Roger Williams Biography

Dictionary of Literary Biography on Roger Williams

Although Roger Williams by no means originated the concept of separation of church and state or the notion that one's religious beliefs are inviolably private matters, it is for these two principles that he is best known. Williams was indeed an early apostle of and forceful spokesman for those ideas which are now central to American thought. Yet it must be remembered that he was a profoundly devout Separatist Puritan whose political and social ideas were always subordinate in importance to his religious thought. The basis for his abiding interest in political democracy, for example, was principally that it afforded the elect the necessary freedom to work out the problems of existence in a climate conducive to religious expression. A Key into the Language of America ... (1643), unlike the usual handbook for traders or missionaries, is largely concerned with the spiritual benefits that observation of the Indian may provide the white man; and in William's later life his scathing attack on the already much-harassed Quakers derived from his staunch and rationalist Calvinism at the expense of his political and social liberalism.

Roger Williams biography

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This biography contains 2,513 words (approx. 8 pages at 300 words per page).