A Brief Book Notice from Books at a Glance
How shall we live together in the light of our very deep differences? Christian author Os Guinness has said this is the greatest problem facing the United States today and the same could be said for ‘the West’ as a whole. Can a seventeenth-century Calvinist contribute anything? In recent years a number of authors, popular and academic, Christian and secular, have found inspiration in Roger Williams, the rebel Puritan exiled from Massachusetts who founded Rhode Island. He made the new little state a haven for those ‘oppressed for conscience’ and wrenched church and state further apart than was anywhere known at that time. Its Charter was the first in the world to protect liberty of conscience. Williams is rewarded with a statue at the Reformation Wall in Geneva, yet he remains strangely unknown today, even by those who stand broadly in his religious heritage.
About the Author
Mostyn Roberts is the pastor of Welwyn Evangelical Church in Hertfordshire. After reading law at Pembroke College, Cambridge (where he was converted) he practised as a solicitor for seven years. He responded to the call to the ministry, taking a BA at Spurgeon’s College in London followed by the MTh at the University of London. After a pastorate in the north of England he came to Welwyn at the end of 1998. He has taught Systematic Theology at LTS since 2002.
Endorsements
Gary Williams, Director, The Pastors’ Academy, London:
…the story of Williams and his trials is itself fascinating and well- told: what an extraordinary challenge these people faced as they sought to construct societies from scratch on the other side of the world!
Michael A G Haykin, FRHistS, Chair and Professor of Church History, The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, Louisville, Kentucky:
This new biography of the key Puritan thinker Roger Williams is most welcome. … Drawing upon the latest research on the Puritan author, Roberts outlines the contours of his life with special focus on his thought about religious liberty and why it is so important today. An excellent and truly thoughtful volume.
Buy the books
THE SUBVERSIVE PURITAN: ROGER WILLIAMS, FREEDOM OF CONSCIENCE, AND CHURCH AND STATE, by Mostyn Roberts