The Puritans were extreme religious bigots, desperate to establish their own very narrow
interpretation of Christianity, and willing to march to the gallows, literally and socially, anyone
who did not practice their very specific rubric of the practice of faith. To the extent the Puritans’
faith influenced America’s Founders in the construct of the US Constitution and the Bill of
Rights, it drove them to put in place greater protection for religious liberty and rule against State
endorsement of any religion.
Both McClellan and Tocqueville reference these bouts of theocratic zealotry on the part of the
Puritans; McClellan points out the
Puritans treated Magna Carta, parliamentary government, and the rule of law with
contempt, acting in a far more arbitrary fashion than any English king had ever
dared to attempt…[where] principles of due process and established rules of
criminal procedure were deliberately violated…” (McClellan, 42).
Tocqueville, in attempting to explain the national impact of the Puritans’ emigrant origins on
America’s democratic development, believes nothing is “more instructive than the legislation of
the period” and to prove that turns to the laws of Connecticut, where the legislators write,
“Whoever will worship a God other than the Lord…will be put to death” and continues to extol
how blasphemy and witchcraft are also punishable by death. This same public servant,
Tocqueville points out,
…completely forgetting the great principles of religious liberty that he claimed in
Europe, forces, by threat of fines, attendance at divine worship. And he goes so
far as to impose severe penalties, and often death, on Christians who want to
worship God according to a creed different from his own.” (Tocqueville, 61f)
The colony of Rhode Island and Providence Plantations was founded because the Puritans
banished Roger Williams and his fellow sect of Christians out of Massachusetts in the winter of
1636 for what they declared to be, “New and Dangerous Opinions” (Grefe 2017). Williams and
his fellow “Quahogs” of Rhode Island immediately set to establish their own civil covenant that
bound the signatories to “promise to subject ourselves in active and passive obedience to all such
orders and agreements…by the major consent of present inhabitants…only in civil things”
(Liberty Fund 2022). Because Williams looked at the Puritans’ strict theocratic requirements as
a threat to both a Christian’s faith and a violation of his civil liberties, he strove to establish
Providence as a haven for “religious freedom and liberty of conscience” (Grefe).
In 1644 Williams turned this philosophy into a book, The Bloudy Tenant of Persecution, where
he set out the dire need for separation of church and state where,
All Civill States with their Officers of justice in their respective constitutions and
administrations are proved essentially Civill, and therefore not Judges,
Governours or Defendours of the Spirituall or Christian State and Worship...
[because] It is the will and command of God, that…a permission of the most
Paganish, Jewish, Turkish, or Antichristian consciences and worships, bee
granted to all men in all Nations and Countries… (sic throughout, emphasis
original) (Williams 1867, 3)
In response to this theocracy in New England, Baracksay points out how “The framers of the
Constitution thought that one way of avoiding the religious intolerance of the Puritan era was to
encourage a multiplicity of denominations” and that the First Amendment was written
specifically to prohibit any State establishment of religion as was seen in the New England
Puritan colonies. The answer to any moral shortcomings in modern American society is not to
be found in any aspect of the government, but in the Church and in men and women’s hearts and
minds.
Baracskay, Daniel. 2009. “Puritans.” Murfreesboro, TN: Middle Tennessee State University,
The Free Speech Center, The First Amendment Encyclopedia. https://www.mtsu.edu/first-
amendment/article/1372/puritans.
Grefe, C. Morgan. 2017. “Roger Williams and the Founding of Rhode Island.” Providence, RI:
Providence University, EnCompass Project. http://library.providence.edu/encompass/roger-
williams-and-the-founding-of-rhode-island/roger-williams-and-the-founding-of-rhode-island/.
Liberty Fund. n.d. “1637: Providence Agreement.” Accessed May 16, 2022. Liberty Fund,
Online Library of Liberty. https://oll.libertyfund.org/page/1637-providence-agreement.
McClellan, James. 2000. Liberty, Order, and Justice: An Introduction to the Constitutional
Principles of American Government 3rd ed. Indianapolis, IN: Liberty Fund.
Tocqueville, Alexis de. 2012. Democracy in America: In Two Volumes. Indianapolis, IN: Liberty
Fund.
Williams, Roger. 1867. The Bloudy Tenant of Persecution, for Cause of Conscience, Discussed,
in A Conference Betweene Truth and Peace. Edited by Samuel L. Caldwell. Providence, RI: The
Narragansett Club. https://archive.org/details/bloudytenentof00will/page/n5/mode/2up.
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