Baptist News Global
Sections
  • News
  • Analysis
  • Opinion
  • Curated
  • Storytelling
    • Faith & Justice >
      • Charleston: Metanoia with Bill Stanfield
      • Charlotte: QC Family Tree with Greg and Helms Jarrell
      • Little Rock: Judge Wendell Griffen
      • North Carolina: Conetoe
    • Welcoming the Stranger >
      • Lost Boys of Sudan: St. John’s Baptist Charlotte
      • Awakening to Immigrant Justice: Myers Park Baptist Church
      • Hospitality on the corner: Gaston Christian Center
    • Signature Ministries >
      • Jake Hall: Gospel Gothic, Music and Radio
    • Singing Our Faith >
      • Hymns for a Lifetime: Ken Wilson and Knollwood Baptist Church
      • Norfolk Street Choir
    • Resilient Rural America >
      • Alabama: Perry County
      • Texas: Hidalgo County
      • Arkansas Delta
      • Southeast Kentucky
  • More
    • Contact
    • About
    • Donate
    • Associated Baptist Press Foundation
    • Planned Giving
    • Letters to the Editor
    • Advertising
    • Ministry Jobs and More
    • Transitions
    • Subscribe
    • Submissions and Permissions
Donate Subscribe
Search Search this site

Baptist leaders gather to defend religious liberty at New Orleans event

NewsAaron Weaver  |  October 1, 2015

By Aaron Weaver

Leaders from the Cooperative Baptist Fellowship, Baptist Joint Committee for Religious Liberty and Southern Baptist Convention joined Tuesday to discuss the importance of religious liberty around the world.

During the event at New Orleans Baptist Theological Seminary, CBF Executive Coordinator Suzii Paynter described her jarring encounter in 1978 with famed atheist Madalyn Murray O’Hair while a public school teacher in Texas.

O’Hair’s adopted granddaughter was in Paynter’s class, and the elder O’Hair showed up on the first day of class and announced that she intended to make problems for the school, vowing to expose the ways in which she believed the rights of her granddaughter were being violated.

Paynter said that her encounter with O’Hair, best known for her lawsuit that led to the Supreme Court’s landmark 1963 ruling outlawing state-sponsored Bible reading in public schools, caused her to take religious liberty more seriously — despite her personal dislike of O’Hair.

SuziiPaynterNOBTS

Religious liberty had little usefulness to her prior to the encounter, Paynter said.

“Religious liberty was about the equivalent to an English china teacup in my life — respected as fine and valuable, but rarely thought of or used.”

That teacup came off the shelf for daily use in 1978, she said.

“I had to come face to face with the words ‘freedom of conscience’ and know that that was not just for me,” Paynter said. “It is very hard to defend the most hated woman in America, but religious liberty is not sanitized and nice. …Thankfully, religious liberty is not as fragile as a teacup.”

Paynter said she would like it if her beliefs were embraced everywhere, but she would never request the government to make it so.

“I will not ask for state support — direct or indirect,” she said. “Don’t shame me or try to remove my right to religious expression. My faith expression does not coerce you.”

Turning her presentation to the importance of global religious freedom, Paynter noted that many churches and faith-based organizations have abdicated their support for freedom abroad over the years.

“If there is an area we have relegated to lawyers and experts, it is international religious liberty,” Paynter said, emphasizing CBF’s expanding partnership with the Baptist World Alliance to speak on behalf of global religious freedom in partnership with the worldwide fellowship of Baptists in 121 countries composed of 42 million members.

Focusing on global religious freedom will be a focus of the Fellowship for the foreseeable future, she said.

“It is a great privilege to serve a Lord and savior whose freedom calls for our direct worship and the sacrifice of our lives to his calling to love one another that our joy may be full and, in this case, to be sure of our liberty and freedom in Christ by working toward that goal for all.”

Assessing the religious liberty landscape

BJC executive director Brent Walker offered an assessment of the state of religious freedom in the United States.

Walker applauded the Supreme Court’s 2012 Hosanna-Tabor ruling, which recognized that churches and other religious groups are free to choose their leaders without government interference.

“I’m very optimistic about church autonomy,” he said. “Churches that do not want to solemnize same-sex marriages are not going to have to under this doctrine.”

Walker, also noted that many critics of the Affordable Care Act’s contraceptive mandate fail to mention that churches have been exempt from the provision from its beginning out of a respect for the principle of church autonomy.

