HAMPTON, Va. — Virginia Baptists adopted a resolution Nov. 9 decrying versions of American history which minimize or deny separation of church and state and they encouraged diligence in correcting mistaken historical accounts.
The resolution, presented in the opening session of the Baptist General Association of Virginia’s annual meeting Nov. 9-10, sparked a lively debate before being adopted on a hand vote by a wide margin.
Virginia Baptists should “regard it as a threat to the flourishing of religious liberty when any version of our nation’s history minimizes or denies the historical basis” of separation of church state, the resolution says, and “be diligent in resisting and correcting any such mistaken version of our history.”
Rob James of Richmond, who chairs the BGAV’s religious liberty committee, said the resolution was prompted in part by recent attempts by a conservative Christian majority on the Texas State Board of Education to amend the state’s social studies textbooks, which they say are hostile to Christianity and traditional values.
“One of the things that frightened us [the committee] was that the next 10 years of social studies textbooks would raise questions about the founding of this country and to what extent, if at all, the idea of separation of church and state is part of our national commitment,” said James, a retired professor of religion at the University of Richmond.
“It appeared to us that what was going on amounted to a change of our historical memory,” he added. “If we as individuals are robbed of our memory we can no longer be the same person and can’t be faithful to the same principles. The same is true of a collective body. Its memory can be tampered with.”
Several messengers spoke against the resolution, including Joseph Giles, pastor of James Square Baptist Church in Lawrenceville, Va., who challenged the religious liberty committee’s terminology.
“The definition of separation of church and state today is not what the man who coined the phrase meant by it,” Giles said, referring to Thomas Jefferson, who first used the words in a letter to Baptists in Danbury, Conn. Whereas Jefferson understood the concept to mean that government could not coerce belief, many today take it to mean that religious faith should be excluded from public life, said Giles.
“The notion [of separation of church and state] held by people today is the real revisionism,” he said.
Giles added that advocates such as conservatives on the Texas State Board of Education “are not revisionists but reclaimers of our heritage.”
Alan Wilder, pastor of Sunny Hills Baptist Church in Wytheville, Va., said he generally supported the resolution but was uncomfortable with its references to authors he had not read. Wilder offered an amendment striking a paragraph which cited David Barton, W. Cleon Skousen and “some Reconstructionist authors” who the committee said engaged in “systematic efforts” to revise American history.
Wilder’s amendment failed but James said he and the committee would consent to removing the authors’ names while leaving the rest of the paragraph intact.
The modified resolution passed.
In other action during its opening session, about 800 BGAV messengers received recommendations on which they will vote tomorrow:
- A proposed 2011 budget of $13,550,000, which is $650,000 less than the current $14 million budget.
- Six recommendations from the BGAV’s affinity committee that would expand the state association’s local, national and international relationships.
- A constitutional amendment that would establish a standing scholarship committee tasked with awarding financial assistance from BGAV scholarship and ministerial education funds.
Both the 2011 proposed budget and the affinity committee’s recommendations will be discussed in break-out sessions this afternoon.
BGAV messengers also adopted a slate of 83 nominees for service on committees and on governing boards of a variety of partner agencies. In addition, messengers agreed to recommendations to hold their 2011 annual meeting in Richmond and 2012 meeting in the Roanoke area.
Robert Dilday is managing editor of the Religious Herald.
The full text of the amended resolution follows:
Inaccurate history threatens religious liberty
Whereas, the Baptist principles of religious liberty and its safeguard, separation of church and state (or government neutrality toward all religions and nonreligion), are well grounded in this nation’s history, and
Whereas, the labors of Virginians, notably Thomas Jefferson, George Mason, James Madison, and the Baptist minister John Leland, were crucial in the historic events that made these two principles part of our nation’s Bill of Rights, and
Whereas, no people, Baptist or otherwise, can remain true to its principles if its knowledge or collective memory of these principles is tampered with, altered, or replaced by a false version of history, and
Whereas, the Religious Liberty Committee of the Baptist General Association of Virginia has concluded that systematic efforts have been under way in recent decades to write and teach versions of American history that minimize and sometimes deny the historic basis of one or both of the principles named above, and
Whereas, resources are available for correcting any such mistaken history, including a 1999 article by Stephen Stookey of Fort Worth, Texas,
Now therefore be it resolved, that the Baptist General Association of Virginia calls upon Virginia Baptists, and all who cherish religious liberty, (1) to redouble their efforts to know and teach the historical foundation and meaning of the two principles named above, (2) to regard it as a threat to the flourishing of religious liberty when any version of our nation’s history minimizes or denies the historical basis of either of these principles, and (3) to be diligent in resisting and correcting any such mistaken version of our history.