The historiography of church-state relations in America and Europe remains a live cultural, religious, and political issue on both sides of the Atlantic. Even more, current political invocations of history illuminate the need for a thoroughly trans-Atlantic approach to the history of church-state relations in the modern West. In the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, the formative period for modern church-states relations we see vividly the complex interrelationship of developments from...

Three hundred and fifty years ago, Roger Williams launched one of the world’s first great experiments in religious toleration. Insisting that religion be separated from civil power, he founded Rhode Island, a colony that welcomed people of many faiths. Though stark forms of intolerance persisted, Williams’ commitments to faith and liberty of conscience came to define the nation and its conception of itself. Through crisp essays that show how Americans demolished old prejudices while invent...