Walker stated that recent Supreme Court decisions relating to the First Amendment’s Free Exercise Clause “suggest that we are doing very well.” But in terms of the First Amendment’s Establishment Clause, “we’re doing terribly and losing ground.”

He cited the Supreme Court’s 5-4 Town of Greece decision that affirmed the small New York state town’s practice of beginning its municipal meetings with a sectarian prayer. Walker distinguished the town’s policy with that of prayers that open up sessions of the U.S. Congress.

“The chaplains’ prayer [before the Congress] is for the body of the legislators,” Walker explained. “That’s completely different than in the [Town of] Greece — and at most local city council meetings — where the public is there not to just watch up in the galleries but to participate, to testify before the council…to get a zoning variance or business license.”

BrentWalkerNOBTS

He said “we took the position that — in that context — it was impermissibly coercive to require those folks to undergo or to experience and participate in a state-sponsored religious exercise as a ticket to exercise and perform their civic responsibilities.”

Referencing recent controversial comments from Republican presidential candidate Ben Carson suggesting that a Muslim could not be president because of his or her faith, Walker said he was glad to see the candidate widely criticized by his conservative peers.

“I was heartened to see that several conservative commentators came out and roundly criticized Dr. Carson and his failure to [acknowledge] the importance of the ‘no religious test’ for public office,” Walker said.

While noting that citizens are free to impose their own religious test on candidates, Walker said that he thinks this is a bad idea.

“I think we ought to live by the spirit of ‘no religious test’ as well as the letter of the law and allow that to inform our thinking about our voting patterns and how we engage the government as citizens,” Walker said. “Religion, of course, can be taken into account and our public leaders don’t have to check their religion at the door.”

A people of the jailhouse

Russell Moore, president of the SBC’s Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission, shared a story about his love for the late country singer Johnny Cash and his famous song “Folsom Prison Blues.”

Moore Russell PreachingFor Baptists to be faithful to their commitment to religious liberty, they must remember their own prison roots and blues in the jailhouses of England, Virginia and Massachusetts during past centuries, he said.

“For us to be the people who maintain a witness to religious liberty, we have to remember what it means to be people of the jailhouse,” Moore said.

Speaking from Acts 16 and the story of the imprisoned Paul and Silas, Moore said that this New Testament scripture proposes us to give up our rights.

“Paul and Silas stay [in prison]…and they stay because of the gospel and the advance of the mission,” he explained.

“We see in this [text] the personal nature of the gospel. …This is why Baptists have fundamentally been committed to religious liberty. It is not because of some political responsibility we have. It is because how we believe the gospel works,” Moore said.

“One cannot somehow coerce people into believing, one certainly cannot use the power of the state to turn people into Christians because state power or economic power or community pressure can never make people Christians,” Moore added. “It can only make people pretend Christians. The gospel works with the spirit convicting the heart and the heart crying out for deliverance and the heart crying out for mercy.

Moore emphasized that what many conservative Christians in the United States believe to be persecution is not always persecution.

“Everything that offends us is not persecution,” Moore said. “We have not been promised life without offense. Often what we can easily do as Christians is to turn into an interest group that lashes out at any group that offends us or disagrees with us.”

When companies and groups poke fun at Christians that’s not persecution, Moore said.

Again, citing the Acts 16 story of the imprisoned Paul and Silas, Moore stressed that the “gospel propels us at the same time to stand up for our rights.”

“When we simply say, ‘I am not willing to stand up for religious liberty,’ we are actually acting in ways that are profoundly selfish and profoundly anti-gospel. What that means is that we are going to be the people who, like the Apostle Paul and Silas, are contending for every legal protection for those areas the government ought not have supervisory oversight over.”

He pointed to examples of conservative Christians who have opposed efforts to build mosques and Muslim cemeteries in their communities, and said the Christians who do so have “lost confidence in the gospel.”

“What happens when the power of the sword is used to shut down mosques for our Muslim neighbors, all that happens is that our mission field goes underground, and they realize that the Christians around me, hate me and want to see me invisible.”

Other presenters at the Sept. 29 event included William Brackney of Acadia Divinity College in Canada, Mike Edens of New Orleans Baptist Theological Seminary, Kenneth McDowell of Union Baptist & Theological Seminary in New Orleans and Gregory Komendant of Kiev Theological Seminary in the Ukraine.

The event, titled “Baptist Voices on Religious Liberty: Left, Right and Center,” was hosted by New Orleans Baptist Theological Seminary and sponsored by the Institute for Faith and the Public Square and the Baptist Center for Theology and Ministry, as well as endorsed by the Baptist History & Heritage Society, a CBF partner.

