"We don't intend to turn the Republican Party over to the traitors in the battle just ended. We will have no more of those candidates who are pledged to the same goals as our opposition and who seek our support. Turning the party over to the so-called moderates wouldn't make any sense at all." - Ronald Reagan, Nov. 10, 1964

The Original Wall of Separation

February 5, 2012   ·   By   ·   0 Comments

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Engraved print depicting Roger Williams, founder of Rhode Island, meeting with the Narragansett Indians

American Minute from William J. Federer

Guilty of preaching religious liberty in England, separatist leader Roger Williams fled from Anglican England to Boston on FEBRUARY 5, 1631.

He pastored briefly before being banished by Puritan leader John Cotton, who himself had been persecuted by Anglicans in England.

Williams was befriended by Narragansett Indians and founded Providence Plantation, Rhode Island-the first place where church government was not controlled by the state government.

In 1639, Williams organized the first Baptist Church in America.

His “notorious disagreements” with Cotton led to his publishing “Mr. Cotton’s Letter Lately Printed, Examined and Answered,” 1644, in which Roger Williams wrote:

“The church of the Jews under the Old Testament in the type, and the church of the Christians under the New Testament in the anti-type, were both separate from the world; and when they opened a gap in the hedge or wall of separation between the garden of the church and the wilderness of the world, God hath ever broken down the wall…

“Therefore if He will ever please to restore His garden and paradise again, it must of necessity be walled in peculiarly unto Himself from the world.”

This understanding that the “wall of separation” was to protect “the garden of the church” from being trampled by “the wilderness of the world” is what Jefferson referred to in writing to Baptists in Danbury, Connecticut, in 1802.


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William J. Federer is a nationally recognized author, speaker, and president of Amerisearch, Inc, which is dedicated to researching our American heritage. The American Minute radio feature looks back at events in American history on the dates they occurred, is broadcast daily across the country and read by thousand on the internet.
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