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George W. Truett | TBC Newsletter - July 1994 |
Baptists and Religious Liberty Southern Baptists count it a high privilege to hold their annual convention this year in the national capitol, and they count it one of life’s highest privileges to be citizens of one great united country.
It behooves us often to look backward as well as forward. We should be stronger and braver if we thought oftener of the epic days and deeds of our beloved and immortal dead. The occasional backward look would give us poise and patience and courage and fearlessness and faith. The ancient Hebrew teachers and leaders had a genius for looking backward to the days and deeds of their mighty dead. They never wearied of chanting the praises of Abraham and Isaac and Jacob, of Moses and Joshua and Samuel; and thus did they bring to bear upon the living the inspiring memories of the noble actors and deeds of bygone days. Lessons From The Past We shall do well, both as citizens and as Christians, if we will hark back often to the chief actors and lessons in the early and epoch- making struggles of this great Western Democracy, for the full establishment of civil and religious liberty—back to the days of Washington and Jefferson and Madison, and back to the days of our Baptist fathers, who have paid such a great price through the long generations, that liberty, both religious and civil, might have free course and be glorified everywhere. Years ago, at a notable dinner in London, that world-famed statesman, John Bright, asked an American statesman himself a Baptist, the noble Dr. J.L.M. Curry: “What distinct contribution has your America made to the science of government?” To that question Dr. Curry relied: “The doctrine of religious liberty.” After a moment’s reflection, Mr. Bright made the worthy reply: “It was a tremendous contribution.” Supreme Contribution Of New World Indeed, the supreme contribution of the New World to the Old is the contribution of religious liberty. This is the chiefest contribution that America has thus far made to civilization. And historic justice compels us to say that it was pre-eminently a Baptist contribution. The impartial historian, whether in the past, present of future, will ever agree with our American historian, Mr. Bancroft, when he says: “Freedom of conscience, unlimited freedom of mind, was from the first, the trophy of Baptists.” And such historians will concur with the noble John Locke, who said: “The just and true liberty, equal and impartial liberty.” Ringing testimonies like these might be multiplied indefinitely. Baptists have one consistent record concerning liberty throughout all their long and eventful history. They have never been a party to the oppression of conscience. They have forever been the unwavering champions of liberty, both religious and civil. Their contention now is, and has been, and please God, must ever be, that it is the natural and fundamental and indefatigable right of every human being to worship God according to the dictates of his conscience, and as long as he does not infringe upon the rights of others, he is to be held accountable alone to God for all religious beliefs and practices. Our contention is not for mere toleration but for absolute liberty. There is a wide difference between toleration and liberty. Toleration implies that somebody falsely claims the right to tolerate. Toleration is a concession while liberty is a right. Toleration is a matter of expediency while liberty is a matter of principle. Toleration is a gift from man while liberty is a gift from God. It is the consistent and insistent opinion of our Baptist people, always and everywhere, that religion must be forever voluntary and uncoerced, and that it is not the prerogative of any power, whether civil or ecclesiastical, to compel men to conform to any religious creed or form of worship, or to pay taxes for the support of a religious organization to which they do not belong and in whose creed they do not believe. God wants free worshipper and no other kind. A Fundamental Principle What is the explanation of this consistent and notably praiseworthy record of our plain Baptist people in the realm of religious liberty? The answer is at hand. It is not because Baptists are inherently better than their neighbors— we would make no such arrogant claim. Happy are our Baptist people to live side by side with their neighbors of other Christian communions, and to have glorious Christian fellowship with such neighbors, and to honor such servants of God for their inspiring lives and their noble deeds. From our deepest hearts we pray: “Grace be with all them that love our Lord Jesus Christ in sincerity.” The spiritual union of all true believers in Christ is now and ever will be a blessed reality, and such union is deeper and higher and more enduring than any and all forms of rituals and organizations. Whoever believes in Christ as his personal Savior is our brother in the common salvation whether he be a member of one communion, or of another, or of no communion at all. How is it then, that Baptists more than any other people in the world have forever been the protagonists of religious liberty and its compatriot, civil liberty? They