#109 Roger Williams Part 2: Expulsion

The History of the Americans

Jack Henneman

History

4.9 • 632 Ratings

🗓️ 16 March 2023

⏱️ 33 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

It is the summer of 1634. When last we were with Roger Williams – helpfully, just the last episode – he was living in Salem, keeping his head down, and paddling around Massachusetts learning the local indigenous language and culture. But then Salem’s minister, Samuel Skelton, would die, and Williams would become the de facto leader of the Salem church. At the same time, politics in England were turning against the Massachusetts Bay Colony. Word was, Sir Ferdinando Gorges was sending an armed ship to confiscate the colony’s charter and impose a governor. The colony prepared for war, and considered it essential that God look favorably on the settlers. Roger Williams would speak up, pointing out that if He did not, it would be because of sins against Him from the government and church in Boston. This would lead to a year-long standoff between Williams and his followers over crucial matters of principle. This is the story of that confrontation, which would be the first moment in the history of the Americans when the separation, or not, of church and state would emerge as an existential question.

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Selected references for this episode

John M. Barry, Roger Williams and the Creation of the American Soul

Edmund Morgan, Roger Williams: The Church and State

Edmund S. Morgan, The Puritan Dilemma: The Story of John Winthrop

Transcript

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0:00.0	Welcome to the History of the Americans podcast, episode 109.
0:11.2	I'm your host, Jack Heneman, and I'm recording this episode on March 16, 23, in Austin, Texas.
0:19.8	We are telling the history of the lands now encompassed by the United States from the beginning without presentism.
0:27.7	For those of you listening in close to real time, on April 11th, I'll be in Washington, D.C. for the evening.
0:35.8	We've got some interest in doing a meetup at some as yet unspecified venue,
0:40.7	probably a bar or brewery.
0:42.8	If you'd like to join a few of us, send me a note at the History of the Americans at gmail.com
0:48.5	or a message through the contact page on the website or direct message on Twitter.
0:54.2	As we get closer, I'll find some place probably fairly convenient to DuPont Circle,
1:00.0	and I'll let people know the details via Twitter, the Facebook page for the podcast, and the
1:05.3	website.
1:06.9	As I think you all know, this is not a professional operation.
1:10.7	So I don't have anybody to organize this for me.
1:14.8	Oh, well, you get what you pay for.
1:18.3	It's the summer of 1634.
1:21.4	When last we were with Roger Williams, helpfully just the last episode, He was keeping his head down and paddling around
1:29.9	Massachusetts, learning the local indigenous languages and culture. A bit outside the Puritan
1:36.5	orbit, the English were establishing their first settlement in India, the beginnings of an
1:42.3	incursion there that would last for more than 300 years.
1:47.4	A young Frenchman named Jean Nicolet was exploring the upper great lakes and would set foot in
1:54.5	Wisconsin this summer, becoming the first European to have done so.
2:00.6	We will return to him.
	...

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