American Minute with Bill Federer

American Minute with Bill Federer

February 5

Guilty of preaching religious liberty in England, Roger Williams fled
to Boston, FEBRUARY 5, 1631.

He pastored briefly before being banished by Puritan John Cotton, who
himself had been persecuted by Anglicans in England.

Roger Williams befriended the Narragansett Indians, who gave him land
for Providence Plantation, Rhode Island-the first place where church
government was not controlled by the state government.

In 1639, Williams organized the first Baptist Church in America.

His "notorious disagreements" with Cotton led to his publishing "Mr.
Cotton's Letter Lately Printed, Examined and Answered," 1644, in
which Roger Williams wrote:

"The church of the Jews under the Old Testament in the type, and the
church of the Christians under the New Testament in the anti-type,
were both separate from the world; and when they opened a gap in the
hedge or wall of separation between the garden of the church and the
wilderness of the world, God hath ever broken down the wall...

therefore if He will ever please to restore His garden and paradise
again, it must of necessity be walled in peculiarly unto Himself from
the world."

In 1802, Jefferson referred to Roger Williams' "wall of separation"
in his letter to the Danbury Baptists.