Roger Williams - America's First Radical

LAST TIME: Americans Are Hungry to Believe Liberty and Equal Justice Will Ultimately Prevail

Roger Williams (1603-1683) is the first person profiled in Radicals in Their Own Time: Four Hundred Years of Struggle for Liberty and Equal Justice in America.

Williams moved from England to the Massachusetts Bay Colony in 1631 at age twenty-eight to escape religious persecution and was was expelled from the Colony just four years later in 1635 for his nonconforming views on religious freedom and separation of church and state. Yet with his views favoring unconditional broad tolerance of the views and practices of all (believers and non-believers alike) - “I plead for impartiality and equal freedom, peace and safety to other consciences and assemblies, unto which the people may as freely go, and this according to each conscience, whatever conscience this conscience be” - he set the template for governmental tolerance of religion in the New World in his new state of Rhode Island, which made the guarantee of religious liberty a part of its fundamental law.

Williams believed government must tolerate the personal autonomy of all citizens on the reasoning that matters involving individual choice not affecting the rights of others are natural rights pre-dating government itself. Indeed, Williams believed the term “tolerance” is itself a misnomer, as it implies government has the authority in the first place to decide whether or not to recognize the right; whereas, the idea of pre-existing natural rights forecloses government interference - period.

When it came to matters of religious orthodoxy, Williams like the other four radicals profiled in the book (Thomas Paine, Elizabeth Cady Stanton, W.E.B. Du Bois, Vine Deloria Jr.) deeply objected to he elaborate superstitions and practices that arose around Christ’s teachings in the many centuries following his death, which variously punished, stigmatized, marginalized or victimized certain individuals or groups. He railed against the hypocrisy of religious wars: “The blood of so many hundred thousand souls of Protestants and Papists, spilt in the Wars of present and former Ages, for their respective Consciences, is not required nor accepted by Jesus Christ the Prince of Peace.”

In the end, for having “broached and divulged [such] diverse new and dangerous opinions against the authority of magistrates,” Williams was banished to the wilderness, where he founded his Rhode Island community dedicated to freedom of religion.

NEXT TIME:  Roger Williams in England

Americans Are Hungry to Believe Liberty and Equal Justice Will Ultimately Prevail

LAST TIME: America's Love of Fictional "Everyman" Underdogs

With its ringing assertion that certain unalienable natural rights (life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness) exist beyond the reach of any manmade government - and, more radically, that the people have the right to abolish any government not observing those rights - the Declaration of Independence was a bold statement to the world. As Thomas Jefferson wrote on the fiftieth anniversary of the signing of the Declaration of Independence just days before his death, “May [the Declaration] be to the world, what I believe it will be (to some parts sooner, to others later, but finally to all), the signal of arousing men to burst the chains, under which monkish ignorance and superstition had persuaded them to bind themselves, and to assume the blessings & security of self-government.”

It was Americans' ancestors who then crafted a Constitution establishing a governmental structure guaranteeing liberty and equal justice, thereby making America the first nation in the history of the world to break the bonds of feudalism. While the promises of the Declaration and Constitution have fallen far short in the execution, the mandate for a constitutionally-limited government dispensing equal justice is every American’s birthright. “It is the protection of the humblest individual against his own government; [his] bulwark against autocratic power, and against the impulses of an irresponsible majority,” Gaspar Bacon rhapsodized in 1928.

So, when Americans are presented with anecdotal reminders of liberty, individual autonomy and equal justice triumphing over a rigid shepherd, it stirs something familiar from deep within themselves: a welling pride, a visceral longing, a sheer hope, that someone - maybe even oneself or loved ones – will have the courage to claim the full promise of Freedom bequeathed by their forebears. Americans are hungry to believe liberty and equal justice will ultimately prevail. The fictional characters identified in the last post, Dorothy of The Wizard of Oz in 1939, the Great Debaters in 2007, and even Yertle the Turtle in 1959, speak to this hunger, and stand – as do their real-life counterparts Roger Williams, Thomas Paine, Elizabeth Cady Stanton, W.E.B. Du Bois and Vine Deloria - as timeless American heroes for courageously challenging a powerful, often unjust and intolerant Establishment - and winning in the end.

