Roger Williams, Natural Law, and Soul Liberty

“There is no such thing as religious freedom.” 

Those words belong to historian Finbarr Curtis, who argues in his book, The Production of American Religious Freedom, that religious liberty is nothing more than a “malleable rhetoric employed for a variety of purposes.” Those purposes, according to Curtis, include the “empowering of private tyranny.” Another historian, Tisa Wenger, makes a similar argument in her book, Religious Freedom: The Contested History of an American Ideal. According to Wenger, religious liberty is merely a “modern invention,” a “human construct,” inextricably tied to issues of power, authority, and empire building.

Religious freedom is, therefore, under sever critique—and not just in the halls of the academy. Indeed, consider the following (now infamous) dialogue: “Freedom of religion is a fundamental right, but it should not be used to discriminate. Do you think religious institutions—like colleges, churches, charities—should they lose their tax-exempt status if they oppose same-sex marriage?” CNN anchor Don Lemon posed that question to former Democratic Presidential hopeful Beto O’Rourke during CNN’s LGBTQ Presidential Town Hall, held in Los Angeles in October 2019. O’Rourke responded with a simple, “Yes.” After pausing for a few moments to let the thunderous applause abate, O’Rourke argued, “There can be no reward, no benefit, no tax break for anyone or any institution, any organization in America that denies the full human rights and the full civil rights of every single one of us.”

Now, in February of 2021, Congress is pushing the Equality Act with renewed vigor now that Democrats enjoy majorities in both chambers and have control of the White House. Advocates of the Equality Act opine that religious liberty cannot protect acts of discrimination—acts, which according to the Equality Act, include Christian Colleges who uphold and enforce their doctrinal beliefs regarding gender and sexuality. The editorial board of The Washington Post went so far as to suggest that governmental protection of religious beliefs is permissible only when those beliefs are maintained privately. Those beliefs have no place in the public square.

From the ivory towers of the academy to the political rhetoric in the halls of Congress, religious freedom is increasingly viewed as a smokescreen of religious people, looking for a way to justify their bigotry. Religious freedom’s discontents believe this first freedom represents nothing more than a harmful prop that curtails human progress and flourishing. Hence why Professor Curtis argues that there is no such thing as religious freedom—like the Wizard of Oz, claims of conscience are curtains that conveniently veil an impulse towards “private tyranny.”

While there are certainly moments in the historical record where claims of conscience were raised for malicious purposes, that is not the full story of religious freedom—nor is it an accurate portrayal of how this idea emerged in the early modern period and in colonial America. Historians like Robert Louis Wilken have rightly argued that religious freedom sprang from the Christian tradition as early as the second century with the church father Tertullian. In the wake of the Reformation, moreover, a burgeoning dissenting tradition contended for the idea of religious liberty, arguing that freedom of conscience was not merely a practical political policy, but an idea grounded in God’s creational order and natural law.

Indeed, the early English Baptist tradition continually asserted the need for religious liberty. For men like Thomas Helwys and John Murton, liberty of conscience would not only secure societal flourishing, but it would inculcate a more proper environment for the spread of the gospel. It also created the conditions where individuals could repent and believe of their own accord, rather than outwardly submit to an established religious orthodoxy that was enforced by the civil magistrate.

These early English Baptists exerted enormous influence on Roger Williams, who is now a celebrated advocate of religious freedom in the American tradition. Williams was clear about his stance on the idea of soul liberty: This was not a freedom concocted in order to enact a system of oppression or to exert authority and power over minorities. On the contrary, Williams believed that religious liberty was a freedom ensconced in a natural order, which promoted a transcendent virtue, goodness, and morality. It was, for Williams, a pre-political freedom. Williams contended that the public expression of one’s deepest religious convictions extended from ontological, moral first principles. Thus, Williams submitted that withholding religious freedom was not merely bad policy—it portended disaster, for in the revocation of religious freedom was the rejection of the natural law. Indeed, the natural law, according to Williams, verified the moral and ethical imperative for societies to protect freedom of conscience. Assaults against religious liberty, therefore, did not violate an abstract, constructed idea but a freedom enshrined in the order of creation—a discovered liberty, essential for human flourishing.

As contemporary debates rage about conscientious freedom, especially as the nation considers the Equality Act, it is incumbent upon Christians to consider the importance of religious liberty. Religious dissenters have often been the most ardent and articulate advocates of soul freedom—that has long been the history of this crucial idea. It appears that as Christians traverses the moral headwinds of the 21st century, we will continue to be those voices crying out for liberty in the things of God.

And we will do so not merely because we ourselves do not want to suffer persecution. Indeed, our advocacy for liberty must spring from that same impulse that guided Helwys, Murton, Williams, Isaac Backus, and John Leland: Religious freedom, as an idea rooted in the natural law, encourages peace, stability, and human flourishing.

But even more than that, we strive for religious freedom because, as Williams wrote, “Whereas he that is a briar, a Turk, a Pagan, and antichristian today, may be, when the Word of the Lord runs freely, a member of Jesus Christ tomorrow.” Thus, the goal of religious freedom was to allow God’s Word to run freely, for consciences to be free to respond, and for men and women to be won to Jesus Christ.