Share this:

  • Click to share on Twitter (Opens in new window)
  • Click to share on Facebook (Opens in new window)
  • Click to print (Opens in new window)
  • Click to email a link to a friend (Opens in new window)
  • More
  • Click to share on LinkedIn (Opens in new window)
  • Click to share on Reddit (Opens in new window)
  • Click to share on Tumblr (Opens in new window)
  • Click to share on Pinterest (Opens in new window)
  • Click to share on Pocket (Opens in new window)
  • Click to share on Telegram (Opens in new window)
  • Click to share on WhatsApp (Opens in new window)
  • Click to share on Skype (Opens in new window)
Tags:Cooperative Baptist FellowshipReligious LibertySocial IssuesReligious PersecutionBaptist World AllianceBaptist Joint Committee for Religious LibertySuzii PaynterBrent WalkerReligious EstablishmentRussell D. Moore
More by
Aaron Weaver
  • Get BNG headlines in your inbox

  • Featured

    • What did Pope Francis say, and what did he mean, in AP interview on homosexuality?

      Analysis

    • Biden administration urged to remove Cuba from list of state sponsors of terrorism

      News

    • Jesus and Buddha are talking with me about loving and blessing my enemies

      Opinion

    • Zimbabwean pastors flee ministry to join more lucrative care work in the UK

      News


    Curated

    • Marvin Olasky Still Wants to Make Journalism Biblically Objective

      Marvin Olasky Still Wants to Make Journalism Biblically Objective

    • Progressive National Baptists to deploy $1 million grant to boost ‘compelling preaching’

      Progressive National Baptists to deploy $1 million grant to boost ‘compelling preaching’

    • Church of England sheds light on ‘shameful’ slave trade ties

      Church of England sheds light on ‘shameful’ slave trade ties

    • Chinese Christians remain in Thailand fearing deportation

      Chinese Christians remain in Thailand fearing deportation

    Read Next:

    Nonreligious young adults say they are more open to religion than older adults, but campus ministers say that’s still a delicate opportunity

    AnalysisMallory Challis

    More Articles

    • All
    • News
    • Opinion
    • Curated
    • The truth about police brutality

      OpinionJames Ellis III

    • In Ukraine: ‘We cannot just preach like we did before the war’

      NewsJeff Brumley

    • TikTok trends and three questions you and your church should ask this year about rest

      AnalysisLaura Ellis

    • Two churches ‘under inquiry’ by SBC Credentials Committee for platforming Johnny Hunt

      NewsMark Wingfield

    • Biblical orthodoxy 2023: Sign or get ‘churched’

      OpinionBill Leonard, Senior Columnist

    • Zimbabwean pastors flee ministry to join more lucrative care work in the UK

      NewsRay Mwareya

    • Jesus and Buddha are talking with me about loving and blessing my enemies

      OpinionH. Stephen Shoemaker

    • Biden administration urged to remove Cuba from list of state sponsors of terrorism

      NewsJeff Brumley

    • Why most everything you think you know about global migration is probably wrong

      AnalysisMark Wingfield

    • What did Pope Francis say, and what did he mean, in AP interview on homosexuality?

      AnalysisMallory Challis

    • Transitions for the week of 2-3-23

      NewsBarbara Francis

    • Letter to the Editor: Kudos all around for Baptist News Global

      OpinionLetters to the Editor

    • Letter to the Editor: Jesus expects us to follow him; Trump expects us to follow him

      OpinionLetters to the Editor

    • Humor and hope mark the dark journey taken by a creative and brave photojournalist

      OpinionKathy Manis Findley

    • ‘Can you imagine looting the religious artifacts that help strengthen the Christian faith from the Vatican?’

      NewsAnthony Akaeze

    • One year of sobriety

      OpinionGlen Schmucker

    • Panelists discuss how the Hamline University controversy could have been handled better in a diverse culture

      NewsJeff Brumley

    • Men’s ministry needs more than, eggs, bacon and football

      OpinionMaina Mwaura

    • Nonreligious young adults say they are more open to religion than older adults, but campus ministers say that’s still a delicate opportunity

      AnalysisMallory Challis

    • Pope Francis arrives in Africa on a two-nation tour seeking peace amid decades of conflict

      NewsAnthony Akaeze

    • The church must show the world a more excellent way of nonviolence

      OpinionRodney Kennedy

    • Museum of the Bible to host Wednesday morning event to pray for God’s judgment on America, and breakfast is not included

