A sermon by Ken Rummer

Is it a step forward or a step back, to display the Ten Commandments at the courthouse?
To require teachers to teach the Bible in public schools?
Is the United States a Christian nation where other faiths are tolerated?
Or a nation of no official faith where Christians are free to worship but receive no special favors?

It turns out, these debates go way back in our history. Back before red states and blue states, before Republicans and Democrats and Libertarians, even before the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution.

Travel with me back in time 400 years to the early 1600s. European monarchs – Spanish, Dutch, French, and English – are claiming chunks of North America by right of discovery and they are establishing plantations and communities and colonies there. Let me introduce you to two Christian leaders from that era, and their two different visions for America.

John Winthrop

The first is John Winthrop. He was the leader of a group of English settlers who arrived in Boston in 1630 aboard the good ship Arabella. These folk weren’t fitting in very well in England. They saw the Church of England, the official church of that day, as corrupt, in need of purifying, and that’s how they are remembered in history, as Puritans.

America, for John Winthrop and his boatload of fellow believers, was a chance to do church right, to establish a society that was visibly and strongly Christian.

John Winthrop gave a speech to fire up his group and prepare them for the challenges to come. His speech survives under the title “A Modell of Christian Charity.”

Winthrop’s main point was that in the extreme situation they were going to be experiencing as a new colony in America, they were going to need to live out an extra measure of Christian love for each other. In addition, they were going to have to establish a fitting form of government both civil and ecclesiastical.

Winthrop sees the relationship between his group and God as a covenant, like God’s relationship to Israel in bible times. They will be “as a city set on a hill” (a picture from Matthew 5). They will be blessed if they stay faithful to God. But if they deal falsely with God, God will withdraw the blessing from them to their ruin.

Can you see Winthop’s colony-sized vision extended to the nation? A nation that won’t come into being for another 150 years?

• What if America is a place of destiny, of covenant, of a special relationship with God?
• What if America is the chance to do church right?
• Where the government supports the church and passes laws in harmony with it, so that both church and state shine with Christian light?
• What if God is picking America to be the example of a Christian society and the eyes of the world look to America as to a city on a hill?

It’s a vision for America that goes back to 1630 and to John Winthrop and to the Puritan founders of the Massachusetts Bay Colony.

Roger Williams

Roger Williams arrived in the Massachusetts Bay Colony in 1631. He was a minister of the Puritan persuasion, but some of his views were in conflict with the leaders of the colony, and they decided to kick him out. They sent officers to arrest him and put him on a boat back to England. But he skipped town and found sanctuary with a tribe of native people. Eventually he bought land from them and started a new colony, Rhode Island.

What were the dangerous ideas Roger Williams was teaching?

He didn’t think the King of England had the right to give land to colonists because people were already living on that land, namely the native Americans.

He didn’t think the civil government should be in the business of enforcing the parts of the ten commandments dealing with God.

He wanted to draw the line between church and state more firmly.

The “wall of separation” language comes from one of his letters.

He thought that religious belief was a matter of conscience, not something that the government should try to force. He cited Acts 4 where the authorities command James and John not to speak any more about Jesus, and they answer that they must obey God rather than the governing authorities.

He used as an example the situation of a ship at sea, one carrying passengers of different religious faiths to a common destination. He didn’t want everybody on the ship forced to come to the same worship service, or anybody prevented from worshiping in their own way. He called this: liberty of conscience.

And what of the ship’s captain?

Roger Williams didn’t think the captain had to be a Christian to do a good job of setting the course and running the ship and enforcing the ship’s rules to maintain justice, peace, and sobriety among both passengers and crew.

Remembering that there was no United States of America the nation in those days, just citizens of England starting colonies in North America, what might Roger William’s vision for America look like on a national scale?

People of many faiths and no faiths at all, traveling on the same ship. No one forced to worship against his beliefs. No one prevented from worshiping according to his beliefs.

People of differing faiths electing leaders together. The civil government maintaining order, looking to the common good, not getting involved in matters of religious belief.

That’s a Christian vision for America that comes from Roger Williams.

Two Visions Compared

So, John Winthrop and Roger Williams, two Christian leaders with two very different visions.

On the one hand, A City on a Hill. On the other, The Ship of State. Two visions that still echo in the public conversations and private opinions of the present day.

Are you convinced that our country would be better off if Christians made the rules and ran everything including the government? John Winthrop is your man.

Does the prospect of the government ensuring correct belief and enforcing church rules fill you with dread? Roger Williams felt the same.

Should the United States be Christian like Saudi Arabia is Muslim? Officially and visibly?

If the Christian nation idea seems right to you, Winthrop is on your side.

If you think freedom of worship should apply, not just to our kind of Christians, but to everyone regardless of their faith or unbelief, then Roger Williams is your champion.

If you like to think of the United States as a new Israel, a nation chosen and favored by God, then John Winthrop speaks your language.

If you see diversity of believing as a mark of liberty and a sign of national health, Roger Williams is in your corner.

Two visions, still popping up in the national conversation.

Three Observations

I’d like to close with three observations.

1. Both Winthrop and Williams were strong, believing Christians, but they disagreed about how to apply Christian faith to living in America. Whichever one seems to you to be closer to the mark, I hope you’ll remember the other one, and take into account the possibility that not everyone who is on the other side is a benighted spawn of Satan. Other Christians may see matters of Church and State differently than you do. My advice: Extend grace. Show respect.

2. When the end of the 1700s came around, and the colonies newly independent from Great Britain designed a constitution by which to govern their new nation, they leaned toward Williams’s vision. No religious test for office meant you didn’t have to be a Christian to be a senator or the president. Citizenship by birth or naturalization meant you didn’t have to be a Christian to vote. And the No Establishment and Free Exercise clauses of the First Amendment decided against the Christian nation designation and for a nation of multiple faith expressions. On matters of Church and State, the Constitution sounds like Roger Williams.

3. In years past, when I tried to give a two-sides sermon as a way to encourage thought and reflection, I would get the question in the handshake line, “But which one is right?!”

I won’t tell you who was right, Roger Williams or John Winthrop. They each had a vision for living as Christians in America. And their visions are still part of the conversation today.

I will tell you that of the two, I personally favor Roger Williams and his ship with passengers of many faiths all traveling together. On the other hand, you may be convinced that Winthrop’s Christian city on a hill is a worthier goal. It’s OK. We can still talk. And I promise not to yell.

For Further Reading:

• “A Modell of Christian Charity,” John Winthrop, 1630
• “The Bloody Tenet of Persecution for Conscience,” Roger Williams, 1644