Separation of church and state in Roger Williams' The Bloody Tenet of Persecution

Roger Williams was a Puritan Separatist and Baptist, who founded the new colony of Rhode Island after his expulsion from Massachusetts. His views were quite radical and democratic by 17th Century standards, since he supported religious freedom for all individuals and strongly disapproved of state-supported religions and established churches of the kind that existed everywhere at the time. Although his own views were strictly Calvinist, and he regularly entered into religious disputes with supporters of other religions, Rhode Island did not use the power of the government to enforce religious conformity. He called for the separation of church and state in his 1644 pamphlet "The Bloody Tenet of Persecution," on the grounds that in went against scripture and also caused religious wars. Williams directed his arguments against fellow John Calvin, John Cotton and other Protestants who favored state-supported churches and enforcement of laws against heresy and blasphemy. Judges, governors and other civil officers should have no power to enforce Christian doctrines and worship, or collect taxes for the official church. Williams would allow Jews, Muslims, pagans or unbelievers to live in civil society without fear of punishment or death, which was the most common punishment for heresy in those times. He also denied that the state should ever force Jews or other groups to convert to Christianity, which occurred frequently at that time. Unlike the New England Puritans, Williams denied that ancient Israel was a model for any governments or civil societies in the present day, and God required the state to enforce the doctrines of one single religion. Just the opposite, such policies led only to "civil war, ravishing of conscience, persecution of Christ Jesus in his servants, and of the hypocrisy and destruction of millions of souls" (Williams 1644). Christianity would survive and prosper very well on its own, without the assistance of the government or the diverse religious opinions held by Jews, Muslims, atheists or others in society.

Williams was not exaggerating in any of this, since civil war was occurring in England at the time he wrote this pamphlet, while religious wars were being fought all over Europe. All of those fighting those wars and exterminating those they believed to be heretical claimed they were doing God's will, but Williams thought this was false, for God did not endorse holy wars. Just the opposite, God favored peace rather than conflict and bloodshed and it was "unnecessary, unlawful, dishonorable, ungodly, unchristian, in most cases in the world, for there is a possibility of keeping sweet peace in most cases, and, if it be possible, it is the express command of God that peace be kept" (Williams 1644). Persecuting governments were all tyrannies like those of Nimrod, but God was always on the side of the innocent and oppressed. Christians should fight only with spiritual weapons and as long as they did no earthly powers could ultimately prevail against them. Violence only led to more violence and only a false religion required prisons, gallows, whips and swords to uphold it. No laws could really control the conscience of the individual, although they could force people to conform to religions and types of worship in which they did not really believe. God did not need "the help of a material sword of steel to assist the sword of the Spirit in the affairs of conscience," while civil officers and judges were not fit to intervene in religious controversies. Their only duty was to pass and enforce laws to maintain civil peace and order in the political or earthly realm, not spiritual matters. They have no authority over setting up the government of the church or electing its officers (which should follow the Bible) just as the church should have no power over the civil government. Williams went further and stated that the people were sovereign and "may erect and establish what form of government seems to them most meet for their civil condition" rather than being controlled by tyrants (Williams 1644).

In his 1652 pamphlet "The Bloody Tenet of Persecution Mad Yet More Bloody" Williams again attacked his opponent John Cotton, and strongly denounced persecution on religious grounds called for separation of church and state. All human beings were part of one family, having been redeemed by Christ, yet countries were being destroyed by religious wars, such as the Thirty Years War of 1618-48 that had recently ended. Jesus favored peaceful methods of persuasion and conciliation, not holy wars or civil governments using torture and execution to enforce Christian doctrines. Persecution and warfare had inly caused the deaths "of so many hundred thousands of his poor servants by the civil powers of the world, pretending to suppress blasphemies, heresies, idolatries, superstition, etc." (Williams 1652). In reality, at least twenty million had died in the recent religious wars in Europe although at the time no one knew the exact numbers, only that the death and destruction had been truly massive. This was more the spirit of the Devil than Jesus, who advocated love, peace and humility rather than rage and fanaticism. Persecution also forced people all over the world to live in fear and hypocrisy, professing religious ideas in which they did not believe because of fear of punishment or desire to win favors from the authorities. It also made the believers in false ideas more hardened and determined to hold to their views no matter what violence they suffered. In many countries, Christians were not even allowed to read the Bible at all but could only listen to the interpretations of the clergy and bishops. They did not allow the people to find the message of salvation since it was a threat to their own power, and this resulted in weakening both the church and the state by "so confounding and overthrowing the purity and strength of both" (Williams 1652).

Persecution had caused thousands of the best people to flee from England to Holland and New England, which damaged the economy and growth of the country. It was destroying all principles of justice and humanity, and insuring that only the persecutors were secure. Williams argued that state-supported religion was also a Machiavellian policy used to benefit those in power by controlling the people, and this "corrupts and spoils the very civil honesty and natural conscience of a nation" (Williams 1652). This had been true since the beginning of recorded history, so much so that Williams was amazed that it had continued so long. The evils resulting from it were so great that they threatened to "to blow up all religion, all civility, all humanity, yea, the very being of the world, and the nations thereof at once" (Williams 1652). Even the most wicked and corrupt persecutors could put on a show of fairness and righteousness by pretending to be protecting the true religion, but no worse doctrine has ever existed in the history of the world than persecution on the grounds of conscience.