      NewsMark Wingfield

    • National Prayer Breakfast gets new sponsorship but still looks like government-sponsored religion, BJC leaders say

      NewsJeff Brumley

    • del Toro’s Pinocchio is a tale of faith that is not wooden

      AnalysisRick Pidcock

    • Ministry jobs and more

      NewsBarbara Francis

    • In Ukraine: ‘We cannot just preach like we did before the war’

      NewsJeff Brumley

    • Two churches ‘under inquiry’ by SBC Credentials Committee for platforming Johnny Hunt

      NewsMark Wingfield

    • Zimbabwean pastors flee ministry to join more lucrative care work in the UK

      NewsRay Mwareya

    • Biden administration urged to remove Cuba from list of state sponsors of terrorism

      NewsJeff Brumley

    • Transitions for the week of 2-3-23

      NewsBarbara Francis

    • ‘Can you imagine looting the religious artifacts that help strengthen the Christian faith from the Vatican?’

      NewsAnthony Akaeze

    • Panelists discuss how the Hamline University controversy could have been handled better in a diverse culture

      NewsJeff Brumley

    • Pope Francis arrives in Africa on a two-nation tour seeking peace amid decades of conflict

      NewsAnthony Akaeze

    • Museum of the Bible to host Wednesday morning event to pray for God’s judgment on America, and breakfast is not included

      NewsMark Wingfield

    • National Prayer Breakfast gets new sponsorship but still looks like government-sponsored religion, BJC leaders say

      NewsJeff Brumley

    • Ministry jobs and more

      NewsBarbara Francis

    • Zimbabwe Theological Seminary names new principal

      NewsBNG staff

    • What happens when church and state merge? Look to Nazi Germany for answers

      NewsJeff Brumley

    • Southwestern Seminary student arrested for alleged ‘felony sexual assault’

      NewsMark Wingfield

    • Trial date set for Patterson and Southwestern versus Jane Roe

      NewsMark Wingfield

    • Faith groups must fight online hate, Interfaith Alliance urges

      NewsJeff Brumley

    • Colorado cake maker back in court, this time for refusing service to a transgender woman

      NewsMark Wingfield

    • For every critic of Jesus and John Wayne there are many more positive responses Du Mez says

      NewsJeff Brumley

    • Bob Banks, longtime SBC missions leader, dies at 91

      NewsMark Wingfield

    • Members of Florida church required to sign ‘biblical sexuality’ statement or be removed from membership

      NewsMark Wingfield

    • Eight months later, there’s renewed interest in Adam Hamilton’s video on why he’ll remain a United Methodist

      NewsMark Wingfield

    • 165 religious leaders plead with White House to abandon immigrant travel ban

      NewsJeff Brumley

    • Ministry jobs and more

      NewsBarbara Francis

    • Knowing a church’s history on slavery can be a nudge toward redemption, historians say

      NewsJeff Brumley

    • Sandra and Andy Stanley: ‘We’re not perfect parents, but we’ve learned some things along the way’

      NewsMaina Mwaura

    • The truth about police brutality

      OpinionJames Ellis III

    • Biblical orthodoxy 2023: Sign or get ‘churched’

      OpinionBill Leonard, Senior Columnist

    • Jesus and Buddha are talking with me about loving and blessing my enemies

      OpinionH. Stephen Shoemaker

    • Letter to the Editor: Kudos all around for Baptist News Global

      OpinionLetters to the Editor

    • Letter to the Editor: Jesus expects us to follow him; Trump expects us to follow him

      OpinionLetters to the Editor

    • Humor and hope mark the dark journey taken by a creative and brave photojournalist

      OpinionKathy Manis Findley

    • One year of sobriety

      OpinionGlen Schmucker

    • Men’s ministry needs more than, eggs, bacon and football

      OpinionMaina Mwaura

    • The church must show the world a more excellent way of nonviolence

      OpinionRodney Kennedy

    • Church historian Richard Hughes reflects on a lifetime of ‘Troublesome Questions’

      OpinionTed Parks

    • What churches could learn from the Pub Choir phenomenon

      OpinionMike Frost

    • Living into lament: A white response to the killing of Tyre Nichols by police

      OpinionRobert P. Jones

    • Of church cemeteries, pulpit committees, crafts and sweet potato casserole

      OpinionChris Ayers

    • Of Margie, mountains and ‘El Shaddai’

      OpinionBert Montgomery

    • What I learned from meeting Martin Luther King in Louisville and Josie in Hopkinsville

      OpinionBill Thurman

    • On the baptism of our firstborn

      OpinionEmily Hull McGee

    • Has virtual worship actually harmed Christianity?

