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Article: Remembering Roger Williams: what the father of Rhode Island can still teach us.(Roger Williams)(Book Review)
- Article from:
- Reason
- Article date:
- November 1, 2005
- Author:
CopyrightCOPYRIGHT 2005 Reason Foundation. 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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Americans don't know much about history. Polls regularly indicate that upward of 95 percent of us can't even name the century in which we were born or say whether we fought the Nazis or the Soviets during the Battle of New Orleans.
None of which excuses our collective amnesia regarding Roger Williams, the first American explicator of religious tolerance and secular government. If ever there was a time to recover his legacy, it's now, with Christian zealots at home pushing creation science in schools and, far more important, Islamic fundamentalists abroad swearing death to godless infidels.
It's a national shame that Williams is remembered, if at all, as ...