Sermon Notes

Why Are We Baptists: Session 5

Religious Liberty

“The distinctive Baptist contribution to political theology is the doctrine of religious freedom…An inner logic connects adult baptism, conversion, religious freedom, and disestablishment. “ – Thomas Kidd, Andrew T. Walker, Paul D. Miller Baptist Political Theology

“The idea of religious freedom and disestablishment is one of the most revolutionary ideas in world history. Virtually every state in history allied with a religion or, when they banned conventional religion, invented new ones (like communism). The Baptist doctrine of religious freedom amounts to a claim that every state in history got it wrong. It would be breathtaking in its audacity, except for subsequent history in which religious freedom spread worldwide and vindicated the belief that states and churches relate best when they are institutionally and jurisdictionally separate.”

“The struggle for religious liberty in Virginia in the closing decades of the eighteenth century was attended by more violence than there had ever been in New England. Here it was the Episcopal (Anglican) Church that resisted the Baptists. A host of Virginia’s Baptist preachers met with more than 160 physical attacks between 1760 and 1780. John Afferman was so cruelly beaten that he was unable to work; David Barrow was seized by twenty men, dunked in water, and nearly drowned; James Ireland was imprisoned and nearly blown up in a murder attempt; David Thomas was once attacked while preaching and physically dragged out of the meetinghouse while on another occasion an attempt was made to shoot him, but the gun was wrenched out of the assailant’s hand by a bystander; John Waller was seized while leading a congregation in worship, his head smashed against the ground more than once, and finally he was horsewhipped with twenty lashes.” – The Baptist Story

Religious Libert in Britain in the 17th century

  • Baptist beginnings: Smyth and Helwys
  • “Men’s religion to God is between God and themselves. The king shall not answer for it. Neither may the king be judge between God and man. Let them be heretics , Turks, Jews, or whatsoever, it appertains not to the earthly power to punish them in the least measure.” – Thomas Helwys, The Mystery of Iniquity, 1612
  • “The king is a mortal man & not God, therefore hath no power over the immortal souls of his subjects, to make laws & ordinances for them, and to set spiritual lords over them. If the king have authority to make spiritual lords & laws, then he is an immortal God and not a mortal man.”
  • “What is notable about this remark is that very few in his world or era upheld such a radical idea of religious liberty. But, for Helwys, it was derived from his conviction that ‘an earthly sword is ordained of God only for an earthly power, and a spiritual sword for a spiritual power.’”

Religious Liberty in America in the 17th century

  • Roger Williams, a Separatist, fled to New England with other Separatists and Puritans, but soon found that the Boston church was not adequately severed from the Church of England.
  • Williams is banished from Massachusetts and founds Providence, Rhode Island, serving for many years as its chief officer.
  • Quakers soon come to Rhode Island, and Williams is forced to put his commitment to Religious Liberty to the test:
    • “In the 17th century, the Quakers were known for their peculiar theology (including a resistance to religious authority and an antinomian commitment to the “inner light” in all people) and their penchant for publicly challenging social mores. Quaker provocateurs interrupted religious meetings with shouting, refused to greet fellow citizens with accepted honorific titles, grew their hair long as a challenge to cultural expectations of modesty, and occasionally ran through town naked as a sign of spiritual enlightenment… Massachusetts leadership looked upon the Quaker episode in Rhode Island with a mixture of horror and humor. Perhaps entertained that Williams himself had to deal with the social consequences of his dangerous doctrine of religious freedom. Later interpreters have suggested that Williams's impatience with the Quakers represented a retreat in his commitment to religious liberty, but in reality, his insistence on debating the Quakers modeled the only proper recourse for engaging religious disagreement. Discourse, not coercive force, was the appropriate weapon in a war of ideas.” – James Calvin Davis, Baptist Political Theology, 78-79
  • Became a Baptist in 1638, but within a year, he had abandoned the Baptist church.
  • Williams did not advocate merely for religious toleration, but “absolute soul-freedom,” liberty in matters of religious belief, speech, and practice that he believed all citizens deserved. “Perhaps unique in his time, Williams argue for religious freedom for Jews, Catholics, Muslims, and atheists in Protestant-dominated England and New England, making his call for religious freedom more expansive and principled than, for example, John Locke.”
  • Yet Williams maintained his commitment to religious liberty and (over a century before Thomas Jefferson) argued that God “intended a hedge or wall of separation between the Garden of the church and the wilderness of the world.”

