Colonial House

[Bombero1956]

For those who may be watching tonight, the program gets off to a portentous start by selecting a governor who in the 21st century is a Baptist minister from Waco Texas. To make matters worse his wife 2 daughters and 1 son are along for the 5 months. How long will it take for the "governor" to bring his religious intolerance into the mix.

[ikojo]

1. He would be keeping with the times.

Rhode Island was the first colony to guarantee religious freedom. In many colonies only those of a particular faith and race (white male of course) were allowed to hold office.

http://www.sec.state.ri.us/rihist/earlyh.htm

Rhode Island's first permanent settlement (Providence Plantations) was established at Providence in 1636 by English clergyman Roger Williams and a small band of followers who had left the repressive atmosphere of the Massachusetts Bay Colony to seek freedom of worship. Canonicus and Miantonomi granted Williams a sizable tract of land for his new village. Other nonconformists followed Williams to the bay region, including Anne and William Hutchinson and William Coddington, all of whom founded Portsmouth in 1638 as a haven for Antinomians, a religious sect whose beliefs resembled those a Quakerism. A short-lived dispute sent Coddington to the southern tip of Aquidneck Island (also purchased from the Narragansetts), where he established Newport in 1639. Samuel Gorton, another dissident from Portsmouth, settled the fourth original town, Warwick, in 1642. During this initial decade, two other outposts were established: Wickford (1637), by Richard Smith, and Pawtuxet (1638), by William Harris and the Arnold family.

The religious freedom that prevailed in early Rhode Island made it a refuge for several persecuted sect. America's first Baptist church was formed in Providence in 1639; Quakers, who merged with the Antinomians, established a meetinghouse on Aquidneck in 1657 and soon became a powerful force in the colony's political and economic life; a Jewish congregation came to Newport in 1658; and French Huguenots (Calvinists) settled in East Greenwich in 1686.

[Bombero1956]

2. yeah

but did he have to be from Texas? I think we've had enough of leaders from Texas.

[ikojo]

3. PBS may be trying to distance itself from the canard

of being a "liberal" network...remember many right-wingers are not happy that they carry Bill Moyers' program. Kissing a Texan's butt may be one way of sucking up to the right-wing.

[TheMightyFavog]

4. well that bit just answered a big question:

Do colonists shit in the woods?

[Bombero1956]

5. and if

nobody sees them does it still stink.