Segment 2

The City Upon the Hill

The tiny Plymouth Colony soon heard reports from England that were not good. Under the new king, Charles I, things were even worse for the religious dissidents—who called themselves "Puritans." They hoped to "purify" the Church of England. But the king wouldn't let them. So between 1630 and 1640, 20,000 Puritans sailed for New England. They wanted to practice their religion in peace. They wanted to build a holy community where people would live by the rules of the Bible. They expected their Massachusetts Bay Colony to be an example for all the world. One of the colony's governors, John Winthrop (shown in the middle of the picture) explained: "We must consider that we shall be as a city upon a hill. The eyes of all people are upon us."

Some Puritans did NOT believe in Tolerance

Ministers like the Reverend John Cotton preached that it was wrong to practice any religion other than Puritanism. Those who did would be helping the devil. They believed they followed the only true religion so everyone should be forced to worship as they did. "[Tolerance is] liberty to tell lies in the name of the Lord," said John Cotton.

Roger Williams

One Puritan minister named Roger Williams disagreed. He said, "Forced worship stinks in God's nostrils." Roger Williams didn't believe in forcing others to believe as he did. He thought that killing or punishing in the name of Christianity was sinful. He respected the beliefs of others, including the Native Americans. He said that church members should pay the bills for their church instead of taking the money out of everyone's general taxes. Then he started preaching that land shouldn't be forcibly taken from the Indians. He said, "[It is] against the testimony of Christ Jesus for the civil state to impose upon the souls of the people a religion. Jesus never called for the sword of steel to help the sword of spirit Roger Williams's "Plea for Religious Freedom"."

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Williams is Banished!

Those were strange ideas in seventeenth-century Massachusetts. Williams was arrested and banished. He fled south, bought land from the Indians, and started a colony called Providence. It would become the capital of Rhode Island. In Roger Williams's time it attracted many who were not wanted elsewhere, especially those who were searching for "freedom of conscience"—the freedom to believe and worship as they wished. Williams welcomed everyone, Quakers and Catholics, Jews and atheists, even when he disagreed with their religion. Centuries later, a biographer named Edmund Morgan wrote this about Williams's ideas: "We may praise him for his defense of liberty and the separation of church and state. He deserves the tribute but it falls short of the man. His greatness was simpler. He dared to think."

It was all good... until it wasn't

Here in this 19th century engraving Roger Williams is depicted upon his arrival in Rhode Island being greeted by the local Narragansett Indians. Though his relationship with the Indians was good for a long while, in 1675 it took a turn for the worse. In that year a group of Narragansetts attacked Providence and burned Williams's house to the ground.