Like obedient children, do not be conformed to the desires that you formerly had in ignorance. Instead, as he who called you is holy, be holy yourselves in all your conduct
Williams and Hutchinson are each remembered for their brave insistence on religious tolerance. Their stories are similar, in that they both immigrated from England to New England, to escape religious persecution. Williams advocated for a ‘wall of separation’ between civil and religious powers, and used his sense of following God’s will to found a community he named ‘Providence’, later chartered as Rhode Island. Hutchinson also fought against the puritanical views that denied equality and rights to women. She was branded a dangerous dissenter and banished from the colony.
Reading about the lives and challenges of people in the past, it’s fascinating to me how much is different, and yet the same.
Williams and Hutchinson both fought against their government in England that was intolerant of their Christian faith. Williams founded a city we now know as Providence, and it was absolutely named for God’s providence, or God’s protective care. Hutchinson was banished for her radical feminist beliefs. We Christians in the US mostly don’t experience these challenges.
But on the other hand, many people, many beloved children of Abraham do. Jews in this Country are targeted for their faith, with unbelievable intolerance and hate. A synagogue in a previous city where I lived had armed guards at the doors during their services, because of previous threats and actual violence. I cannot imagine feeling so persecuted and vulnerable that I needed an armed guard to protect my worship time.
US citizens, children of Abraham who are Muslim are perhaps more targeted now. Their country of origin, the color of their skin, their accents, all seem to put them at risk of persecution. I, along with other faithful non-Muslims have sat vigil outside a mosque during their time of worship, at a time of active threats, to allow them to worship freely.
And even people of no faith are attacked in this country, for what they believe. I understand that our country was founded by Christians, but it does seem a bit presumptuous to me that our pledge of allegiance was amended to add “under God” as recent as 1954. For people who are beloved Children of God, but who don’t believe in God, this pledge becomes an affront to their beliefs. They are forced to recite and profess something they don’t believe. The same goes for our currency. In God we trust. For people of no faith, this seems like an affront. More than that, it’s an intolerance to their beliefs perpetrated by people of faith who founded this country largely in response to intolerance to their beliefs.
This morning I’m thinking about the very fine line between religious intolerance and the actions of the religious majority. It’s easy to spot intolerance when your views are different than the predominant culture. In the 1600’s, Williams and Hutchinson left England to follow their convictions rooted in their faith. In the 2000’s in the US, that looks to me to be about a Christian-centric nation that is increasingly intolerant of the beliefs and convictions of anyone not Christian. Today, I hope to see all those insidious, implicit presumptions about commonly held beliefs of faith, that are not, in fact, commonly held.
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