      OpinionSara Robb-Scott

    • ‘What can we forgive?’: An interview with Matthew Ichihashi Potts on Forgiveness

      OpinionGreg Garrett, Senior Columnist

    • My father’s faith

      OpinionBrett Younger

    • The apology that never came at Bubba-Doo’s

      OpinionCharles Qualls

    • Trump and his allegedly disloyal white evangelical supporters

      OpinionRobert P. Jones

    • Doom-scrolling, sourdough starter and three kinds of kin

      OpinionJustin Cox

    • Putin needs to be taken down

      OpinionMark Wingfield

    • How my eyes were opened to America’s broken immigration system

      OpinionChristian Vaughn

    • Meditating with Buddhists and other Asian lessons

      OpinionBill Leonard, Senior Columnist

    • Marvin Olasky Still Wants to Make Journalism Biblically Objective

      Curated

      Exclude from home pageBNG staff

    • Progressive National Baptists to deploy $1 million grant to boost ‘compelling preaching’

      Curated

      Exclude from home pageBNG staff

    • Church of England sheds light on ‘shameful’ slave trade ties

      Curated

      Exclude from home pageBNG staff

    • Chinese Christians remain in Thailand fearing deportation

      Curated

      Exclude from home pageBNG staff

    • Black police officers aren’t colorblind – they’re infected by the same anti-Black bias as American society and police in general

      Curated

      Exclude from home pageBNG staff

    • Ohio is investigating a Nazi homeschooling network that teaches children to love Hitler

      Curated

      Exclude from home pageBNG staff

    • Omar says some Republicans don’t want a Muslim in Congress: ‘These people are OK with Islamophobia’

      Curated

      Exclude from home pageBNG staff

    • Tyre Nichols police beating video prompts faith leaders to react with grief, goals

      Curated

      Exclude from home pageBNG staff

    • How Egyptian police hunt LGBT people on dating apps

      Curated

      Exclude from home pageBNG staff

    • N. Carolina church says it lost nearly $800K in email scam

      Curated

      Exclude from home pageBNG staff

    • On A Mission To Fill Empty Pulpits: A Couple Addressing The Preacher Shortage

      Curated

      Exclude from home pageBNG staff

    • Second gentleman Emhoff visits Auschwitz, part of a push against antisemitism

      Curated

      Exclude from home pageBNG staff

    • A Buddhist disaster relief organization offers key support after Monterey Park shooting

      Curated

      Exclude from home pageBNG staff

    • It shouldn’t seem so surprising when the pope says being gay ‘isn’t a crime’ – a Catholic theologian explains

      Curated

      Exclude from home pageBNG staff

    • USCCB official: The church must admit its role in destroying Native American culture

      Curated

      Exclude from home pageBNG staff

    • House bill would limit government authority over religious events

      Curated

      Exclude from home pageBNG staff

    • ‘He Gets Us’ organizers hope to spend $1 billion to promote Jesus. Will anyone care?

      Curated

      Exclude from home pageBNG staff

    • The Rise of Spirit Warriors on the Christian Right

      Curated

      Exclude from home pageBNG staff

    • Twitter reinstated white nationalist Nick Fuentes. He lasted 24 hours.

      Curated

      Exclude from home pageBNG staff

    • In Rare Rebuke, Elaine Chao Calls Out Trump’s Anti-Asian Attacks

      Curated

      Exclude from home pageBNG staff

    • How Southern California helped birth white Christian nationalism

      Curated

      Exclude from home pageBNG staff

    • Extreme Israeli group takes root in US with fundraising bid

      Curated

      Exclude from home pageBNG staff

    • Review: Decolonizing Christianity

      Curated

      Exclude from home pageBNG staff

    • Two Leaders Of The New US House Could Put Baptist Diversity In The News Spotlight

      Curated

      Exclude from home pageBNG staff

    • Making Sweat Feel Spiritual Didn’t Start With SoulCycle

      Curated

      Exclude from home pageBNG staff

    Conversations that Matter.

    © 2023 Baptist News Global. All rights reserved.

    Want to share a story? We hope you will! Read our republishing, terms of use and privacy policies here.

    • Facebook
    • Twitter
    • Instagram
    • LinkedIn
    • RSS