Was Roger Williams a Baptist?

Was Roger Williams a Baptist? I answer that question differently as a pastor than as a historian. As a pastor, the answer revolves around church membership. Roger Williams was baptized and helped found the first Baptist church in America in Providence, Rhode Island. However, while there, he became convinced that all churches were corrupt beyond repair since legitimacy depended on apostolic succession and every church had irreversibly strayed from the apostolic standard. After a few months, he renounced his own baptism, left his church, and never returned to any church for the remainder of his life. From this perspective, Roger Williams was a Baptist only for about four months.

Historically, the question is more complex. Matthew Bingham has recently challenged the prevailing Baptist historiography wherein historians anachronistically import later labels to classify earlier figures.^[1] He argues that no single Baptist movement existed in the seventeenth century because these groups would not have considered agreement on baptism sufficient grounds for shared identity (For fuller analysis of his thesis, see my earlier article). By the end of the century, Protestants who both accepted regenerate church membership and rejected infant baptism had begun adopting the “Baptist” designation. Though the term was first used disparagingly by their opponents, it at least distinguished them from the dreaded “Anabaptist” label. Whether you accept Bingham’s alternative of “baptistic congregationalists” or prefer to stick with the traditional label of “Particular Baptists” for simplicity, his work at least shows that our modern categories fail to do justice to the complexity of the times.

As an aside, Bingham’s preferred label of “baptistic congregationalists” also has problems. Bingham wants to show that the two groups commonly called General Baptists and Particular Baptists did not occupy two branches of a common theological identity. To achieve this, he aligns the Particular Baptists more closely with the emerging Congregationalists (another anachronism, but how else do we talk about these groups?). However, as Nathan Sherman points out, “If a growing number of pastors and their churches were moving in a deliberate baptistic exodus away from Congregationalism, historians should be reticent to drag them back to the identity which they had so decisively left behind.”^[2] Bingham’s “baptistic congregationalists” had explicitly rejected the Congregationalist system, devised their own covenant theology, and formulated their own conception of the relationship between church and state. Most of all, they wrote their own confessions of faith and constituted distinct churches that practiced believers’ baptism exclusively. If we need a new label, “baptistic separates” seems a better fit.

Christopher Hill and G. J. M. Pearce capture the difficulty of these questions of classification: “The disagreements among historians as to the exact sectarian classification of an individual or a congregation is the best evidence that what they are trying to do is unsatisfactory because anachronistic.”^[3] Hill and Pearce use John Tombes (1603–1676) to illustrate this complexity: “Take John Tombes, for instance. Doctrinally he was a Baptist. But he is not usually claimed by Baptist historians because he held a living^[4] from 1630 to 1662, and in his license under the Indulgence of 1672 he described himself as a Presbyterian. On his death bed he declared that he dared not separate from communion with the Church of England.”^[5] Or consider a figure like William Dell (1607–1669). Though never linked with a specific Baptist congregation, his written works portray Baptist views. He opposed the concept of a state church and explicitly criticized the Church of England, yet he took a state salary for two decades, embraced episcopacy, and allowed his infant children to be baptized.

It was an era of intense political instability, and Protestant Dissenters did not yet have the rigid denominational identities within which to find refuge. These figures were seeking to balance several conflicting concerns simultaneously, including theological conviction, earning a living, and staying alive. If you want to get a good sense of the convolution, read Michael Watts’ The Dissenters: From the Reformation to the French Revolution, where you will encounter a dizzying array of labels with overlapping meanings, including but not limited to Puritan, Anabaptist, Brownist, Separatist, sectary, Dissenter, Nonconformist, and Free Churchman. Then, there were Ranters, Seekers, Quakers, Diggers, Levellers, Fifth Monarchists, Grindletonians, and Muggletonians. Of course, we already know about the Anglicans, Presbyterians, Independents, and Baptists. Often figures moved fluidly between these groups and could identify with several designations at once.^[6]

But what about Roger Williams? Williams is notoriously hard to classify because, first, he was in America as the Baptist tradition was emerging in England, and, second, his idiosyncratic views about the corruption of all churches prevented him from identifying with any church. However, like John Tombes, he was doctrinally a Baptist. His covenant theology, ecclesiology, sacramentology, and political theology place him within the stream of baptistic thinking then crystallizing into a distinct theological identity that we now recognize as “Baptist.” Furthermore, later Baptists counted Williams as one of their own and learned from his writings. Thus, though it’s embarrassing for some contemporary baptistic congregationalists to admit, Roger Williams has shaped Baptist identity regardless of how we prefer to classify him. It doesn’t really matter whether you consider him a kindred spirit. Those who came before us and shaped the Baptist tradition certainly did. Personally, while I disdain Williams’ unwillingness to submit to a church, I appreciate his brilliant defense of Baptist covenant theology and religious liberty. Like all figures from history, Roger Williams is a mixed bag.

As a takeaway, sound historiography always attempts to account for the complexity of history. When evaluating figures from this era, labels often obscure more than they reveal. Study the context carefully and account for the times. Try your best to remove your own passions and set aside your agenda and personal hobbyhorses. If you have an axe to grind, don’t use the dead as your personal grinding wheel.

^[1] Matthew C. Bingham, Orthodox Radicals: Baptist Identity in the English Revolution (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2019).

^[2] Nathan Sherman, “A Change in Kind, Not Degree: Labels, Identity, and an Evaluation of ‘Baptistic Congregationalists,” Themelios 49, no. 1 (2024), 107.

^[3] Christiopher Hill and G. J. M. Pearce, “History and Denominational History,” Baptist Quarterly 22, no. 2 (1967): 68.

^[4] “Held a living” indicates someone who received a ministerial salary from the state.

^[5] Hill and Pearce, “History and Denominational History,” 70.

^[6] Michael R. Watts, The Dissenters: From the Reformation to the French Revolution (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1978).