, is seldom included among the great figures in American Reformed theology. Yet Williams's arguments for religious liberty were deeply rooted in Puritan Calvinism. This book explores the "moral theology" that informed Williams's spirited defense of toleration, demonstrating how Reformed theology in Williams's hands allowed him to defend the integrity of religious convictions while also making the case for conversation and cooperation with moral citizens outside his circle of faith. The Columbia Series in Reformed Theology represents a joint commitment by Columbia Theological Seminary and Westminster John Knox Press to provide theological resources from the Reformed tradition for the church today. This series examines theological and ethical issues that confront church and society in our own particular time and place.
Banished from the Massachusetts Bay Colony for his refusal to conform to Puritan religious and social standards, Roger Williams established a haven in Rhode Island for those persecuted in the name of the religious establishment. Davis gathers together important selections from Williams's public and private writings on religious liberty, illustrating how this renegade Puritan radically reinterpreted Christian moral theology and the events of his day in a powerful argument for freedom of conscience and the separation of church and state.
Religion and Politics in France and the United States compares the current status and views of Jews, Christians, and Muslims regarding political life in two states. Longstanding traditions of laicite and of constitutional law frame discussions of political speech, voting patterns, and attempts to deal with demographic and cultural shifts characteristic of French and American societies. Papers by leading scholars demonstrate the ways that historical experience sheds light on current events; how it is, for example, that previous efforts to deal with religious difference affect current approaches to the display of religious symbols in state schools, or how the struggles of minority groups for recognition affect voting patterns. One question running throughout the volume is, what can French and American policymakers and citizens learn from one another, as they seek to deal with the challenges presented by contemporary life?
Religious liberty is America’s first freedom. But in recent years, challenges to religious liberty have abounded. For example, some claim that religious freedom promotes intolerance and bigotry, while others contend religious freedom condemns people to hell. And others weaponize religious liberty for culture warring. Nevertheless, evangelicals believe that religious liberty is fundamentally a matter of human dignity; thus, religious liberty is a right we must preserve for all people. This book will explore how evangelical anthropology, cosmology, and eschatology offer the most stable basis for religious freedom. Secular and Roman Catholic theories may positively contribute to religious liberty, but the evangelical model is superior because it answers fundamental questions left unanswered in other models.
The tragic and fascinating history of the first epic struggle between white settlers and Native Americans in the early seventeenth century: “a riveting historical validation of emancipatory impulses frustrated in their own time” (Booklist, starred review) as determined Narragansett Indians refused to back down and accept English authority. A devout Puritan minister in seventeenth-century New England, Roger Williams was also a social critic, diplomat, theologian, and politician who fervently believed in tolerance. Yet his orthodox brethren were convinced tolerance fostered anarchy and courted God’s wrath. Banished from Massachusetts Bay Colony in 1635, Williams purchased land from the Narragansett Indians and laid the foundations for the colony of Rhode Island as a place where Indian and English cultures could flourish side by side, in peace. As the seventeenth century wore on, a steadily deepening antagonism developed between an expansionist, aggressive Puritan culture and an increasingly vulnerable, politically divided Indian population. Indian tribes that had been at the center of the New England communities found themselves shunted off to the margins of the region. By the 1660s, all the major Indian peoples in southern New England had come to accept English authority, either tacitly or explicitly. All, except one: the Narragansetts. In God, War, and Providence “James A. Warren transforms what could have been merely a Pilgrim version of cowboys and Indians into a sharp study of cultural contrast…a well-researched cameo of early America” (The Wall Street Journal). He explores the remarkable and little-known story of the alliance between Roger Williams’s Rhode Island and the Narragansett Indians, and how they joined forces to retain their autonomy and their distinctive ways of life against Puritan encroachment. Deeply researched, “Warren’s well-written monograph contains a great deal of insight into the tactics of war on the frontier” (Library Journal) and serves as a telling precedent for white-Native American encounters along the North American frontier for the next 250 years.
Baptist ideals like the separation of church and state have indelibly shaped Western democracies, and Baptist thinkers continue to influence public policy and political engagement today. Yet the historical contours, enduring commitments, and current contributions of Baptist political thought are little understood. Baptist Political Theology, edited by scholars Thomas Kidd, Paul Miller, and Andrew Walker, introduces readers to the full sweep of Baptist engagement with politics. Part 1 reviews the life, writings, and political activity of important figures in Baptist history, as well as Baptist involvement in key historical eras and episodes. Part 2 presents a collective effort at applied political theology, with essays relating Baptist principles to a range of contemporary issues. This monumental volume sheds light on the history and contemporary practice of Baptists in the public square, offering context and clarity for Baptist political thought in the years to come.
This book pivots around two principal concerns in the modern world: the nature and practice of human rights in relation to religion, and the role of religion in perennial issues of war and peace. It articulates a vision for achieving a liberal peace and a just society firmly grounded in respect for human rights, while working in tandem with the constructive roles that religion can play even amid cultural difference. It explores topics including the status and justification of human rights; the meaning and significance of religious liberty; whether human rights protections ought to be extended to other species; how the comparative study of religious ethics ought to proceed; and the nature, limits, and future development of just war thinking. Featuring a group of distinguished contributors, this is a distinctive contribution that shows a multifaceted and original exploration of cutting edge issues with regards to the aforementioned themes.
A unique resource for the study of John Calvin's theology, its reception, and insights for today.
An illuminating portrait of the nation's earliest—and most passionate—advocate for the total separation of church and state. A classic of its kind, Edmund S. Morgan's Roger Williams skillfully depicts the intellectual life of the man who, after his expulsion in 1635 from the Massachusetts Bay Colony, founded what would become Rhode Island. As Morgan re-creates the evolution of Williams's thoughts on the nature of the church and the state, he captures with characteristic economy and precision the institutions that informed Williams's worldview, from the Protestant church in England to the Massachusetts government in the seventeenth century. In doing so, Morgan reveals the origins of a perennial—and heated—American debate, told through the ideas of one of the most brilliant polemicists on the subject, a man whose mind, as Morgan describes, "drove him to examine accepted ideas and carry them to unacceptable conclusions." Forty years after its first publication, Roger Williams remains essential reading for anyone interested in the church, the state, and the right relation of the two.
Beginning with the legacy of Roger Williams, who in 1633 founded the first colony not restricted to people of one faith, The Lively Experiment chronicles how Americans have continually demolished traditional prejudices while at the same time erecting new walls between belief systems. The chapters gathered here reveal how Americans are sensitively attuned to irony and contradiction, to unanticipated eruptions of bigotry and unheralded acts of decency, and to the disruption caused by new movements and the reassurance supplied by old divisions. The authors examine the way ethnicity, race, and imperialism have been woven into the fabric of interreligious relations and highlight how currents of tolerance and intolerance have rippled in multiple directions. Nearly four hundred years after Roger Williams' Rhode Island colony, the "lively experiment" of religious tolerance remains a core tenet of the American way of life. This volume honors this boisterous tradition by offering the first comprehensive account of America’s vibrant and often tumultuous history of interreligious relations.