WASHINGTON (ABP) — One of the most prominent historians of American evangelicalism called on “true Baptists” June 29 to re-assert their prophetic role “as watchmen on the wall of separation between church and state.”
Randall Ballmer, a history professor at Columbia University, told more than 550 supporters of the Baptist Joint Committee for Religious Liberty that many of America's Baptists, in recent decades, have “lost their way.”
“They have been seduced by leaders of the Religious Right into thinking that the way to advance the gospel in this country is to abandon Baptist principles,” he said.
Among the examples he listed were former Alabama Chief Justice Roy Moore, a Southern Baptist. Moore's controversial decision to place a massive monument to the Protestant translation of the Ten Commandments at the center of the rotunda in the Alabama Supreme Court building ultimately cost him his job — but it also made him a folk hero among many of the nation's conservative Christians.
Moore argued that his oath to defend the United States and Alabama constitutions required him to “acknowledge God” as “the source of law” by creating the monument.
“Why not post the Decalogue in public places? Because, quite simply, it trivializes the faith and makes the Ten Commandments into a fetish,” Ballmer said. “What Roy Moore was peddling was idolatry, pure and simple — a conflation of the gospel with the American political order.”
Ballmer also assailed Baptists who have, he argued, so aligned themselves with political movements, they have diminished their ability to call the very officials they helped elect to moral account.
“The identification of the Religious Right with the Republican Party has deprived the faith of its prophetic voice. Where are the Baptist voices of conscience decrying this administration's immoral war in Iraq, the relentless assault on civil liberties and the abomination of torture?” he said.
“In too many cases, the answer is that those voices have been co-opted by the promise — often the mirage — of access to political power,” he said. He added, referring to President Bush's chief political adviser, “It is hard to escape the conclusion that the Religious Right has abandoned the faith for a conference call with Karl Rove in return.”
Ballmer argued that Baptists who oppose such entanglements between religion and government need to bring their wayward brethren back into the fold.
“Every true Baptist understands that any attempt to baptize the faith with the imprimatur of the state … ultimately diminishes the integrity of the faith,” Ballmer said. “I'm asking Baptists to reaffirm their heritage. I'm asking them to rededicate themselves to the importance of liberty of conscience. Baptists were once a minority themselves, so they should know better than most the importance of protecting the rights of minorities, religious and otherwise.”
The speech came during the 17th annual meeting of the BJC's Religious Liberty Council, held in conjunction with the Cooperative Baptist Fellowship General Assembly and the American Baptist Churches USA Biennial in Washington.
The RLC is comprised of the individual donors who contribute to BJC, a Washington-based advocacy group supported by CBF, ABC and all of the nation's other large Baptist denominations except for the Southern Baptist Convention.
The council re-elected its three officers to second one-year terms. RLC co-chairs are Hal Bass, a professor at Ouachita Baptist University in Arkadelphia, Ark., and a member of First Baptist Church of Arkadelphia; and Cynthia Holmes, a St. Louis attorney and member of Overland Baptist Church in Overland, Mo. Henry Green, pastor of Heritage Baptist Church in Annapolis, Md., was re-elected as RLC secretary.
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Shurden gives sobering warning on state of religious freedom (6/26/2006)