Who was the founder of Rhode Island described as too radical for Puritans?

• A. John Winthrop
• B. Roger Williams
• C. Anne Hutchinson
• D. Samuel Gorton

Answer: (B)

Religious liberty and the separation of church and state are at the heart of this question. Roger Williams argued that government should not compel people to hold or practice a particular faith and that conscience should be free from state control. He also criticized how colonists treated Native Americans and bought land from them rather than taking it by force. Because these ideas challenged the built-in authority of the Puritan church-state system in Massachusetts Bay, Puritan leaders judged him too radical and banished him. Williams then founded Providence Plantations, which embraced freedom of worship and gradually grew into Rhode Island, a colony known for toleration of different beliefs.

John Winthrop was a leading Puritan governor of Massachusetts and represented the established, not the radical, side. Anne Hutchinson was a dissenter who challenged Puritan religious authority and was banished, but she did not found Rhode Island. Samuel Gorton was an early Rhode Island founder and religious reformer as well, but the description of Rhode Island’s founder as "too radical for Puritans" is most closely tied to Roger Williams, whose ideas directly shaped Rhode Island’s open approach to religion.