In the midst of a pandemic, and working from home, I have had the opportunity to read through Lively Experiment LLC and Rockwell Stensrud’s well-written 560 page account of Newport, Rhode Island in their Newport: A Lively Experiment, 1639 – 1969. Stensrud has done his history homework well and has covered the culture and history of this seaside town in great detail and with astute fairness. My wife and I had the enjoyment of visiting the town in 2019, with my special interest in the International Tennis Hall of Fame. We drove the streets and the seashore road dotted with the palatial homes of the rich and famous. This peeked my interest in Newport’s history and contributions.
What struck me, as a Christian theologian and church history buff, are the many references in Stensrud’s book to the religious history and characters of Newport. Most people know that Rhode Island, or “Rogues Island,” as it was called by other New England settlements of the period, was founded by Roger Williams, an exile from the Puritan colony of Massachusetts. He founded Providence and established the first Baptist church in the town. Stensrud’s description of the Puritans as seeking religious freedom in the new world “along the lines of John Calvin’s austere teachings. ‘They wanted to reduce Christianity to its most primitive form of four bare walls and the literal words of the Bible’” (17) is key to much of his comments on New England Puritanism — cold, harsh, stiff, solemn and cruel. He says, “The road to Newport began in Boston and Salem. The very harshness of their uncompromising elites forced those of a more liberal spiritual–and mercantile–persuasion to seek destinies free of the theocratic handcuffs of the Bay Colony.” (18)
The author maintains that the Puritans were opposed to liberty of conscience, as for instance, citing the hanging of the Quaker Mary Dyer in Boston in 1660 as well as the Salem witch trials of the 1690s. (19) Stensrud claims that Williams “forged America’s first real attempt at secular government. The separation of church and state, and tolerance for conflicting religious beliefs, were the hallmarks of the community from the beginning, in 1636.” (21) Added to the religious strain of the times was the fervent teaching of the “spiritist,” Anne Hutchinson, who taught the “notion of ‘free justification by grace alone,’ of an ecstatic and overpowering intimacy with the divine.” This threatened the Puritan concept of living by the moral law of God (21-22). One of her sponsors, William Coddington, first governor of Newport, bought Aquidneck Island from the Indians through the efforts of Roger Williams. Joined later by the Hutchinson band and others, the town of Newport became an English colony, ruled not by biblical law but the laws of England until the American Revolution. Dr. John Clarke, also strongly influenced by Hutchinson, founded the second Baptist church in Newport in 1644, calling for a “rebaptism of all adults because people could only find true grace of their own free wills.” (41) Calling this “Anabaptism,” however, would be going too far technically and historically.
Coddington, a royalist at heart, hungry for power and domination was less a champion of freedom of religion and much more a power-hungry leader who wanted to have his own way in Newport and surrounding areas. Later he would soften his overbearing lust for control and meekly submit to other forces around him. Dr. John Clarke, whom many see as the real hero of freedom, was the vision behind the town’s 1663 Charter, “the first enduring republican government in the new world, based on an individual’s right to choose his or her own faith freely without temporal control or punishment.” (57-58) Some say this Charter would influence the later American Bill of Rights. This Charter framed not merely the rights but the ongoing religious climate and boundaries of the town of Newport until the 1880s. Professor Sydney Ahlstrom noted that this Charter made religious liberty in this commonwealth not simply a degree of toleration but “a cardinal principle of its corporate existence and to maintain the separation of church and state on these grounds.” (69)
With this infusion of religious liberty, English Quakers first arrived in Newport in 1657, becoming prominent citizens. As long as they obeyed the laws of England, they could freely associate and proselytize. The sad story of the Quaker Mary Dyer put to death in Boston on June 1, 1660, is hard for modern eyes to read. What is little told is that she was warned several times not to return to Puritan Boston or she would face severe penalties. She refused to listen and paid the price for her efforts by a death sentence. Some say this was her brave stand for religious freedom and tolerance. Others might say she was duly warned and given opportunities to change her beliefs or vacate Boston. Jewish immigrants also arrived in Newport with the famous Touro Synagogue completed in 1772. They formed their own clubs and freely associated with people from other religious persuasions. Roman Catholics had a much harder time being accepted, but they finally were welcomed as part of Newport society.
Here we must stop and make an observation. Much of American Protestantism owes its theological foundations to the Puritans. While we shudder at the church/state complications and severity of early Puritan law, to discount them as hated monsters out to kill anyone who disagreed with their biblical stance is far too general and judgmental. Many modern writers have taken up the cry against Puritanism and catapulted it to a cry against any form of biblically defined Christianity. The Puritans generally followed the Westminster Confession and Catechisms in their definitions and descriptions of biblical theology. They most certainly did believe in justification by free grace, but they also saw a place for the law of God ruling the moral habits of society.
The religious freedom and toleration that Newporters enjoyed and expected also produced Unitarianism under William Ellery Channing, a Newport native, who preached a faith based on “the inherent goodness of mankind, not a theology that stressed human depravity. In short, Channing humanized Protestantism.” (311) “By 1810, the long-held authority of Boston and other New England Congregational churches was beginning to be challenged by a growing number of pastors who believed he hellfire and brimstone Calvinist orthodoxy was basically corrupt because there was no room in the theology to recognize mankind’s innate optimism or potential for good works. A revolution was in the wings.” (312) Channing is looked upon as the champion of the new America with his staunch antislavery and antiwar philosophy and a proponent of public education. “The characteristic New England mixture of individual self-culture and social reform owed much to Channing’s precept and example.” (313)
Indeed. Newport has always been a haven for the elite rich and famous. She has had her dark days, to be sure, but her proud spirit of innovation and freedom of religion has framed her existence. Unitarianism begets Universalism and Universalism forgets and ignores and disputes any biblical authority, including Jesus’ own words about his being the “only way, truth and life to the Father” (John 14:6). Any way to God is valid and to be sought after by man’s essential goodness, it is believed and proffered. It does not matter how we even define “God.” Newport’s culture and religious openness have taken universal hold on the America of the twenty-first century. We can now have it all — endless enjoyment, promised riches, freedom from any religious or theological restraints. It is the New England playground, maybe even vaunted hope, of America.
