A Roger Williams Approach in a Holy Land
Palestinian and Jewish younger voices want to reexamine a one-state solution for Palestine/Israel. A desire for a two state solution has led to deadlock for thousands of years in some sense, but since 1948 in its modern construction. Could a one state solution protect this Holy Land? The one thing many on each side agree on is the specialness of this place.
The secular image of Roger Williams, the one his enemies — like John Cotton’s grandson Cotton Mather — and more recently John Barry, create, would have nothing to say to people with a precept of Holy Land. The real Roger Williams would have volumes to communicate. He came to America believing he was building God’s kingdom on earth, a new Jerusalem, as commanded to do in the Lord’s Prayer. Above all he intended he and his family, even all God’s children, to respect holiness.
Roger Williams’s version of the way to draw the lines came in part from the Old Testament, most notably from Jeremiah and Moses. Jeremiah declared the job of the state to protect civil peace and as such all needed to respect it’s edicts. Moses laid out the ten commandments that Roger Williams observed to split to a set inspiring church (e.g., have nothing else before your love for God) and a different set inspiring state (e.g., thou shalt not kill). Instead of two states, two realms of authority. In one territory, there would be one civil government over all people. In one person, one conscience, over which a state has no authority so long as civil peace is respected. No state authority would declare the type of faith a conscience should have as approved or required. Holy places set aside and respected as holy, no matter which faith declared them so. Holy laws that apply to people of that faith, but not to those outside that faith.
Like Israel, Roger Williams set up Providence as a refuge for the persecuted. Unlike Israel, Roger Williams did not discriminate as to why persecution was suffered, only against those that broke civil peace. Could immigration rules or targets be defined that respected all consciences, and yet enabled return to this holy homeland for the Jewish people and possibly for others requiring refuge as minority faiths?
Could a two state solution be replaced by a two pronged institutional approach — one institution for the civil state and another set of institutions for faith. Could such a line of separation be drawn and holiness protected? Would it create a civil peace, despite difference?
Experience taught us that as long as civil government sanctions one faith above others while the people have many faiths, there is not a practical and stable separation of faith and state, and likely not equal human rights. As a result, there is likely to be civil unrest and persecution. Before the United States was formed, Virginia tried such an approach and abandoned it — turning in the end to religious freedom instead. For Israel the mission of being a homeland for the Jewish people is a challenge to the stability of separated faith and state, but perhaps not an insurmountable challenge.
Will there be a Roger Williams of the Holy Land?
