Gathering the most significant writings of Roger Williams, this collection highlights the legacy of a powerful agitator for religious liberty, and the cofounder of the first Baptist church in America.
Explore the early call for a “wall of separation” between church and state as found in the writings of Roger Williams. This collection features his most famous work on religious liberty and church and state relations, The Bloody Tenent of Persecution, as well as his later defense of the work, The Bloody Tenent Yet More Bloody. Williams’ ideas are further explored and debated in his voluminous correspondence with John Cotton, John Winthrop, and other religious figures, as well as his open letter to the Westminster Assembly, all included here. These and other works provide insight into seventeenth-century debates within the Church of England, the early efforts towards protecting freedom of conscience in the American colonies, the boundaries between church and state, and much more.
