Roger Williams was a charismatic young clergyman who had first come to New England in 1631. This, as well as the nature of the actual ideas proposed, helps to explain the controversies that centered on Roger Williams and Anne Hutchinson. What was essential to the system of open discussion of religious views was the willingness of all sides to admit that they might be wrong and that their openness further truth. After extended discussion, he abandoned that position. For example, the Watertown clergyman George Philips expressed a belief that the Roman Catholic Church was a true church, something most Protestants had traditionally denied. In many cases debates over religious views led to agreement or to a willingness to accept differences. In his famous “Christian Charity” lay sermon, Governor Winthrop expressed the belief that if the colonists lived as God desired them to, he would allow them to “see much more of his wisdom, power, goodness and truth than we have formerly been acquainted with.” Clearly he did not believe that he or his fellow colonists had no further need for debate, and the early history of the colony was characterized by vigorous discussion within individual congregations and in the larger community. Open discussion that could lead to a greater understanding of God’s will and way was how the godly had worked to achieve unity when in England. These differences were key as the colonists sought to establish the perimeter fence that would define their society. Others believed that because God had blessed them, their views on what was to be believed and practiced were beyond question. Massachusetts governor John Winthrop was typical of puritans who never lost awareness of the fact that they were unworthy of God’s love and still imperfect in their understanding. Their reaction to this experience differed, however.
Virtually all puritans believed that they had been born again through God’s grace, bestowed upon them despite their unworthiness. The settlement of Massachusetts presented the colonists with their first opportunity to decide what views and actions were acceptable and to prohibit what was not. The puritans who settled New England in 1630 were not coming to America to promote religious freedom for all, but to achieve for themselves a freedom from the church and civil officials in England who had prevented them from pursuing their faith as they believed God wanted them to. The debates over where to place that boundary can be very heated, pitting those who believe that a broader range of opinions can foster progress towards the society’s goals against others who fear that contested notions will poison the body politic. This is as true of the United States in the twentieth century as it was of New England in the seventeenth century. Every society constructs what one scholar has called a “perimeter fence,” which sets the boundary between actions and beliefs that are acceptable and those that are not.
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