Includes bibliographical references (pages 427-438) and index.

An acclaimed historian and "New York Times"--Bestselling author offers a revelatory look at how Roger Williams shaped the nature of religion, political power, and individual rights in America.

For four hundred years, two fault lines have divided America: one is the proper relationship between the church and the state, and the other is the balance between the rights of the individual versus the power of the state. In this extraordinary book, award-winning and New York Times best-selling writer John M. Barry examines the origins of these fault lines. What he finds is as relevant today as it was when they first emerged in the seventeenth century ... At the center of the story lies Roger Williams, a pioneer in religious freedom, the first man to describe individual liberty in modern terms, and the man who created in America the first government on earth informed by those beliefs. It is set against the background of monumental upheavals in intellectual, political, religious, and social life. In England these led to the writing of the King James Bible, then civil war, revolution, and the beheading of a king. They led in America to efforts to establish an entirely new kind of society, one that would be a beacon unto the world. The question was what that beacon would signal, and what its light would shine upon. - from book flap.

SACFinal081324