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10 - Freedom of Conscience and Its Right to Constitutional Protection

The Contribution of Roger Williams*

from Part II - Conscience According to Major Figures and Traditions

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  12 June 2021

Jeffrey B. Hammond
Affiliation:
Faulkner University
Helen M. Alvare
Affiliation:
George Mason University, Virginia
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Summary

David Little presents Roger Williams as a seventeenth-century champion of conscience. Williams was expelled from Massachusetts Bay that ostensibly prized free exercise, but in fact recognized it only within narrow bands of orthodoxy. Williams thereafter prized freedom of conscience in the charter for the Providence Plantations and Rhode Island. A central principle for Williams is the distinction between the “inward” and “external” fora. The “inward forum” is the conscience, a “spiritual power” changeable by reason and persuasion. The “external forum” is “outward behavior,” meaning actions that can be coerced by the governing authority through force, in order to protect life, property, and other interests. Williams provocatively labeled coercive acts against conscience as “soul rape” and “piracy,” indicating how deeply and intimately these violated the person. Williams maintained a fruitful relationship with the Narangansett Indians, having shown them great respect, as the people who provided him refuge when he was expelled from Massachusetts Bay. He didn’t co-opt their government, and fully respected their ability to choose religion (or not), in the quiet of their own internal fora.

Type
Chapter
Information
Christianity and the Laws of Conscience
An Introduction
, pp. 187 - 207
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2021

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References

Recommended Reading

Byrd, James P. Jr. The Challenges of Roger Williams: Religious Liberty, Violent Persecution, and the Bible. Macon, ga: Mercer University Press, 2002.Google Scholar
Davis, James Calvin. Moral Theology of Roger Williams: Christian Conviction and Public Ethics. Louisville, ky: Westminster John Knox, 2004.Google Scholar
Davis, James Calvin. ed. On Religious Liberty: Selections from the Works of Roger Williams Cambridge, ma: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 2008.Google Scholar
Gaustad, Edward. Liberty of Conscience: Roger Williams in America. Grand Rapids, mi: Eerdmans, 1991.Google Scholar
Gilpin, W. Clark. Millenarian Piety of Roger Williams. Chicago, il: University of Chicago Press, 1979.Google Scholar
Hall, Timothy L. Separation of Church and State: Roger Williams and Religious Liberty. Chicago, il: University of Chicago Press, 1998.Google Scholar
Lutz, Donald S. Origins of American Constitutionalism. Baton Rouge, la: Louisiana State University Press, 1988.Google Scholar
McIlwain, C. H. Constitutionalism and Its Changing World. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1939.Google Scholar
Miller, Perry. Roger Williams, His Contribution to the American Tradition. New York, ny: Atheneum, 1962.Google Scholar
Miller, William Lee. The First Freedom: America’s Foundation in Religious Freedom. Washington, dc: Georgetown University Press, 2003.Google Scholar
Morgan, Edmund S. Roger Williams: The Church and the State. New York, ny: Harcourt Brace & World, 1967.Google Scholar
Nussbaum, Martha C. Liberty of Conscience: In Defense of American’s Tradition of Religious Equality. New York, ny: Basic Books, 2008.Google Scholar
Pfeffer, Leo. “Freedom and/or Separation: The Constitutional Dilemma of the First Amendment,” Minnesota Law Review 64, no. 3 (1980): 561–84.Google Scholar
Polishook, Irwin H., ed. Roger Williams, John Cotton and Religious Freedom: A Controversy in New and Old England. Englewood Cliffs, nj: Prentice Hall, 1967.Google Scholar
Twiss, Sumner B.Roger Williams and Freedom of Conscience and Religion As a Natural Right.” In Religion and Public Policy: Human Rights, Conflict, and Ethics, edited by Twiss, Sumner B., Simion, Marian Gh., and Petersen, Rodney L., 4576. New York, ny: Cambridge University Press, 2015.Google Scholar
Wilken, Robert Louis. Liberty in the Things of God: The Christian Origins of Religious Freedom. New Haven, ct: Yale University Press, 2019.Google Scholar
Winslow, Ola Elizabeth. Master Roger Williams: A Biography. New York, ny: Macmillan, 1957.Google Scholar

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