This is thinking in public, a program dedicated to intelligent conversation about

front-line theological and cultural issues with the people who are shaping them.

I'm Albert Moller, your host and president of the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary in

Louisville, Kentucky. It's not every day that on the front table of the local bookstore you find a book on a colonial minister.

That tells you something about the individual that is the focus of this new book by John Berry.

That man is Roger Williams.

His role in American history and in the context of American thought.

And in the history of Church State Relations in the United States is a story that needs to be told.

And when it comes to this new book by John Barry, it's a story that's told well.

John Berry is a well-recognized author, a prize-winning author.

You'll recognize him as the author of books including Rising Tide,

his book on the Great Mississippi flood of

1927, and the great influenza, the epic story of the deadliest plague in history.

More recently, he's the author of Roger Williams and the creation of the American soul, Church State and the birth of liberty.

John Berry, welcome to thinking in public.

Well, thanks very much for having me on.

Now, I was very interested right at the onset of my engagement with your new book which is a fascinating work

on the fact that this actually wasn't the book you first set out to write.

No I was going to write a book about the home front in World War I and culminating in

1919 a year of extraordinary turmoil in America and one of the figures I was going to use as a narrative vehicle was Billy Sunday.

Of course, the first really big time American evangelist and the Jerry Falwell type figure figure and as I just started doing my due diligence

and researching the issue of religion and American public life I kept going

...