did not stumble upon this principle. Their uniform, unyielding and sacrificial advocacy of such principle was not and is not an accident. It is, in a word, because of our essential and fundamental principles. Ideas rule the world. A denomination is molded by its ruling principles, just as a nation is thus molded, and just as an individual life is thus molded. Our fundamental essential principles have made our Baptists people of all ages and countries to be the unyielding protagonists of religious liberty, not only for themselves but, as well, for everybody else. What Are Our Principles? Such fact at once provokes the inquiry: What are these fundamental Baptist principles which compel Baptists in Europe, in America, in some far off seagirt island, to be forever contending for unrestricted religious liberty? First of all, and explaining all the rest, is the doctrine of the absolute Lordship of Jesus Christ. That doctrine is for Baptists the dominant fact in all their Christian experience, the nerve center of all their Christian life, the bedrock of all their church polity, the sheep anchor of all their hopes, the climax and crown of all their rejoicing. They say with Paul: “For to this end Christ died and rose again and that He might be Lord both of the dead and the living.” The Absolute Lordship of Christ From that germinal conception of the absolute Lordship of Christ, all our Baptist principles emerge. Just as yonder oak came from the acorn, so our many-branched Baptist life came from the cardinal principal of the absolute Lordship of Christ. The Christianity of our Baptist people from Alpha to Omega, lives and moves and has its whole being in the realm of the doctrine of the Lordship of Christ. “One is your Master, even Christ, and all ye are brethren.” Christ is the one head of the church. All authority has been committed unto Him, in heaven and on earth, and He must be given the absolute pre-eminence of all things. One clear note is ever to be sounded concerning Him, even this: “Whatsoever He saith unto you, do it.” The Bible is Our Rule of Faith How shall we find our Christ’s will for us? He has revealed it in His Holy Word. The Bible and the Bible alone is the rule of faith and practice for Baptists. To them the one standard by which all creeds and conduct of character must be tried is the Word of God. They ask only one question concerning all religious faith and practice, and that question is: “What saith the Word of God”? Not traditions, nor customs, nor councils, nor confessions, nor ecclesiastical formalities, however venerable and pretentious, guide Baptists, but simply and solely the will of Christ as they find it revealed in the New Testament… New Testament Our Guide Book When we turn to this New Testament, which is Christ’s guide book and law for his people, we find that supreme emphasis is everywhere put upon the individual. The individual is segregated from family, from church, from state, and from society, from dearest earthly friend or institution, and brought into direct, personal dealings with God. Everyone must give account of himself to God. There can be no sponsors or deputies or priests in such a vital matter. Each one must repent for himself, and answer to God for himself, both in time and in eternity. The clarion cry of John the Baptist is to the individual: “Think not to say within yourselves, we have Abraham to our Father; for I say unto you that God is able of these stones to raise up children unto Abraham. And now also the axe is laid unto the root of the trees; therefore, every tree that bringeth not forth good fruit is hewn down and cast into the fire.” One man can no more repent and believe and obey Christ for another than he can take another’s place at God’s judgment bar. Neither persons nor institutions, however dear and powerful, may dare to come between the individual soul and God. “There is one mediator between God and men, the man Jesus Christ.” Let the state and the church, let the institution, however dear, and the person, however near, stand aside and let the individual soul make its own direct and immediate response to God. One is our pontiff and His name is Jesus. The right to private judgment is the crown jewel of humanity, and for any person or institution to dare to come between the soul and God is a blasphemous impertinence and a defamation of the crown rights of the Son of God. Out of these two fundamental principles, the supreme authority of the Scriptures and the right of private, have come all the historic protests in Europe, and England and America, against unscriptural creeds, polity and rites, and against the unwarranted and impertinent assumption of religious authority over men’s consciences, whether by church or by state. Baptists regard as an enormity any attempt to force the conscience or to constrain men by outward penalties to this or that form of religious belief. Infant Baptism Unthinkable It follows, inevitably, that Baptists are unalterably opposed to every form of sponsorial religion. If I have fellow Christians in this presence today who are the protagonists of infant baptism, they will allow me frankly to say, and certainly I would say it in the most fraternal Christian spirit, that to Baptists, infant baptism in