Traditional understandings of the genesis of the separation of church and state rest on assumptions about 'Enlightenment' and the republican ethos of citizenship. Nicholas Miller does not seek to dislodge that interpretation but to augment and enrich it by recovering its cultural and discursive religious contexts - specifically the discourse of Protestant dissent. He argues that commitments by certain dissenting Protestants to the right of private judgment in matters of Biblical interpretation, an outgrowth of the doctrine of the priesthood of all believers, helped promote religious disestablishment in the early modern West.
Arguing that commitments by certain dissenting Protestants to the right of private judgment in matters of Biblical interpretation helped promote religious liberty and religious disestablishment in the early modern West, this text describes a continuous strand of this religious thought - as well as the thinkers who spread it
Introduction: religion and American disestablishment -- The monk and the bard: Luther's protest to Milton's Protestant vision -- The philosopher and the enthusiast: John Locke and William Penn -- The Puritan lawyer and the Baptist preacher: Elisha Williams, Isaac Backus, and the rise of American dissent -- Revolutionary and governor: William Livington opposes Anglican control of King's College -- Theologian and politician: John Witherspoon and James Madison make a national principle -- Epilogue: back to the future of church and state
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