Roger Williams established the first government in colonial America with legally guaranteed religious freedom, and Rhode Island’s political principles directly preceded the First Amendment of the U.S. Constitution. Williams was expelled from Massachusetts Bay Colony in January 1636 and walked alone through the winter wilderness to found Providence, Rhode Island — purchasing the land from the Narragansett people rather than claiming it by royal charter. The colony he established was the first in the Western world to legally separate church and state and guarantee freedom of religious practice to all residents. This 19-minute video posted on June 3, 2026 by Unifying Lens traces Rhode Island’s full founding story from Williams’s expulsion through the Royal Charter of 1663, King Philip’s War, and to the colony’s contributions to the Revolutionary War.

Williams held three beliefs that led to his expulsion from Massachusetts: that civil government had no authority over religious conscience, that the English Crown had no legal right to grant land already belonging to Native people, and that every individual was answerable only to God. Williams was sheltered by Narragansett sachem Canonicus during his winter journey (above, left and right) and purchased the Providence settlement land directly from the Narragansett people. (Above, center) In 1763 the first synagogue in America was built in Newport, RI.

The Providence settlement compact of 1636 explicitly limited civil authority to “civil things,” making it the first written separation of church and state in colonial America — 144 years before Jefferson used the phrase “wall of separation.” (Above, left) Williams welcomed people to Rhode Island whose beliefs differed from his own. Anne Hutchinson (above, right), expelled from Massachusetts in 1638, co-founded Portsmouth as the second Rhode Island settlement, continuing a pattern of the colony receiving those persecuted elsewhere.

King Philip’s War of 1675–1676 (above, center) devastated Rhode Island more than any other colony and virtually destroyed the Narragansett people who had made the colony’s founding possible, including in the Great Swamp Massacre of December 1675.