unthinkable from every viewpoint. First of all, Baptists do not find the slightest sanction for infant baptism in the Word of God. That fact to Baptists make infant baptism a most serious question for the consideration of the whole Christian world. Nor is that all. As Baptists see it, infant baptism tends to ritualize Christianity and to reduce it to lifeless forms. And since I have thus spoken with unreserved frankness, my honored pedobaptist friends in the audience will allow me to say that Baptists solemnly believe that infant baptism, with it its duplications, has flooded the world and floods it now with untold evils… Our Ordinances are Symbols Again, to Baptists the New Testament teaches that salvation through Christ precedes membership in His church, and must precede the observance of the two ordinances in His church, namely, baptism and the Lord’s Supper. These two ordinances are not sacramental but symbolic. They are teaching ordinances, portraying in symbol, truths of immeasurable and everlasting moment to humanity. To trifle with these symbols, to pervert their forms and at the same time to pervert the truths they are designed to symbolize, is indeed a most serious matter. Baptist Churches are Pure Democracies To Baptists, the New Testament clearly teaches that Christ’s church is not only a spiritual body but it is also a pure democracy, all its members being equal, a local congregation, and cannot subject itself to outside control. Such terms, therefore, as “The American Church,” or “The Bishop of this city, or state,” sound strangely incongruous to Baptist ears. IN the very nature of the case, also, there must be no union between church and state because their nature and functions are utterly different. Jesus stated the principle in the two sayings: “My kingdom is not of this world,” and “Render unto Caesar the things that are Caesar’s and unto God the things that are God’s.” Never anywhere, in any clime, has a true Baptist been willing, for one minute, for the union of church and state, never for one moment. Every state church on the earth is a spiritual tyranny. And just as long as there is left upon this earth any state church, in any land, the task of Baptists will that long remain unfinished. Their cry has been and is and must be this:
That utterance of Jesus, “Render unto Caesar the things that are Caesar’s and unto God the things that are God’s” is one of the most revolutionary and history-making utterances that ever fell from those lips divine. That utterances, once for all, marked the divorcement of church and state. It marked a new era for the creeds and deeds of men. It was the sunrise gun of a new day, the echoes of which are to go on and on, until in every land, whether great or small, the doctrine shall have absolute supremacy everywhere of a free church in a free state. Cause of Religious Ills In behalf of our Baptist people, I am compelled to say that forgetfulness of the principles that I have just enunciated, in our judgment, explains many of the religious ills that now afflict the world. All went well with the early churches in their earlier days. Those were incomparably triumphant days for the Christian faith. those early disciples of Jesus, without prestige and worldly power, yet aflame with the love of God and the passion of Christ, went out an shook the pagan Roman Empire from center to circumference, even in one brief generation. Christ’s religion needs no prop of any kind from any worldly source, and to the degree that it is thus supported is a millstone hanged about its neck. Presently there came an incomparable apostasy in the realm of religion which shrouded the world in spiritual night through long hundreds of years. Constantine, the Emperor, saw something in the religion of Christ’s people which awakened his interest, and now we see him uniting religion to the state and marching up the marble steps of the emperor’s palace, robed in purple. thus and there was begun the most baneful mis-alliance that ever fettered and cursed a suffering world. For long centuries even from Constantine to Pope Gregory VII, the conflict between church and state waxed stronger and stronger, and the encroachments and usurpations became more deadly and devastating. When Christianity first found its way into the city of the Caesars, it lived at first in cellars and alleys, but when Constantine crowned the union of church and state, the church was stamped with the impress of the Roman idea and fanned with the spirit of the Caesars. Soon we see a Pope emerging, who himself became a Caesar, and soon a group of councilors may be seen gathered around this Pope, and the supreme power of the church is assumed by the Pope and his councilors. The long blighting record of the Medieval ages is simply the working of that idea. The Pope ere long assumed to be the monarch of the world, making the astonishing claim that all kings and potentates were subjects unto him. By and by when Pope Gregory VII appears, better known as Hildebrand, his assumptions are still more astounding. In him the spirit of the Roman church became incarnate and triumphant. He lorded it over Parliaments and Council Chambers, having statesmen to do his bidding and creating and deposing kings at his will. For