Rhode Island Colony: Religious Freedom for All

Roger Williams founded Providence (1636) on a radical principle: soul liberty — no state church, no religious test for citizenship.

Who Was Welcome

• Baptists (Williams himself, after brief Puritan, then Seeker phase)
• Quakers (persecuted in Massachusetts)
• Jews (Touro Synagogue, Newport, 1763 — oldest standing US synagogue)
• Antinomians, Familists, Ranters — fringe Puritan sects
• Anglicans (King's Chapel, Boston refugees)
• Catholics (rare but tolerated)
• Muslims, "Turks," "Infidels" — theoretically protected (Williams: "civil peace ≠ spiritual conformity")

Charter Guarantees

1663 Royal Charter (Charles II): "No person shall be any wise molested... for any differences in opinion in matters of religion." Unique among colonies.

Contrast

Massachusetts: Congregational establishment, heresy banishment (Williams, Hutchinson).
Pennsylvania: Quaker-led, broad tolerance but Christian frame.
Rhode Island: Separation of church and state — 130 years before Constitution.

Limits

Only freemen (property-owning males) voted. Indigenous (Narragansett, Wampanoag) displaced. Slavery existed (Newport = major slave port). "Soul liberty" didn't extend to bodies.

But for conscience — Rhode Island was the first political entity in the West to say: belief is not the state's business. That legacy endures.