Religious Freedom
By Walter Shurden

RELIGIOUS FREEDOM is the historic Baptist affirmation of freedom OF religion, freedom FOR religion, and freedom FROM religion, insisting that Caesar is not Christ and Christ is not Caesar.

Introduction

Historically, the relationship between church and state has been difficult, at time tortuous. Even scripture proposes diverse interpretations of this relationship. In Matthew 22:15-22, Jesus recognizes both the legitimacy of the state. In Romans 13:1-7, Paul accents the legitimacy of the state because Christians were not in danger from the state. In Revelation 13, however, during a time of persecution, John advocates resistance to the state to the point of martyrdom.

No one model fits all circumstances and epochs of history. Baptist Christians have acknowledged the diversity of biblical teaching on the relation of the church to the state. Often they have been “Romans 13 People,” appreciative of civil government. Occasionally they have been “Revelation 13 People,” opposing the state with their very lives. Most of the time, however, they have been “Matthew 22 people,” legitimizing but limiting the state. In their persistent call for religious freedom and the separation of church and state, however, Baptists have been consistent. Yet, today, the Baptist position on religious freedom is under attack.

Nothing is more difficult than trying to arouse people to action when they do not see the need for action. But William R. Estep has made the effort. In a magnificent book entitled Revolution Within the Revolution, Estep, the former Distinguished Professor of Church History at Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary, makes the distressing charge that the First Amendment of the Constitution of the United States is currently “under siege.” That amendment reads: “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof.”

This cherished statement, which Baptists of the eighteenth century insisted upon, is now “under siege” says Estep, by, of all people, some Christians! Misguided but extremely dangerous, these people want to eliminate the First Amendment either by constitutional convention or by reinterpretation. This current situation is “nothing less than a crisis of faith in freedom itself,” screams Estep.

But for Baptists who believe in the historic principles of religious freedom, here is the really devastating charge from Estep. SOME PROMINENT BAPTIST PREACHERS HAVE JOINED THE SIEGE AGAINST THE FIRST AMENDMENT! He quotes one of them who said on national television: “I believe the notion of separation of church and state was the figment of some infidel’s imagination.” Charging with one hundred percent accuracy that this attitude represents “a radical break” with Baptists’ historical commitment to separation of church and state, Estep believes that some current Baptists suffer from an “identity crisis” (Estep, 9).

Estep, a man who has spent his life studying the Baptist heritage, says some current Baptists do not know who Baptists really are. Well, who are they? Particularly, who are Baptists when it comes to the issue of religious freedom? What have they really said and done? Why did they say and do it? What did they mean by what they said and did? What are the threats to religious liberty in contemporary America and how should Baptists, in light of their heritage, respond to those threats?

Historic Baptists and the Witness to Religious Freedom

Preaching the keynote address before the opening session of the Baptist World Alliance in London, England, in 1905, John D. Freeman, one of Canadian Baptists most celebrated pastors at that time and later professor at Mercer University, chose as his subject, “The Place of Baptists in the Christian Church.” Claiming that the essential Baptist principle is the personal, direct, and undelegated authority of Jesus Christ over the souls of people, Freeman said that the concept carried with it “the radical and far-reaching Baptist doctrine of individualism.” It was the doctrine of individualism, said Freeman, that made Baptists the champions of religious liberty. And of the doctrine of religious liberty he said, “We did not stumble upon the doctrine. It inheres (exists) in the very essence of our belief.”

Freeman was absolutely correct. Baptists did not “stumble” on the idea of religious liberty. John Smyth and Thomas Helwys, trailblazers of the Baptist tradition in early seventeenth-century England, launched the Baptist denomination with no uncertain sound on issues of liberty. Smyth’s hand is behind the “the first confession of faith of modern times to demand freedom of conscience and separation of church and state (Lumpkin, 124).”

In 1612 Helwys, a layman, wrote A Short Declaration of the Mistery of Iniquity. Many historians say that it is the first plea for complete religious freedom in the English language. Brashly he inscribed a handwritten note, sent a copy to King James I, and kindly reminded him that “the king is a mortal man and not God” and “therefore has no power over the immortal souls of his subjects.”

Within the document itself, Helwys affirmed loyalty to the state, the limitations of the state, and the principle of religious liberty for all people. “Let them be heretics, Turks, Jews, or whatsoever, it appertaines not to the earthly power to punish them in the least measure (as cited in Estep, 53).” And why should the powers of state keep their hands off of folks’ souls? Helwys gave the same reason in 1612 that Freeman gave almost three hundred years later, in 1905. Because, in Helwys’ words, “mens religion to God is betwixt God and themselves.” The doctrine of full religious liberty, now taken for granted, was a perilous and heretical concept then. Helwys paid. Promptly thrown into prison, he died there in 1616.