example, when the Emperor Henry offended Hildrebrand, the latter pronounced against Henry a sentence of not only excommunications but of deposition as Emperor, releasing all Christians from allegiance to him. He made the emperor do penance by standing in the snow with bare feet at Canossa, and he wrote this famous letter to William the Conqueror to the effect that the state was subordinate to the church, that the power of the state as compared to the church was as the moon compared to the sun. This explains the famous saying of Bismark, when Chancellor of Germany, to the German parliament: “We will never go to Canossa again.” Whoever favors the authority of the church over the state favors the way to Canossa. Absolutism vs. Individualism The student of history cannot fail to observe that through the long years two ideas have been in endless antagonism, the idea of absolutism and the idea of individualism, the idea of autocracy and the idea of democracy. The idea of autocracy is that supreme power vested in the law, who, in turn, delegates this power to the many. That was the dominant idea of the Roman empire and upon that idea the Caesars built their throne. That idea has found worldwide expression in the realms both civil and ecclesiastical. Often have the two ideas, absolutism versus individualism, autocracy versus democracy, met in battle. In the recent world war (WWI) these two ideas met on a world basis. Autocracy dared in the morning of the 2Oth century to crawl out of its ugly fair and proposed to substitute the law of the jungles for the law of human brotherhood. For all time to come the hearts of men will stand aghast upon every thought of the incomparable death drama and at the same time they will renew the vow that the few shall not presumptuously tyrannize over the many, that the law of human brotherhood and not the law of the jungle shall be given supremacy in all human affairs. And until the principle of democracy rather than the principle of autocracy shall be regnant in the realm of religion, our mission shall be commanding and unending. The Reformation The coming of the 16th century was the dawning of a new hope for the world. With that century came the Protestant Reformation. Yonder goes Luther and this theses which he nails over the old church door in Wittenberg, and the echoes of that mighty deed shake the Papacy, shake Europe, shake the whole world. Luther was joined by Melancthon and Calvin and Zwingli and other mighty leaders. Just at this point emerges one of the most outstanding anomalies of all history. Although Luther and his compeers protested vigorously against the errors of Rome, yet when these mighty men came out of Rome, and mighty men they were, they brought with them some of the grievous errors of Rome. The Protestant Reformation of the 16th century was sadly incomplete - it was a case of arrested development. Although Luther and his compeers grandly sounded out the battle cry of justification by faith alone, yet they retained the doctrine of infant baptism and a state church. They shrank from the logical conclusions of their own theses. In Zurich there stands a statue in honor of Zwingli in which he is represented with a Bible in one hand and a sword in the other. That statue was the symbol of the union between church and state. The same statue mighty have been reared to Luther and his fellow reformers. Luther and Melancthon fastened a state church upon Germany, and Zwingli fastened it upon Switzerland. Knox and his associates fastened it upon Scotland. Henry VIII bound it upon England where it remains even till this very hour. These mighty reformers turned out to be persecutors like the Papacy before them. Luther unloosed the dogs of persecution against the struggling and faithful Anabaptists. Calvin burned Servetus, and to such awful deed Melancthon gave his approval. Louis XIV revoked the Edict of Nantes, shut the doors of all the Protestant churches and outlawed the Hugenots. Germany put to death that mighty Baptist leader, Balthaser Hubmaier, while Holland killed her noblest statesman, John of Barneveldt, and condemned to life imprisonment her ablest historian, Hugh Grotius, for conscience sake. In England, John Bunyan was kept in jail 12 long, weary years because of his religion. And when we cross the mighty ocean separating the Old World and the New, we find pages of American History crimsoned with the stories of religious persecutions. The early colonies of America were the forum for the working out of the most epochal battles that earth ever knew for the triumph of religious and civil liberty. The Challenge of the Present And now, my fellow Christians, and fellow citizens, what is the present call to us in connection with the priceless principles of religious liberty? That principle, with all the history and heritage accompanying it, imposes upon us obligations to the last degree meaningful and responsible. Let us today and forever be highly resolved that the principle of religious liberty shall, please God, be preserved inviolate through all our days and the days of those who come after us. Liberty has both its perils and its obligations. We are to see to it that our attitude toward liberty, both religious and civil, both as Christians and