James Carroll’s opinion piece in the Monday, November 19, 2012 issue of the Boston Globe was titled “How R.I.’s Roger Williams Gave us Thanksgiving as we know it.” Hmm. . . . That immediately halted my search of our digital collections for turkeys, grandma’s house, and proclamations. He begins by saying that “Americans are confused about Thanksgiving” and goes on to talk about Roger Williams, “a Puritan who defended the right, one could say, to be religiously impure.”

This got me reflecting on Roger Williams and our collections. As I was sitting at my desk I looked out the window and realized I was looking at the First Baptist Church in America, established by Roger Williams in 1638. This is the first and oldest Baptist church in the New World. Williams belief in the practices of the church wavered throughout his life, but he remained steadfast in his defense of religious freedom, and his influence caused Rhode Island to be a unique haven of religious liberty in the seventeenth century

The story of Roger Williams’ search for religious freedom and expulsion from Massachusetts is repeatedly told. Here it appears in a broadside to be sung to the tune of “Auld Lang Syne.” As Williams stepped ashore on what is now Gano Street in his search for freedom, he was supposedly greeted by friendly native Americans. The words in the final line, “What Cheer, Netop, What Cheer” were supposedly spoken to the banished Puritan Roger Williams, by the Narragansett Indians as they encountered each other in what would become Rhode Island.

As we begin the holiday season with Thanksgiving, we should keep James Carroll’s opinion piece in mind and “look back gratefully at those who created the American ideal. . . . Roger Williams did indeed create the American soul. He’s the founder to whom, therefore, the nation’s deepest thanks are due. But the way to express such gratitude is by protecting authentic religious liberty from those who, using the phrase as a banner, would destroy it.”