NEXT TIME:  Roger Williams

America's Love of Fictional "Everyman" Underdogs

LAST TIME:  Radicals Stood on Principle, Regardless of Consequences to Selves

Even while the American masses may be “disposed to suffer” death by a thousand cuts, as the Declaration of Independence suggests (see last post), at the same time the masses vicariously enjoy the exploits of the few who refuse to be intimidated. So, in any given holiday movie-going or summer reading season, it is possible to find fictional radical characters pushing back against overweening or unjust government. “Who are we to just lie there and do nothing?” asks fictionalized radical-James Farmer Jr., for example, in the 2007 movie The Great Debaters, during a debate about the morality of civil disobedience in response to Southern lynchings in the 1930s. “There is no Rule of Law in the Jim Crow South,” Farmer continues, “not when Negroes are denied housing, turned away from schools, and hospitals. And not when we are lynched. St. Augustine said, ‘An unjust law in no law at all,’ which means I have a right – even a duty – to resist, with violence or civil disobedience. You should pray I choose the latter.”

“Pay no attention to the man behind the curtain,” the Wizard-government of Oz commands as he madly works the levers and wheels trying to maintain his grasp on power in one of the most popular movies of all time, The Wizard of Oz - while radical-Dorothy scolds him for his hubris and refuses to allow him to usurp her own autonomy or to mistreat her friends. Dorothy implicitly understands the Wizard is human, no better or worse than herself – and she demands the restoration of justice and tolerance to the Land of Oz.

Or, on the lighter side, Theodore (Dr. Seuss) Geisel’s radical-turtle Mack in Yertle the Turtle implicitly knows that King Yertle is not so special that he should be able to cruelly command all of the other turtles to stack themselves up merely so Yertle will have a better view from atop the stack - so he does something about it. Mack “did a plain little thing. He burped. And his burp shook the throne of the king! … And Yertle, the King of all Sala-ma-sond, Fell off his high throne and fell Plunk! In the Pond! And today the Great Yertle, that marvelous he, Is King of the Mud.” And best of all - “the turtles, of course … all the turtles are free. As turtles and, maybe, all creatures should be.”

There is good reason Americans today are so inspired by underdog stories of courageous individuals who take on an unjust Establishment and prevail – it is in their blood. It was their ancestors, after all, who against heavy odds declared and won independence from the mighty British Empire on the audacious principle that government serves only as liberty’s servant; and that the people may abolish any government that fails to do so. As the Declaration of Independence declares:

"We hold these Truths to be self-evident, that all Men are created equal, that they are endowed … with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness. That to secure these Rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just Powers from the Consent of the Governed, that whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of those Ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute a new Government, laying its Foundation on such Principles."

NEXT TIME:  Americans' Hunger to Believe Liberty and Equal Justice Will Ultimately Prevail

Williams, Paine, Stanton, Du Bois, and Deloria Stood on Principle, Regardless of Consequences to Themselves

LAST TIME:  Radicals' View of Organized Religion as Source of Intolerance

Part of what makes Roger Williams, Thomas Paine, Elizabeth Cady Stanton, W.E.B. Du Bois and Vine Deloria, Jr. such compelling figures is that they were ready to pay the price for liberty and equal justice - regardless of the consequences. For them, principle prevailed. As Stanton’s collaborator Susan B. Anthony mused in 1873, “cautious, careful people always casting about to preserve their reputation and social standing, never can bring about a reform. Those who are really in earnest must be willing to be anything or nothing in the world’s estimation, and publicly and privately, in season and out, avow their sympathy with despised and persecuted ideas and advocates, and bear the consequences.” One should never follow the path, Du Bois suggested, of Galileo Galilei, who renounced his life’s work seeking scientific truth when threatened by the Catholic Church. “By that lie, civilization was halted, science was checked, and bigotry was more strongly enthroned on its crimson glory.”

As oft-criticized, ridiculed, and even shunned by government and society as they were, Stanton, Du Bois and the others still lobbied, agitated, and generally made nuisances of themselves in their efforts to correct the injustices they encountered. They knew that behind the self-inflating posturing, “government” is no more than a collection of mere men and women cloaked in special clothing to serve a defined narrow purpose; and they demanded change to the existing order so that they – and we all – might one day see liberty and equal justice served.

