711. How Did Two People From Massachusetts Advance Religious Liberty?

Hello everybody. Welcome back to another episode of The Way the World Works. I'm really excited about this episode. I go on these historical rabbit holes and then I get like way too excited about things I find out about American history and then I have nobody to tell them to. And I get so excited because I get to tell them to you. So today we're going to talk about religious liberty. But the reason I'm so excited about it is obviously we know that America, big part of it, was religious liberty. We know about the, you know, pilgrims coming over on the Mayflower and how

that had to do with religious liberty. But this year I'm reading, finally reading one of my, it's heavy so I got to pick it up, a book that has been on my list forever and it is a big boy. This is not for the faint of heart. So this is conceived in liberty. It is by Murray Rothbard who is an economist and a, to me, amazing historian. I said is, was, he's been, he passed many, many years ago. But this book is so good. To me, it is one of the most concise and just in depth and all the good stuff about American history. I mean, there's a lot of good stuff.

But if you have read Fate of the Future, which I hope you have the Tuttle Twins book, that was based on another Murray Rothbard book. So we love Murray Rothbard here. But this book is, like I said, just such a great, just honestly so good with American history, but not for kids necessarily because, I mean, if they can, if they can read it and understand it, more power to them, but it's pretty dense. But I want to talk about the chapters I recently read on Roger Williams and Anne Hutchinson. And these are people who I remember hearing about in like elementary school history classes,

but the problem is with those classes in public school, especially you have to just like gloss over things so quickly that you don't get a chance to really take it in. And you know, parents, as you know, the way schools are set up to dates, it's like remembering names and dates. And I remembered their names and their dates, but I couldn't have told you who they were until going back as an adult and reading this book. So without further ado, let's get into it. So we're going to travel back about 400 years ago to meet two people who challenge one of the

strictest societies in America. And they honestly help set the stage for religious liberty. So we're going to get right into these two, Roger Williams and Anne Hutchinson. So, you know, you guys already know Puritans, pilgrims coming to America on the Mayflower, and a lot of that was because they were actually called separatists at the time. And they were called separatists because they wanted to separate themselves from the main religion in England. So they came here for that liberty, for that chance. And so when you're thinking about that,

you think, oh, that's great. So they're going to be super tolerant of other religions because they know what it's like to be persecuted and not be able to freely practice their faith. So that's great. They're going to start this new society where everyone can believe what they believe. That is not what happened, unfortunately. So they got here and they were all about religious freedom for themselves, but not for other people. So let's talk about the Massachusetts Bay Colony. This is about the 1630s. So the Puritans that come to America, again,

seeking religious freedom, but once they were in charge, they did not award or allow that freedom to other people. So in the colony, only members of the official church were allowed to vote, okay? You needed government permission to start a new church and criticizing leaders, especially religious leaders, you could be fined, you could be whipped or banished entirely from the colony. And as we're going to see, they made good on those promises on those threats. So they believed that too much freedom would cause chaos. Oh my goodness, how can we let

people have all this freedom? Not only that, they thought that what they called unbounded toleration was dangerous. So they literally only believed that their religion should be the one that had all these exceptions and should have the freedom to worship, but no one else and they couldn't even be tolerant. So this is a whole different thing than I think what we think about when we think of these people as being very pro-religious liberty. So this whole colony was built kind of like a theocracy, a religious government, and there was a religious rule book where leaders watched people

carefully. It was very much like big brothers watching you and they punished dissent. There are some crazy stories about people being religious leaders being worried that if people were congregating together, even walking together, that that would mean they could be discussing religion and God and the Bible on their own. And that was dangerous. So what if they formed opinions that were different to the main religion in town? So we're going to kind of get into that right now in those threats. So Roger Williams, guys, this guy is so cool. So he was a he was a big believer in what he called

soul liberty belonging to everybody. So like soul religious like that, that freedom. And he's also in Massachusetts, obviously in 1631, he's young, he's brilliant, he's energetic, and he was noticing a very serious problem with the way things were going. So he believed that forcing people to follow a religion wasn't just unkind to them, but it was wrong. It was morally wrong. And here's a real novel idea. He believed that civil government should only have the authority over civil matters. What crazy idea back then to think about this