citizens, is an attitude consistent and constructive and worthy. We are to “Render unto Caesar the things that are Caesar’s, and unto God the things that are God’s.” We are members of the two realms, the civil and the religious, and are faithfully to render unto each all that each should reserve at our hands. We are to be alertly watchful, day and night, that liberty, both religious and civil, shall be nowhere prostituted and mistreated. Every perversion and misuse of liberty tends by that much to jeopardize both church and state. There comes now the clamant call for us to be the right kind of citizens. Happily the record of our Baptist people toward civil government has been a record of unfading honor. Their love and loyalty to country have not been put to shame in any land. IN the long list of published Tories in connection with the Revolutionary there was not one Baptist name. Our Use of Liberty It behooves us now and ever to see to it that liberty is not abused. Well may we listen to the call of Paul, that mightiest Christian of the long centuries, as he says: “Brethren, ye have been called unto liberty, only use not your liberty for an occasion to the flesh. But by love serve one another.” This ringing declaration should be heard and heeded by every class and condition of people throughout all our wide-stretching nation. It is the word to be heeded by religious teachers, by editors, by legislators, and by everybody else. Nowhere is liberty to be used “for an occasion to the flesh.” We will take free speech and a free press, with all their excrescences and perils, because of the high meaning of freedom but we are to set ourselves with all diligence not to use these great privileges in the shaming of liberty. A free press - how often does it pervert its high privilege! Again and again it may be seen dragging itself through all the sewers of the social order, bringing to light the moral cancers and leprosies of our poor world and glaringly exhibiting them to the gaze of respective youth and childhood. The editor’s task, whether in the realms of church or state, as an immeasurably responsible task. These editors, side by side with the moral and religious teachers of the country, are so to magnify the ballot box, a free press, free schools, the courts, the majesty of the law and reverence for all properly accredited authority that our civilization may not be built on the shifting sands, but on the secure and enduring foundation of righteousness. Let us remember that lawlessness wherever found and whatever its form, it is the pestilence that walketh in darkness and the destruction that wasteth at noonday. Let us remember that he who is willing for law to be violated is an offender against the majesty of the law as really as he who actually violates law. The spirit of the law is the spirit of civilization. Liberty without law is anarchy. Liberty against law is rebellion. Liberty limited by law is the formula of civilization. The Majesty of Law Challenging to the highest degree is the call that comes to legislators. They are to see to it continually, in all their legislative efforts, that their supreme concern is for the highest welfare of the people. Laws, humane and righteous, are to be fashioned and then to be faithfully regarded. Men are playing with fire if they lightly fashion their country’s laws and then trifle in their obedience to such laws. Indeed, all citizens, the humblest and the most prominent alike, are called to give their best thought to the maintenance of righteousness, everywhere. Much truth is there in the widely quoted saying: “our country is afflicted with the bad citizenship of good men.” The saying points its own clear lesson. “When the righteous are in authority the people rejoice, but when the wicked bear rule people mourn.” The people, all the people, are inexorably responsible for the laws, the ideals, and the spirit that are necessary for the making of a great and enduring civilization. God does not raise up a nation to go selfishly strutting and forgetful of the high interests of humanity. National selfishness leads to destruction as truly as does individual selfishness. Nations can no more live to themselves than can individuals. Humanity is bound up together in the big bundle of life. The world is now one big neighborhood. There are no longer any hermit nations. National isolation is no longer possible in the earth. The markets of the world instantly register every commercial change. An earthquake in Asia is at once registered in Washington City. The people on one side of the world may not dare to be indifferent to the people on the other side. Every man of us is called to be a world citizen, and to think and act in world terms. The nation that insists upon asking that old murderous question of Cain, “Am I my brother’s keeper?,” the question of the slacker, is a nation marked for decay and doom and death. The parable of the good Samaritan is heaven’s law for nations as well a for individuals. Some things are worth dying for, and if they are worth dying for, they are worth living for. The poet was right when he sang:
