[TheRealThing]

Yes, and he soon found that the oppressive spirit within the Church of England was not limited to that nation's shores. And, when Williams did not toe the company line, church authority, merged with civil authority, banished him, sending him into the wilderness in a brutal winter. He knew that of which he spoke and believed.

So, you're telling me that you don't know, or won't accept that the Church of England sent pastors and elders to America with orders and charters to establish Churches over here? It was not just the Church of England in chief that he shunned. But all who insisted on ties with the Anglican Church, or who tried to claim authority over their memberships as well. We, all of us, are at liberty to accept or reject Christ of our own volition, that was the soul liberty that Williams envisioned. But, just as in the case of their brethren in England, Church leaders here were loath to give up the power they had over their memberships. The more power they had, the more money they could expect to come into the Church. Thus Roger Williams separated himself from the Church as it existed in the US.

The Church exiled him true enough, but I have not seen that civil authorities had anything to do with it. But, even if they did, you pointed out yourself that this all happened 100 years before the drafting of the US Constitution. Therefore, America was more like a little England than the land of freedom we know today. The same corrupt system under which the English were beset, would have been in place here, with Ministers and bureaucrats and leaders of every kind, home grown in England and sent here to keep us in line. But, if you guys keep working on it, and insist that we need to turn the Constitution on it's head because the drafters are now seen as white supremacists, you may yet realize the satisfaction of the dreamed for “fundamental transformation.”

In any case, the thoroughly entrenched English elite had this land in a death grip when the courage and the sacrifice of the founders lifted us from their tyrannical reign to the heights of freedom realized by every American since 1776. But by all means, let's dismantle the miracle of governance established by our founders, for that which a bunch of Ivy League social theorists have dreamed up. That which the founders ripped from the grip of the English ruling class and placed into the hands of "the people," your ilk would once again throw to the wind.

"prudence indeed will dictate that governments long established should not be changed for light & transient causes: and accordingly all experience hath shewn that mankind are more disposed to suffer while evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed." ----Thomas Jefferson