Religious Liberty in America in the 18th century

  • Isaac Backus (1724-1806)
    • “Now who can hear Christ declare, that his kingdom is, not of this world, and yet believe that this blending of church and state together can be pleasing to him?” - An Appeal to the Public for Religious Liberty, Against the Oppressions of the Present Day
    • “Since religion is ever a matter between God and individuals, how can any man become a member of a religious society without his own consent?”
    • Backus maintained that “religion is as necessary for the well-being of human society as salt is to preserve from putrefaction or as light is to direct our way…civil rulers ought to be men fearing God, and hating covetousness, and to be terrors to evil doers, and a praise to them who do well; and as ministers ought to pray for rulers, and to teach the people to be subject to them; so there may be and ought to be a sweet harmony between them.” Backus saw Christianity as key to America’s future. His goal…was to stop government control over religion, but to still allow religion to have a continued influence over the government.” – The Baptist Story, 2nd, 140

  • John Leland (1754-1841)
    • “Whenever men fly to the law or sword to protect their system of religion, and force it upon others, it is evident that they have something in their system that will not beat the light, and stand upon the basis of truth.”
    • “The notion of a Christian commonwealth should be exploded forever...Government should protect every man in thinking and speaking freely, and see that one does not abuse another. The liberty I contend for is more than toleration. The very idea of toleration is despicable; it supposes that some have a pre-eminence above the rest to grant indulgence, whereas all should be equally free, Jews, Turks, Pagans and Christians." - A Chronicle of His Time in Virginia.
    • Leland became a key ally to both Thomas Jefferson and James Madison, our third and fourth presidents, respectively.
      • Madison is supported by Leland in exchange for guarantees of freedom of religion in the Bill of Rights.
      • Jefferson’s letter to the Danbury Baptist Association in 1802: “Believing with you that religion is a matter which lies solely between Man & his God, that he owes account to none other for his faith or his worship, that the legitimate powers of government reach actions only, & not opinions, I contemplate with sovereign reverence that act of the whole American people which declared that their legislature should 'make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof,' thus building a wall of separation between Church and State.”
      • Jefferson’s “mammoth cheese” gift from Leland and his preaching at Congress on religious liberty
    • Jefferson’s Virginia Statue of Religious Liberty (1779)
      • “Whereas, Almighty God hath created the mind free;


That all attempts to influence it by temporal punishments or burthens, or by civil incapacitations tend only to beget habits of hypocrisy and meanness, and therefore are a departure from the plan of the holy author of our religion, who being Lord, both of body and mind yet chose not to propagate it by coercions on either, as was in his Almighty power to do,
…
Be it enacted by General Assembly that no man shall be compelled to frequent or support any religious worship, place, or ministry whatsoever, nor shall be enforced, restrained, molested, or burthened in his body or goods, nor shall otherwise suffer on account of his religious opinions or belief, but that all men shall be free to profess, and by argument to maintain, their opinions in matters of Religion, and that the same shall in no wise diminish, enlarge or affect their civil capacities.

  • Presbyterians follow suit with the rewriting of the Westminster Confession, 23.3
    • In the original, the government “hath authority, and it is his duty, to take order, that unity and peace be preserved in the Church, that the truth of God be kept pure and entire; that all blasphemies and heresies be suppressed; all corruptions and abuses in worship and discipline prevented or reformed; and all the ordinances of God duly settled, administered, and observe.” As well as the power to call synods.
    • In the revised version civil magistrates are forbidden to “interfere in matters of faith. Yet, as nursing fathers, it is the duty of civil magistrates to protect the church of our common Lord, without giving the preference to any denomination of Christians above the rest, in such a manner that all ecclesiastical persons whatever shall enjoy the full, free, and unquestioned liberty of discharging every part of their sacred functions, without violence or danger. And, as Jesus Christ hath appointed a regular government and discipline in his church, no law of any commonwealth should interfere with, let, or hinder, the due exercise thereof, among the voluntary members of any denomination of Christians, according to their own profession and belief. It is the duty of civil magistrates to protect the person and good name of all their people, in such an effectual manner as that no person be suffered, either upon pretense of religion or of infidelity, to offer any indignity, violence, abuse, or injury to any other person whatsoever: and to take order, that all religious and ecclesiastical assemblies be held without molestation or disturbance.”