On Williams and Locke

Scott Stearman has written a helpful article about "Baptists Stand for Church/State Separation" that is posted at Ethics Daily.

Here's a quote:

Early in this country's history, Baptists were among those who fought hard for religious liberty. We believed then that coerced faith is not faith, that the worst thing for any religion is for government to "establish" it, and that allowing church control over government didn't do anyone any good, either.

There is an error in his essay regarding Roger Williams. Williams (1603-1683) was not following the ideas of Locke (1632-1704). He was founding Rhode Island as "a pure democracy, which for the first time guarded jealously the rights of conscience by ignoring any power in the body politic to interfere with those matters that alone concern man and his Maker" when Locke was four years old.