Also in the seventeenth century, but on the other side of the ocean, Roger Williams, John Clarke, and Obadiah Holmes clamored in the colonies for unrestricted religious liberty. Isaac Backus and John Leland took up the chorus in the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. By the fourth decade of the nineteenth century in America, the last state church had ceased to exist. No religious denomination did more to accomplish that reality than the Baptists. Throughout the twentieth century troubled Baptist voices—such as E. Y. Mullins, Rufus Weaver, J. M. Dawson, George W. Truett, James E. Wood, Jr., G. Hugh Wamble, and James M. Dunn—have implored Baptists not to forget the Baptist witness to liberty for all. That message is much easier to hear and act upon when you are small and powerless. When a denomination gets large and powerful and courted for political reasons, the bells of freedom ring fainter and flatter.

Historic Baptists and the Foundations of Religious Freedom

On what do Baptists rest their case regarding freedom of conscience? It is a relatively modern and bold conviction to affirm that people should be able to believe without coercion, to practice their faith without constraint, and to spread their faith without hindrance. How have Baptists and others justified that conviction?

Throughout Christian history, the Bible has been used in contradictory ways to support both religious liberty and persecution. For example, some have used the parable of the Great Banquet in Luke 14:15-24 as a justification for force in Christianity. After all, did not the master say to the servants, “Go out into the roads and lanes, and compel them to come in, so that my house may be filled.” After the wedding of Christianity to the Roman Empire by Constantine in the fourth century, some discovered that force would work in increasing the size of the church. This text often became the biblical license for force. Others, however, used the parable of the Tares and the Wheat in Matthew 13:24-30 to defend religious liberty. “Let both of them grow together until the harvest…” is the counter text to “compel them to come in.”

The misuse and abuse of these specific parables is obvious. Rather than basing their commitments to religious liberty on specific texts, Baptists have been more inclined to build on biblical principles. Religious freedom could be based on the ancient idea of human reason and the need for a society of equals to concede to one another the right of free discussion. But neither has this been the primary appeal of Baptists.

They have anchored their passion for religious liberty to (1) the nature of God, (2) the nature of humanity, and (3) the nature of faith. First, religious freedom is rooted in the very nature of God. A sovereign God who dared to create us as free beings is portrayed in the Bible as a liberating Deity. Throughout the Old Testament, God is set against persons and institutions that restricted the freedom of people. And the complete thrust of Jesus’ ministry was to free people from all that would hold them back from fulfilling their potential under God. Freedom is more than a constitutional right or a governmental gift. God, not nations or courts or human law, is the ultimate source of liberty. That is the theological pillar on which Baptists set their love of freedom.

As was noted in the study on Soul Freedom, Religious Liberty is also based on the biblical view of persons. Created in the image of God, a human being is the crowning work of God’s creation (Ps. 8). Human personality is sacred and life’s highest value. To deny freedom of conscience to any person is to debase God’s creation.

Religious liberty, therefore, is founded on the nature of God and on the biblical view of persons. Baptists have also argued for religious freedom from the biblical nature of faith. To be authentic, faith must be free. Genuine faith cannot be forced or denied by the state.

Historic Baptists and the Meaning of Religious Freedom

In the Baptist heritage, religious freedom has several dimensions. First, freedom of religion represents a commitment to complete religious liberty and not simply religious toleration. Religious liberty and religious toleration are not the same. Religious toleration is a concession; religious liberty is a right. Religious toleration is a measure of expediency; religious liberty is a matter of principle.

Second, historically Baptists have been clear that religious liberty is for all, not for a selected few nor even for an overwhelming majority. The Baptist insistence on freedom of religion includes, therefore, freedom from religion. One’s right not to believe is as sacred as one’s right to believe. Those Baptists of the 1990s would do well to go back and read another Baptist of the 1790s. John Leland wrote in 1791 a document entitled “The Rights of Conscience Inalienable,” in which he said that “Government has no more to do with the religious opinions of men, than it has with the principles of mathematics.” Then Leland called for absolute religious liberty:

Let every man speak freely without fear, maintain the principles that he believes, worship according to his own faith, either one God, three Gods, no God, or twenty Gods; and let government protect him in so doing. (Leland, 184)

But Leland’s was no eccentric Baptist voice in this regard. Helwys called for the precise same universal liberty in 1612. And E.Y. Mullins, in 1923, said, Baptists believe in religious liberty for themselves. But they believe in it equally for all men. With them it is not only a right; it is also a passion. While we have no sympathy with atheism or agnosticism or materialism, we stand for the freedom of the atheist, agnostic, and materialist in his religious or irreligious convictions. (as cited in Shurden, 62)

George W. Truett, former pastor of the First Baptist in Dallas, Texas, echoed this historic Baptist position of religious liberty for all when he said, Baptists make this contention, not only for themselves, but as well, for all others—for Protestants of all denominations, for Romanists, for Jews, for Quakers, for Turks, for Pagans, for all men everywhere. (as cited in Shurden, 115)

Third, religious freedom means separation of church and state and not accommodation of church with state. Four patterns of church-state relations are evident in Christian history and the contemporary world. The first is that of church above state, present through much of the medieval era. The second is church under state, manifest in the twentieth century in communist countries. The third is the accommodation of a particular church with the state; the most prominent example is the Anglican Church in England. Freedom of expression is given to all, but preferential treatment given to one. The fourth form of church-state relationship is the separation of church and state, the American model. This is better expressed as “a free church in a free state” or church and state side by side. Baptists, not only in America, but around the world have been solidly on the side of the separation of church and state.