It is no stretch to say that without their efforts we would not enjoy the scope of freedoms we have today. They knew, along with the nation’s founders, that the natural tendency of government is “threatening, pushing and grasping; … too often in the end … destroy[ing] its benign victim.” Alexis de Tocqueville presciently recognized this threat in America as early as 1835, commenting: “The [democratic] sovereign … spreads a fine mesh of uniform, minute, and complex rules, through which not even the most original minds and most vigorous souls can poke their heads above the crowd…. Rather than tyrannize,” this subtle government power-grab “inhibits, represses, saps, stifles, and stultifies, and in the end reduces each nation to nothing but a flock of timid and industrious animals, with the government as its shepherd.” And the fact is, the flock rarely acts against the shepherd’s subtle abridgments, as the Declaration of Independence expressly recognizes. “All experience hath shown,” the Declaration observes, “that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed.”

NEXT TIME:   America's Love of Fictional "Everyman" Underdogs

Radicals' View of Religious Orthodoxy as Source of Intolerance

LAST TIME: What Governmental Tolerance is Not

The second common theme of Roger Williams's, Thomas Paine's, Elizabeth Cady Stanton's, W.E.B. Du Bois's, and Vine Deloria Jr.'s activism is that each argued religious orthodoxy (especially Christian orthodoxy) has been a significant source of intolerance throughout American history - just as it had been for many centuries previously in Europe. (The first common theme, again, was that each believed that governmental tolerance is a mandatory feature of America's constitutional democracy.) 

Each admired Jesus Christ the man, and the principles of tolerance, equality, humility and forgiveness he advocated. “[Jesus] was a virtuous and an amiable man,” Thomas Paine explained in The Age of Reason. “The morality that he preached and practiced was of the most benevolent kind.” And, indeed, they admired his stubborn commitment to principle (recognizing, no doubt, some of themselves in Christ’s own life experiences): “[Christ] preached also against the corruptions and avarice of the Jewish priests; and this brought upon him the hatred and vengeance of the whole order of priesthood,” Paine recalled. “The accusation which those priests brought against him was that of sedition and conspiracy against the Roman government, to which the Jews were then subject…. Jesus Christ [likely] had in contemplation the delivery of the Jewish nation from the bondage of the Romans.” And for that, Paine explained, “this virtuous reformer and revolutionist lost his life.” One might accurately say Jesus Christ was himself a radical in his own time.

What Paine and the others objected to were the elaborate superstitions and practices that arose around Christ’s teachings in the many centuries following his death, which variously punished, stigmatized, marginalized or victimized certain individuals or groups. And for daring to challenge the church’s dogma – which has always been accepted essentially verbatim by the vast majority of Americans, with marginal variations depending on the particular Judeo-Christian flavor – all five, to varying degrees, were vilified.

Williams railed against the hypocrisy of religious wars: “The blood of so many hundred thousand souls of Protestants and Papists, spilt in the Wars of present and former Ages, for their respective Consciences, is not required nor accepted by Jesus Christ the Prince of Peace.” In the end, for having “broached and divulged [such] diverse new and dangerous opinions against the authority of magistrates,” Williams was banished to the wilderness (literally) from the Massachusetts Bay Colony.

Paine said, “I do not believe in the creed professed by the Jewish church, by the Roman church, by the Greek church, by the Turkish church, by the Protestant church, nor by any church that I know of,” explaining instead: “My own mind is my own church.” “All national institutions of churches, whether Jewish, Christian, or Turkish,” he added, “appear to me no other than human inventions set up to terrify and enslave mankind, and monopolize power and profit.” These are fighting words in a Christian country like America; and in 1888, approaching a century after his death, Paine was still being derided as “that dirty little atheist” by the likes of Theodore Roosevelt.