Some Things Worth Living For When this nation went in to the world war a little while ago, after her long and patient and fruitless effort to find another way of conserving righteousness, the note was sounded in every nook and corner of our country, that some things in this world are worth dying for, and if they are worth dying for they are worth living for. What are some of the things worth dying for? The sanctity of womanhood is worth dying for. The safety of childhood is worth dying for, and when Germany put to death that first helpless Belgian child, she was marked for defeat and doom. The integrity of one’s country is worth dying for. And, please God, the freedom and honor of the United States of America are worth dying for. If the great things of life are worth dying for they are surely worth living for. Our great country may not dare to isolate herself from all the rest of the world and selfishly say: “We propose to live and die to ourselves, leaving all the other nations with their weaknesses and their burdens and their sufferings, to go their ways without our help.” This nation cannot pursue any such policy and expect the favor of God. Myriads of voices, both from the living and the dead, summon us to a higher and better way. Happy am I to believe that God has His prophets not only in the pulpits of the churches but also in the school rooms, in the editor’s chair, in the halls of legislation, in the marts of commerce, in the realm of literature… Primary Task of Evangelism Preceding and accompanying the task of building our Christian schools, we must keep faithfully and practically in mind our primary task of evangelism, the work of winning souls from sin unto salvation, from Satan to God. This work takes precedence of all other work in the Christian program. Salvation for sinners is through Jesus Christ alone, nor is there any other name or way under heaven whereby they may be saved. Our churches, our schools, our religious papers, our hospitals, every organization and agency of the churches should be kept aflame with the passion of New Testament evangelism. Our cities and towns and villages and country places are to echo continually with the sermons and songs of the Gospel Evangel. The people—high and low, rich and poor, and foreigner, all the people— are to be faithfully told of Jesus and His great salvation and invited to come unto Him to be saved by Him and to become His fellow workers. The one only sufficient solvent for all the questions in America, individual, social, economic, industrial, financial, political, educational, moral and religious, is to be found in the saviorhood and Lordship of Jesus Christ. A Program For The Whole World While thus caring for the homeland we are at the same time to see to it that our program is co-extensive with Christ’s program for the whole world. The whole world is our field, nor may we with impurity dare to be indifferent to any section, however remote, or to any soul, however sinful and ignorant. Our task is a world task, not a whit less than that, and with our plans sweeping the whole earth we are to go forth with believing faith and obedient service to seek to bring all humanity, both near and for, to the faith and service of Him who came to be the propitiation for our sins, and not for ours only, but also for the sins of the whole world. His commission covers the whole world and reaches to every human being. Soul in China and India, Japan, Europe, Africa, and the islands of the sea, are as precious to Him as soul in the United States. By the love we bear to our Savior, by the love we bear our fellows, by the greatness and preciousness of the trust committed to us, we are bound to take all the world upon our hearts and to consecrate our utmost strength to bring all humanity under the sway of Christ’s redeeming love. Let us go to such task, saying with the immortal Wesley: “The world is my parish,” and with him may we also be able to say: “And best of all, God is with us.” The Day For A Greater Service Glorious it is, my fellow Christians, to be living in such a day as this, if only we shall live as we ought to live. Irresistible is the conviction that the immediate future is packed with amazing possibilities. We can understand the cry of Rupert Brooks as he sailed from Gallipoli: “Now God be thanked who has matched us with this hour.” The day of the reign of the common people is everywhere coming like the rising tides of the ocean. The people are everywhere breaking with feudalism, autocracy is passing, must pass, whether it be civil or ecclesiastical. Democracy is the goal toward which all feet are traveling, whether in state or in church. The demands upon us now are enough to make an Archangel tremble. Themistocles had a way of saying that he could not sleep at night for thinking of Marathon. What was Marathon compared to a day like this? John C. Calhoun, long years ago, stood there and said to his fellow workers in the National Congress: “I beg you to lift up your eyes to the level of the conditions that now confront the American Republic.” Great as was that day spoken of by Mr. Calhoun, it was as a tiny babe beside a giant compared to the day that now confronts you and me. Will we be alert to see our day and faithful enough to measure up to its high demands? Are we willing to pay the price that must be
paid to secure for humanity the blessings they
need to have? |