August15 weekend 2025 spirituality column

The Pending Deportation of Roger Williams

By Jeffery Jones and Norris Burkes

 

With all the recent swarm of INS arrests, I feel fortunate they aren't deporting any white male Baptists such as myself.

 

I can hear you saying, "Oh Norris, don't be ridiculous. You're 'America's Favorite Chaplain' – a National Treasure."

 

Trustfully, I felt safe until my new friend, Professor Jeffrey Jones shared a story he wrote called, "The Attempted Deportation of Roger Williams." 

 

Jones is a Baptist like me, so Roger Williams is our main guy.

 

According to Jones, Williams arrived February 5,1631 in the Boston harbor on the Lyon. He came with other migrants seeking to escape the religious and political oppression of English Puritans. He had feared his unorthodox religious views would get him arrested in England.

 

He hoped to find greater freedoms in Boston but was soon forced to migrate again, this time to Salem. Even there, however, he encountered religious restrictions imposed by both church and state.

 

That summer he migrated to Plymouth. He spent a year there before his growing family found bigger accommodations back in Salem, Massachusetts.

 

At first, the town welcomed his return. A local church asked him to be their teacher and the Williams family settled into a comfortable house.

 

While Roger served the church, he simultaneously sought to develop relationships with local Native Americans. However, political leaders back in Boston Massachusetts expressed concern over Williams' unorthodox beliefs and most especially on his view of Native American land ownership.

 

Town leaders met with him on several occasions demanding his silence on these controversial topics.  At first, Williams agreed to accommodate their wishes. but it wasn't long before he found that silence in the face of oppression is not a viable option.

 

Most significantly, he opposed the government's attempt to enforce the first four of the Ten Commandments. Willaims believed that government had no role to play in one's personal faith.

 

Williams objected with succinct clarity, "Forced worship stinks in God's nostrils."

 

His protest threatened the puritan arrangement of joining the church with the state, an essential part of the Puritan vision of the "City on the hill."

 

Willaims would not go unchallenged.

 

Religious and civic leaders saw him as a threat to colony unity and demanded Williams' banishment. The magistrates agreed.  And on a frigid November day, Williams received a removal order telling him to self-deport within six weeks.

 

Williams happened to be very ill at the time, so the magistrates permitted him to stay until spring, provided he did not speak publicly. With no official church position, he wisely agreed to silence.

 

However, Willams continued to meet with a small group of friends in his home. The magistrates saw those meetings as a clear violation of their agreement and immediately sent agents to deport Williams on the next ship.

 

Warned of his pending arrest and near certain death if he remained in Salem, Williams risked life and limb as a fugitive in the wilderness.

 

Nearly dead, he stumbled into sanctuary with the Native Americans he had befriended and whose language he knew. The food and shelter they provided enabled him to regain his strength.

 

He then established a colony in Providence Rode Island where his religious freedom became a reality with the creation of the first Baptist church in America.

 

Jones and I see how Williams' story offers challenging insights about oppression and freedom, brutality and compassion. Today, few can really say they aren't next, even a Baptist dude such as myself.

 

Disclaimer: Roger Williams was an "American Treasure." I'm not. But there is talk about sending me back to Texas.

 

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Jeffrey Jones is retired pastor who has served on the faculty of Andover Newton Theological School and the American Baptist national staff. His most recent book is Being Church in a Liminal Time: Remembering, Letting Go, Resurrecting.