Forced worship stinks in God’s nostrils

Rodger Williams

Abstract

During the discussion we will talk about one of this nation’s Foundering Fathers,’ Roger Williams. The notion of the separation of church and state found an early advocate within the fertile mind of Williams. Long praised for his stance on religious freedom and limited government, Williams seems to have lost some of his prestige as historians employ the focusing lens of Critical Theory to the past.

Within the article, Linford D. Fisher and Lucas Mason-Brown have cracked a long-standing historical mystery surrounding Williams’s use of a complex form of shorthand that he mastered while serving as a clerk for the famous English Jurist, Edward Choke. Once the team deciphered William’s shorthand, they found that he was responding to a work by the Roxbury Massachusetts Puritan minister John Eliot concerning the heated debate surrounding infant baptism. Within that shorthand response, the scholars found a sidebar about aboriginal conversion, which they take as an opportunity to insert their own thoughts on morality and chide Williams for views that were commonly held during the period in which he lived. In so doing, Fisher and Mason-Brown, have committed the historical fallacy of presentism, which, of course, is one of the inherent failings of Critical Theory.

Time permitting, please feel free to listen to my rebuttal of authors’ and explain why presentism is such a heinous sin for the historian to commit. Given the fact that since the 1970s historians have largely forgotten the principle of presenting history as objectively as possible, this vlog is most prudent for those who wish to are tried of reading historians who constantly through stones instead of telling compelling stories about our fascinating and lamentable human saga. Also, one will note that the topic deviates from the list provided. My area was without the internet for a time, so I improvised.

Bibliography

Fischer, David Hackett. Historians’ Fallacies: Toward a Logic of Historical Thought. London, UK: Harper & Row, 1970.

Fisher, Linford D., and Lucas Mason-Brown. “By ‘Treachery and Seduction’: Indian Baptism and Conversion in the Roger Williams Code.” The William and Mary Quarterly 71, no. 2 (April 2014): 175–202. https://www-jstor-org.ezproxy.liberty.edu/stable/10.5309/willmaryquar.71.2.0175#metadata_info_tab_contents

Mises, Ludwig von. Theory & History. Auburn, AL: Ludwig von Mises Institute, 2007.

Morgan, Edmund Sears. Roger Williams: The Church and the State. New York, NY: Harcourt, Brace World, 1967.