separation of church and state, which we hear about all the time now. He also believed that your beliefs are personal there between you and God and not you and your government, you know, again, separation of church and state. And he again, wild for the time believed that people with different beliefs deserved the freedom of conscience, meaning they deserve the freedom to worship and believe what they believed because they were serving their own conscious, right? I can't start believing in a religion. I don't believe is serving me just because the government

tells me to. So this was a big thing for Roger Williams. And, you know, people thought in these days that the unity of religion kept society safe. They didn't see it as individual liberty. So it's again, really interesting that when we look at the pilgrims, the Puritans, the separate it, we look at these and we think like, Oh, they came for religious liberty. We sometimes forgot how quickly that turned into religious liberty for me, not for thee, right? And so you see this, this inconsistency, which is a human thing, but it's, it's interesting to take a closer look at

history and say, all right, they got some of it right. And then it all got real wrong from there. So he also criticized. And this was again, everything Roger Williams did was pretty radical. I mean, he was like, he, he was so cool. I would have been, I would have wanted to be his friend. But he also criticized how the king was just claiming land that belonged to the Native Americans. So Williams actually was saying like, Hey, if this is their land, if they were here before us, why don't we pay them? If they're the rightful owners and we want their land,

why don't we like offer to pay them for this land? And people don't want to hear this, this time, right? They're thinking like, Well, first of all, no, I don't want to waste money in that second of all, you know, worse, we might be stronger. We have more, you know, might we can scare them, we can chase them off their land. And that just didn't sit, that didn't sit right with Roger Williams. Man ahead of his time. So pretty soon, the leaders were obviously like, this guy is, this guy's dangerous. This guy is influential because he's so charismatic. People like him.

We've heard enough. So they charge him guys, they charge him with spreading new and dangerous opinions, which is just wild. And they banished him and they banished him in the middle of winter. And this is not like it is today where if I were to get banished from my city, I would have countless other cities to go find and go move in. No, you're banished from, you know, your colony, you're wandering through the wilderness. And in the middle of winter, that is not a place you want to be. So William's escaped. He's in the freezing wilderness, but he survived. And this I love. Do

you know how he survived with the help of Native American tribes? And who better for them to want to help when they're finally meeting somebody who's like, I don't want to steal your land. I want to pay you for the land. I don't think what's happening to you guys is right. So because of this, because of this respect of their property rights of their land, they end up helping him because why not? You know, he's been good to them too. So he goes on to found Providence, Providence, Rhode Island is what you may have heard of today.

So he goes on to form Providence and that became the very beginning of Rhode Island itself. Actually, this is the beginning of it. Rhode Island is pretty tiny. And it's, it's near Massachusetts, but it's the first colony in America. And I want you to really take this in with true religious liberty. Okay, we, we talk about it as the founding of our nation and it was, but really it doesn't start until Roger Williams and Rhode Island. All right. So that's happening. Meanwhile, there is a really cool lady named Anne Hutchinson. Okay. And she was really a voice

nobody could silence. She was a firecracker. I would have wanted to be friends with her too. So really bold for her time also, because remember, unfortunately, at this time, women weren't given much of a a, they weren't given a platform to really speak their mind. It just wasn't done. That wasn't, you know, what was considered a woman's place at the time. But not only was Anne Hutchinson just not afraid to do it, but her husband was super supportive too, which again, wasn't always common at that time. So I think that's really cool. So she was a midwife that somebody who helps

bring babies into the world. And she was a very gifted speaker. So she starts hosting these small, you know, Bible discussions in her home. And people loved them because she was teaching things that were really powerful. And she was doing it in such a convincing and just again, people flocked to her energy. So her whole thing was that salvation was could be achieved by God's grace, not just following strict rules. And we're not going to get into whether or not you believe in this or don't believe in this. But why this was so dangerous at the time

is that the political leaders who were also religious leaders at the time were saying, if you don't follow every rule we set for you, then you are not saved that, you know, you are an enemy of God, all this stuff. And here comes Anne Hutchinson saying, well, wait a second, though, what if you are believe you believe in it? And you're, and God does, you know, God looks at more than just whether we're following these arbitrary laws, that these political men, you know, men meaning mankind, meaning that like humans are setting them put in a different way. Basically, Anne didn't

believe that following rules is what made you a good person, that there were countless other ways, including believing in God and that could make you actually a good person, right? What did that mean? Because the political leaders were trying to say, basically, you're only good and saved by God if you follow our rules. So again, Puritan rulers, they are not like unless they're like, who is this woman? And this is really big because in this particular, you know, community, they were really monitoring people's lives to see if they were following all these rules. So if following

