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Roger williams
[[File:Roger Williams and Indians.jpg|right|200px|thumb|Roger Williams talking to Narragansett Indians]]
[[File:Roger Williams and Indians.jpg|right|200px|thumb|Roger Williams talking to Narragansett Indians]]
'''Roger Williams''' (1603-1683) was the founder of the colony of [[Rhode Island]] and a promoter of a strict separation between church and state. He opposed any preference by government of one religion over another, or any interference by a [[magistrate]] into religious matters.
'''Roger Williams''' (1603-1683) was the founder of the colony of [[Rhode Island]] and a promoter of a strict separation between church and state. He opposed any preference by government of one religion over another, or any interference by a [[magistrate]] into religious matters.
Williams was a staunch advocate of separation of church and state. He was convinced that civil government had no basis for meddling in matters of religious belief. He declared that the state should concern itself only with matters of civil order, not with religious belief, and he rejected any attempt by civil authorities to enforce the "first Table" of the Ten Commandments, those commandments that deal with an individual's relationship with and belief in God. Williams believed that the state must confine itself to the commandments dealing with the relations between people: murder, theft, adultery, lying, and honoring parents.[39] Williams wrote of a "hedge or wall of Separation between the Garden of the Church and the Wilderness of the world." Thomas Jefferson later used the metaphor in his 1801 Letter to Danbury Baptists.[40][41]
==Early life==
==Early life==