Baptists Today and Threats to Religious freedom

A major threat to religious freedom today, as Glenn Hinson reminded back in 1975, is that Baptists will “assume that there is no danger” or that “the danger is too slight to bother (Hinson, 122).” Baptists today are not whipped on the streets as was Obadiah Holmes in seventeenth-century Boston or jailed as were those preachers in colonial America. If you think, however, that the danger is too slight to bother, go quickly in a bookstore and purchase Estep’s book mentioned at the beginning of this chapter. Worth the price of the book are the “Foreword” by Bill Moyers and the first chapter in which Estep highlights chilling contemporary threats to the First Amendment.

If that does not sufficiently alarm you, listen to Chief Justice William Rehnquist of the Supreme Court of the United States of America when he says, “The ‘wall of separation between church and state’ is a metaphor based on bad history, a metaphor that has proved useless as a guide to judging. It should be frankly and explicitly abandoned (Church and State, April, 1990, 24).” Whatever the Chief Justice meant, it does not bode well for the historic Baptist principle of religious freedom and separation of church and state.

The danger of undermining this historic principle is real even within Baptist life. During a television interview in 1984, Pastor W.A. Criswell, senior minister of the largest church in the Southern Baptist Convention, understandably alarmed many of his viewers when he said, “I believe this notion of the separation of church and state was the figment of some infidel’s imagination.” Note how far Criswell’s statement deviates from that of his predecessor, George W. Truett. Preaching from the east steps of the National Capitol Building on May 16, 1920, Truett said that Jesus’ word about rendering unto Caesar what is Caesar’s and unto God what is God’s was one of the “most revolutionary and history-making utterances that ever fell from those lips divine.” “That utterance,” Truett said, “once for all, marked the divorcement of church and state.” He spoke of the need for the doctrine of “a free church in a free state” to have universal acceptance (as cited in McBeth, 471).

Another serious threat to the principle of religious freedom is the theocratic mindset of some Christians involved in what is known as the Reconstruction Movement. A small but growing movement that is popular within fundamentalist circles, this group seeks to restructure American society on the basis of the Old Testament. R.J. Rushdoony and Gary North, ardent Calvinists, spearhead this movement that would replace American democracy with a Christian theocracy. “If the advocates of this radical reordering of American society have their way,” says William Estep, “religious freedom will vanish (Estep, 12).”

Another danger, more popular and subtle, is the confusion of citizenship and discipleship. Sometimes referred to as “Civil Religion,” this attitude calls for, among other things, prayer in public schools, the channeling of public tax dollars into the support of private religious programs, and the presence of religious symbols in civil contexts. Christians have to work hard at distinguishing between pietism and patriotism, assessing critically where one begins and the other ends. When the cross of Jesus is wrapped in the flag of any nation, danger, if not downright heresy, is close by.

Nationalism is not the faith of Christians. Baptist especially have insisted that the state is always subordinate to the Lordship of Jesus Christ. There are indications in the last several years that the lines of church and state are becoming seriously blurred in America, even among some Baptists.

It is easy for a people—even Baptist people—to call for religious liberty when they do not have it. It is easy for a people— even Baptist people—to call for separation of church and state when the union of church and state limits their freedoms. It is easy for a people—even Baptist people— to distinguish between discipleship and citizenship when Caesar is less than friendly. Throughout the seventeenth, eighteenth, and early nineteenth centuries, such were the Baptist circumstances. During those years, Baptists pled for religious liberty and the separation of church and state on the basis of principle. This was not simply self-serving expediency; it was principle! And it was a principle applied to all people. Baptists were also clear in those early years about what they called “the crown rights of the Redeemer”—the idea that Christ wields ultimate authority in the life of the believer and that allegiance to Christ is never to be confused with the partisan claims of patriotism.

But what now? What about Baptists today? Having become prominent and powerful, especially in the United States, are we still as committed to religious liberty for all persons as our ancestors were? And does this include those outside the Judeo- Christian tradition? Does it include those outside any religious tradition? Do we believe in separation of church and state as much today when it benefits us as we did in a day when it worked against us? Baptists are now one of the most powerful religious groups in the most powerful nation in the world. Power can corrupt and blind us to our heritage. Power, however, in defense of the principle of religious liberty, can work in the vitality of the church and the good of the republic.

June 2003