Roger Williams (Lives & Legacies (Oxford))
Glimpsed in Charlotte Gordon's magnificentMistress Bradstreet[BKL Mr 1 05], Roger Williams fascinates there because, unlike Anne Bradstreet's friend Anne Hutchinson, who evolved into dissent, he appears a dissenter from the beginning. Gaustad's excellent profile confirms that impression. Williams arrived in Massachusetts in 1631, convinced of what we now call the separation of church and state, and for speaking his mind, he was banished in 1635. He walked in winter to the site of Rhode Island and founded a colony and a Baptist congregation that he left within months, feeling that no new church should be established before the Second Coming. Conscientious, humble, a faithful family man, and a devoted public servant, he insisted on just dealings with the Indians, whom he regarded as the original owners of colonists' lands, learning the Narragansett language to help him do so. He was, Gaustad affirms, and many learned in school, a man ahead of his time, whose dedication simultaneously to freedom of conscience and civic responsibility remains a high ideal of good citizenship.Ray OlsonCopyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved