providence
Apr. 17th, 2014 03:17 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
stormsewerSo, the first book I read upon arriving in Boston was The Wordy Shipmates by Sarah Vowell. It is about the first years of the Massachusetts Bay Colony, written in Vowell's trademark style, which is informal and subjective, but obsessively researched. It turns out the most interesting part of the book for me was not the founding of Massachusetts but that of Rhode Island.
Having lived my entire life (up till ten days ago) west of the Mississippi, Rhode Island has always seemed both rather mysterious and rather silly to me. The entire state is barely twice as large, area-wise, as Houston, and much smaller than the Houston metropolitan area. Los Angeles County is nearly four times larger. So why does Rhode Island get to be its own state?
Roger Williams, that's why. Williams was zealous, argumentative, and stubborn: in many ways a quintessential Puritan. He was warmly welcomed to Boston in the beginning, but he held certain views that even the Boston Puritans considered extreme. As he persisted in preaching his ideas to everyone who would listen, he was sidelined, censured, and finally banished. According to Vowell, there were two of his tenets in particular which got him booted:
1. The King of England has no power to grant rights of settlement in the New World. If Europeans want to live there, they need to get permission from the Native Americans, not Old World monarchs.
2. Church and state should be separate. While Williams was extremely, vehemently, loudly, aggressively religious (for instance, he believed that visible saints should not even eat meals with the non-elect, which meant he refused to dine with his own family), he believed that if not kept separate the state would inevitably corrupt pure religion and twist it to its own nefarious ends, and, furthermore, since all sinners will eventually get what they deserve, there is no need for the state to enforce religious observance. (This second idea does also fit quite well with the Calvinist doctrine of predestination.)
The ruling powers, of course, weren't particularly interested in engaging with these inconvenient truths, and thus Williams was expelled. In mid-winter, no less.
So what did he do upon leaving Massachusetts? He founded Providence, Rhode Island, and there set up his own society, rather in opposition to the goings-on in Massachusetts. He did indeed get permission from the natives to settle it, and founded Rhode Island with both separation of church and state and complete freedom of religion. This made it quite rare in the Western world at that time, and Rhode Island subsequently proved to be a haven for religious outcasts such as Jews and Quakers. While Williams was more than happy to publicly rail against the newcomers' beliefs and condemn them to hell, he was equally adamant that there should be no legal restriction on their religious activities.
He also remained on relatively good terms with the natives, frequently comparing them favorably to Europeans (all the while trying strenuously to convert them to Calvinism). He published a textbook on the Algonquin language, and often served essentially as ambassador to the natives for all the Puritan colonies. According to Wikipedia, he also passed laws banning slavery and was arguably the first Anglo-American abolitionist.
So while he was a crazy cat, I can't help but respect him for his steadfast adherence to a number of ideals that are matter-of-fact today but quite at odds with the society of his time. The world needs people like Roger Williams to show us the way, even if only in hindsight. (In passing, another fascinating and heroically stubborn exile from Boston to Rhode Island was Anne Hutchinson). Even more than one hundred years later, Rhode Island was one of the last former colonies to sign on to the Constitution, because they were holding out for the Bill of Rights that ensured religious liberty.
So that's why Rhode Island gets to be its own state. Because Rhode Island is a special, even a singular, place.
Having lived my entire life (up till ten days ago) west of the Mississippi, Rhode Island has always seemed both rather mysterious and rather silly to me. The entire state is barely twice as large, area-wise, as Houston, and much smaller than the Houston metropolitan area. Los Angeles County is nearly four times larger. So why does Rhode Island get to be its own state?
Roger Williams, that's why. Williams was zealous, argumentative, and stubborn: in many ways a quintessential Puritan. He was warmly welcomed to Boston in the beginning, but he held certain views that even the Boston Puritans considered extreme. As he persisted in preaching his ideas to everyone who would listen, he was sidelined, censured, and finally banished. According to Vowell, there were two of his tenets in particular which got him booted:
1. The King of England has no power to grant rights of settlement in the New World. If Europeans want to live there, they need to get permission from the Native Americans, not Old World monarchs.
2. Church and state should be separate. While Williams was extremely, vehemently, loudly, aggressively religious (for instance, he believed that visible saints should not even eat meals with the non-elect, which meant he refused to dine with his own family), he believed that if not kept separate the state would inevitably corrupt pure religion and twist it to its own nefarious ends, and, furthermore, since all sinners will eventually get what they deserve, there is no need for the state to enforce religious observance. (This second idea does also fit quite well with the Calvinist doctrine of predestination.)
The ruling powers, of course, weren't particularly interested in engaging with these inconvenient truths, and thus Williams was expelled. In mid-winter, no less.
So what did he do upon leaving Massachusetts? He founded Providence, Rhode Island, and there set up his own society, rather in opposition to the goings-on in Massachusetts. He did indeed get permission from the natives to settle it, and founded Rhode Island with both separation of church and state and complete freedom of religion. This made it quite rare in the Western world at that time, and Rhode Island subsequently proved to be a haven for religious outcasts such as Jews and Quakers. While Williams was more than happy to publicly rail against the newcomers' beliefs and condemn them to hell, he was equally adamant that there should be no legal restriction on their religious activities.
He also remained on relatively good terms with the natives, frequently comparing them favorably to Europeans (all the while trying strenuously to convert them to Calvinism). He published a textbook on the Algonquin language, and often served essentially as ambassador to the natives for all the Puritan colonies. According to Wikipedia, he also passed laws banning slavery and was arguably the first Anglo-American abolitionist.
So while he was a crazy cat, I can't help but respect him for his steadfast adherence to a number of ideals that are matter-of-fact today but quite at odds with the society of his time. The world needs people like Roger Williams to show us the way, even if only in hindsight. (In passing, another fascinating and heroically stubborn exile from Boston to Rhode Island was Anne Hutchinson). Even more than one hundred years later, Rhode Island was one of the last former colonies to sign on to the Constitution, because they were holding out for the Bill of Rights that ensured religious liberty.
So that's why Rhode Island gets to be its own state. Because Rhode Island is a special, even a singular, place.
