Soul Liberty into the 18th century

By the end of the 17th century, Rhode Island, which was now predominately Baptist and Quaker, had no clear religious leader. Roger Williams had died in 1683, and Rhode Island Baptists, through Williams' teachings, had grown to distrust learned religious leaders.


Rhode Island was also left adrift with another problem after their founder's death. Since its inception, the colony had prided itself on allowing all to pursue "soul liberty", and thus had no state religion. As a result, Rhode Island was without any outside social connections to the other colonies.

These problems that Rhode Island faced at the end of one century were quickly addressed at the beginning of another. In 1703, Anglican ministers in London established the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel in Foreign Parts, which sent fellow ministers to the colonies to spread the Anglican faith. James Honeyman was sent to Newport in the same year, and his arrival hoped to foster imperial patriotism, align the rich and powerful of the colony with the Crown, and, undermine the growing influence of the Quakers and Baptists. The Society was quite successful, and 22 years later, Newport built Trinity Church, now the oldest Episcopal parish in Rhode Island.

The Congregationalist Church also began to gain parishioners in the early 18th century, when towns in the eastern portion of the colony, such as Bristol, became Rhode Island towns(they were formally a part of Massachusetts). The Congregationalists had their roots in the Puritan tradition that existed in the 17th century.



Newport was the second city in British North America to have a Jewish community, which arrived in 1658 from Brazil. While Judaism did not gain any converts in the colony, they were quick to make an impact on both the religious and economic level. Many Jews were prominent merchants in Newport, such as Aaron Lopez, who dominated the whaling trade in the mid 18th century. In 1759, the Jewish community built the first synagogue in North America, known as the Touro Synagogue.

Unlike other colonies, colonists in Rhode Island had the ability to choose a faith that satisfied their own needs, either spiritually, or even socially. By the mid 18th century, the switch Rhode Islanders made to realigning churches with traditions of learning and magnificence, allowed them to create links with the outside world, whether it be through the Anglicans, who established a solid Newport-London link, or the Congregationalists who established a Providence-Boston link.
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-Crane, Elaine Foreman. A Dependant People: Newport, Rhode Island in the Revolutionary Era. Fordham UP: New York, NY. 1985.