Roger Williams

The Garden, the Wilderness, and the Wall Roger Williams

Roger Williams' "The Bloody Tenet for the Cause of Persecution of Conscience" is perhaps the single most important document in American history pertaining to the Establishment Clause of the First Amendment: "Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof." Dr. Brunson has excerpted the seminal ideas from Williams' massive book and updated Williams' 17th-century language to be accessible to all readers interested in early American history, especially those interested in the relationship between church and state. Any student of history or government, or any teacher, from the university to high-school level, will find this summary and new translation valuable to an understanding of the dynamic tensions between European and British traditionalists who brought their theocratic ideas to the New World, versus colonial separatists and deists who longed for a new "nation under God" where citizens of different faiths could coexist peaceably without the dictates or interference of the secular state. The book also includes three other important documents: a key passage from Roger Williams' letter to John Cotton in which Williams coins the phrase "wall of separation," and two of Jefferson's most important writings on the relationship between church and state, his "Letter to the Danbury Baptists" and "The Virginia Statute of Religious Freedom."