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Article: Ill Newes from twenty-first century America: most of the readers of this journal are well acquainted with John Clarke and his 1651 Ill Newes from New England.
- Article from:
- Baptist History and Heritage
- Article date:
- March 22, 2004
- Author:
CopyrightCOPYRIGHT 2004 Baptist History and Heritage Society. This material is published under license from the publisher through the Gale Group, Farmington Hills, Michigan. All inquiries regarding rights should be directed to the Gale Group. (Hide copyright information)
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Ill Newes, a seventeenth-century religious literary classic that screamed for religious freedom, is important for those of us in contemporary America for many reasons. Read Ill Newes carefully. Then read some of the legislation proposed in Washington, D.C. today, and you may want to write a sequel: Ill Newes from Twenty First Century America. But before contemporizing Ill Newes, let's be sure that we understand John Clarke and his masterpiece.
No historian can ever minimize the importance of Roger Williams. However, John Clarke, not Roger Williams, was the most important and influential Baptist of seventeenth-century Colonial America. Such an appraisal
is ...