SETTING THE RECORD STRAIGHT ON RELIGIOUS LIBERTY
by Abner V. McCall

A recent fundamentalist publication said the Baptist Joint Committee on Public Affairs supports a more contemporary approach to issues of religious liberty while the SBC Christian Life Commission, which now has the religious liberty assignment from the SBC, since it was taken from the Baptist Joint Committee, supports a more historical and traditional position on church/state issues.

NOTHING COULD BE FURTHER FROM THE TRUTH. THIS IS REVISING HISTORICAL FACT AT ITS WORST.

It is the Baptist Joint Committee that has stayed by Baptist principles in the current confusion over church-state relations. The Southern Baptist Christian Life Commission has sounded an uncertain trumpet at best.

Since Thomas Helwys’ martyrdom for the sake of religious liberty, Baptists have stood for the separation of church and state. Helwys’ bravely preached that “the King is not Lord of the conscience.” It cost him his freedom, even his life.

Only in the last few years since fundamentalists took over the Southern Baptist Convention (SBC) has the Christian Life Commission of the SBC moved away from historic Baptist positions.

With the willingness to compromise on school prayer, the eagerness to take University of Virginia money to pay for a fundamentalist student publication, Wide Awake, and support for a Jewish parochial school in the Kiryas Joel case, the SBC Christian Life Commission has shown its true colors.

Worse, perhaps, is the readiness of the Christian Life Commission to abandon the historic tests that measure the constitutionality of a law in the light of the First Amendment.

First, laws or government regulations should have a non-religious, secular purpose. If the intent of a law is in any way religious the first logical question is “whose religion?”

J.M. Dawson, in his book, America’s Way in Church, State and Society, made it clear that “secular” is not always evil or godless. As the word is used in regard to church-state issues, it simply means neutral, and it’s a good thing for government to be neutral when it comes to religion. Neutral is not hostile.

Then, we Baptist want the state to stay out of religion, pushing it or putting it down. Frankly, we do not trust government to meddle in spiritual matters.

Our biblical understanding of fallen human nature leads us believe that separation of church and state is good for the church and good for the state. Government is no business advancing or inhibiting religion. The common sense query is which religious causes would you have everyone's tax money support? Who decides the religions which should be suppressed?

Finally, a practical test of appropriate separation is the degree of interaction. The institutions of government and religion coexist, share constituents, work together at times, but how much entanglement is too much?

It is the Christian Life Commission of the Southern Baptist Convention that rejects these traditional tests for proper separation of church and state. The Baptist Joint Committee is the religious liberty voice for Texas Baptists.

April 1995