-1683) was a religious dissenter and the founder of Rhode Island (1636). During his fifty years in New England, Williams was a staunch advocate of religious toleration and separation of church and state. read more
Miller, Perry, Roger Williams, A Contribution to the American Tradition, (1953). much debated study; Miller argues that Williams thought was primarily religious, not political as so many of the historians of the 1930s and 1940s had argued. read more