b. 1603; d. January 27/March 15, 1683
Roger Williams is best known for popularising the concept of separation of church and state that the founders of the United States discovered as inspiration to develop the First Amendment to the Constitution. Before Roger Williams founded the city of Providence and the colony of Rhode Island, he had been banished from the Massachusetts Bay Colony for his views that magistrates had no rights to intervene in religious matters. He is the founder of the Baptist Church in colonial America. A follower of of Calvinist theology, of his writings, he is best known for The Bloudy Tenent of Persecution (1644).