Elizabeth Cady Stanton too charged that the clergy were responsible for much of society’s ills, especially for women. “I now see more clearly than ever, that the arch enemy to women’s freedom skulks behind the altar,” she ruminated in 1886. “No class of men have such power to pervert the religious sentiments and oppress mankind with gloomy superstitions through life and an undefined dread of the unknown after death.” But Stanton was convinced the clergy did not truly speak for the Almighty, reasoning, “I cannot believe that a God of law and order … could have sanctioned a social principle so calamitous in its consequences as investing in one-half the race the absolute control of all the rights of the other.” To so baldly criticize mainstream Christian orthodoxy at the turn of the twentieth century was too radical even for most women’s rights activists - who distanced themselves from Stanton by issuing a formal censure at the 1896 NAWSA convention, and for decades after her death rendering her persona non grata, even while canonizing her longtime collaborator Susan B. Anthony.

While W.E.B. Du Bois believed the true teachings of Jesus were morally uplifting, he had “no particular affection for the Church. I think its record on the Negro problem has been shameful…. [T]he southern branch of the Church is a moral dead weight and the northern branch … never has had the moral courage to stand against it.” “The church of John Pierpont Morgan,” he stressed, “[is] not the church of Jesus Christ.” “Of course, it is the Churches which are the most discriminatory of all institutions!” The United States government sued Du Bois on trumped-up charges after his turn to the avowedly-atheist Communist nations of China and Russia, and then, as noted above, effectively disowned him in the final year of his life for his communist party membership.

Vine Deloria was blunt in his assessment of Christian orthodoxy’s deleterious effects throughout history: “From pope to pauper, Protestant to Catholic, Constantinople to the United States, the record is filled with atrocities, misunderstandings, persecutions, genocides, and oppressions so numerous as to bring fear into the hearts and minds of non-Christian peoples. Deloria was caustic in his criticism of America and other Western nations’ use of Christian orthodoxy to justify its expansionist goals: “At one time or another slavery, poverty, and treachery were all justified by Christianity as politically moral institutions of the state.” These harsh assessments antagonized many in a mainstream American establishment thoroughly suffused with Christian dogma.

In short, all five of the profiled radicals lived implicitly by Christ’s uncompromising moral values of peace, goodwill, and forgiveness. All spoke their mind about the hypocrisies and abuses perpetuated in Christ’s name – and all, like Christ himself, were punished for speaking truth to power. The lesson? Challenge this most sacred of cows, Christian orthodoxy – and be prepared to pay a heavy price.


NEXT TIME:  Radicals' Stands on Principle, Regardless of Consequences to Themselves

What Governmental Tolerance is Not

LAST TIME:  Governmental TOLERANCE as Core Principle of American Democracy - "Harm" Principle; Right to be "Let Alone"

It is worth noting what governmental tolerance is not. It is not a strict libertarian approach where government would have little or no role in all matters – as Thomas Paine said, “the Public Good is to be [government’s] object.” Government has vital, important functions. In exercising these functions, however, elective government acts legitimately only insofar as it respects the individual’s “right to be let alone.” All government activity must be guided by this test - if the elective government’s action abridges individual free-will on matters of natural private concern, presumptively it is not legitimate, and should be struck down by another branch of government - the judiciary. Outside of such freedom-depriving sorts of actions, however, elective government is free to enact policy as it will – whether of progressive, conservative, or any other description. This is where the people and their representatives exercise the will of the majority in a democratic society. In such cases judicial intervention is inappropriate, and an intervening court would raise legitimate countermajoritarian-difficulty concerns. Finally, at the same time, when judicial opinions fail to respect liberty/equal-justice interests, it is elective government’s responsibility to enact legislation to (among other things) guide the judiciary.

One last note on tolerance: as much as one may sing its praises, it is important not to view governmental tolerance as a panacea for all of society’s ills. As Professor Michael Walzer notes, “tolerance brings an end to persecution and fearfulness, but it is not a formula for social harmony. Newly tolerated groups [and individuals], insofar as they are really different, will often also be antagonistic, and they will seek political advantage.” The point is that in a governmental tolerance regime, the one thing those groups and individuals will not be able to do, even while seeking political advantage, is to enlist government assistance in denying the other groups and individuals from engaging in their preferred activities. Government, with rare exceptions, must tolerate them all.

NEXT TIME:   Organized Religion as Source of Intolerance