rules became less of a, a, a given or a less of a rule to have to be considered a good person and saved by God's grace, well, then why would people follow all these rules? And maybe they're going to start questioning whether or not this rule actually makes any real sense. And so all of a sudden now she's becoming pretty popular. And every, like their political rulers are like, oh, this is getting, this is getting bad for us. This might end up with people realizing that we don't have all the answers. Maybe all these rules aren't worthwhile. So 1637 rules around, and it's a very tense

political year at the time. And, you know, the officials actually held a trial for Anne because they believed that she had these dangerous opinions, much like, you know, Roger Williams. And so she defended herself absolutely brilliantly, but she was also banished, which is again, just crazy. So she was also excommunicated from the main church, which to her didn't mean much because she was already starting to question this very puritanical society. But the minister went as far as to tell her she was being cast out like a leper. So a leper in Bible times, it was like a,

like a disease, I guess, and people would cast out lepers because it was contagious. They didn't want other people to get it. So that's what he was calling her. And she gives the best singer, guys, she goes better to be cast out of a church than to deny Christ because in her mind, she did not think they were representative of what God actually meant or intended to teach. So she and her supporters, they pick up and where do you think they go? Where can they go at this time where religious liberty is allowed? Rhode Island.

So they go to Rhode Island because they're aware of Roger Williams and his experiment, and they think this is the place for us to be. So now you've got this like burgeoning community, right? Of these settlements in in Rhode Island where real freedom is being tested, like maybe people can actually live together, even though they don't have common religions, you know, maybe if we all live by the rule, don't hurt people, don't take their stuff.

That will help us, right? That will be enough to keep us good to each other where we won't have to think that we have to live under the same religious rule. And so that's what's happening. Now you have communities like Portsmouth and Newport and Rhode Island, and you have something that became really, truly unique in the colonies. And it's a place where for the first time government didn't control religion, and it wasn't just lip service, as they say. It wasn't just something you said, it was something they were truly living. And so now all of a sudden people

with all sorts of different beliefs, you had Puritans, you had Baptists, you had Quakers, you had people with shocking no religion at all who were able to live together, and they were able to do it peacefully and without fear that somebody was going to persecute them for their beliefs. So here's the thing though. Does that mean things weren't a little chaotic? No, Rhode Island was messy. It was diverse, and it was a little chaotic sometimes, but it was free. People sometimes want to live in a society that's so ordered where everyone's just like looking down and following the

rules and doing nothing. And sure, maybe that will give you a lot of order, but that's not how freedom is born. Freedom can sometimes be a little messy because we're dealing with a bunch of different individual personalities, right? So it's messy in the best possible way. And Rhode Island is going to help impact the religious freedom, the freedom to worship and to believe you want to believe that later is going to be included in the First Amendment. So why remember these two people? I remember Roger Williams and

Ann Hutchinson because they both risked everything to start a society, to say to power like, no, I'm not going to believe what you tell me to believe because it's a rule you set. I'm going to follow my own conscience. I'm going to do what I believe in my heart is correct, and I'm not going to do it in a way that hurts you. I'm not going to do it in a way where I'm putting anyone else's life, liberty, or property, in jeopardy, I just want to be free to believe what I want to believe. And so that's a really important lesson to understand the origins

of religious liberty. But I also think one of the bigger lessons here is to realize that even people like the Puritans, Separatists, who came here for religious liberty, once they got it, they excluded other people. And it's this human flaw that we see time and again in history. And you even saw it after the American Revolution, when they were forming the Constitution, there were some people like Alexander Hamilton, for example, who was like, well, yeah, we fought this war because we wanted freedom from the government having too much power,

but that was then. Now I'm going to give, since now I'm in charge of government, I think they should have a little bit more power. And it's like people quickly forget when they're on the side of having to get to make the rules, and then they start doing the same thing that they didn't like when somebody else was making the rules. And so remember that just because it's going to happen all throughout history, but also in your own life. Remember that sometimes getting a little bit of power or getting your way or getting to make these decisions, you end up doing

things that are contrary to the reason you wanted to be the person making decisions. It's a really interesting study in human behavior. We will leave it there. As always, don't forget to like and subscribe to the podcast. And until next time, I will talk to you later.