Baptists should not sit quietly while the federal government considers a report that would redefine religious liberty in the United States.
The Presidential Religious Liberty Commission’s draft report deserves a direct Baptist response. It challenges church-state separation while advancing a policy agenda that would give faith-based institutions greater access to public funds, stronger legal protections, more room for religious expression and new federal channels for religious liberty complaints. The practical effect would be to increase the power of conservative Christian organizations that already hold significant cultural and political influence.
Heather Deal
Baptists should call this what it is. It is Christian nationalism with a religious liberty label.
This is not a document to shrug off. Project 2025’s “Mandate for Leadership” has shown how quickly conservative policy blueprints can move from think tank documents into federal action. The RLC draft should be read in the same way — as a governing agenda that could reshape how public money, federal agencies, civil rights protections and church-state boundaries are used.
“It is Christian nationalism with a religious liberty label.”
Our Baptist convictions should make us harder to fool. At our best, Baptists have insisted that faith must be voluntary, conscience must be free and the state must not decide which religion deserves public favor.
Religious liberty becomes something else when it is used to secure Christian preference. It is not permission for churches to become extensions of political campaigns. It is not a public subsidy for religious institutions that want fewer public obligations. It is not a shield that allows people with power to shift harm onto neighbors with less power.
If adopted, the RLC agenda could reshape public life in concrete ways. It could weaken church-state separation while calling that freedom. It could invite churches deeper into partisan politics while calling it free speech. It could send public money to religious agencies that claim exemptions from civil rights protections. It could push schools, health care systems, child welfare programs and employers to prioritize conservative Christian objections over the rights and needs of the people those institutions are supposed to serve.
As Baptists, we need to be clear about this. A version of religious liberty that protects Christian power while making others bear the cost is not religious liberty for all.
The recommended repeal of the Johnson Amendment is one example, but it is not the whole story. Churches already may preach, organize, advocate, teach and serve. Pastors already may speak out about the moral and political questions facing their communities, from poverty and racism to immigration, sexuality, war, democracy and justice. What churches should not seek is the public benefit of tax-exemption while acting as vehicles for partisan politics. A church that endorses candidates as a church has not become freer. It has handed part of its witness to a political campaign.
“A version of religious liberty that protects Christian power while making others bear the cost is not religious liberty for all.”
But the deeper danger is the RLC draft’s larger pattern: Public funding without public accountability, religious expression backed by government power, and exemptions that protect institutions while harming people.
That is not soul freedom. That is not a free church in a free state. That is not religious liberty for all.
Baptists should respond clearly, and we should do it now.
The RLC draft is open for public comment until July 12. Those comments matter only if people submit them. Baptists who care about religious liberty should say plainly that church-state separation does not threaten religious freedom. It helps protect it. We should press Baptist institutions and leaders — including denominational leaders and seminary faculty — to say where they stand. We should teach our congregations that religious liberty belongs to everyone, not only Christians with political access.
Pastors should name the danger from the pulpit without endorsing candidates. Churches should refuse to become tools of political campaigns, even if the law gives them more room to do so. Baptist scholars, ministers and laypeople should write, organize and push back when Christian nationalism borrows Baptist language while stripping it of Baptist meaning.
Baptists cannot retreat from public life. Public witness does not require state favor.
We can advocate for justice without asking the state to favor Christianity. We can defend conscience without turning conscience into a weapon against our neighbors. We can protect churches without making churches servants of political parties. We can defend religious liberty without confusing it with Christian power.
Baptists know better than this version of religious liberty. If we mean what we say, we should be among the first to oppose it.
Heather Deal is an assistant professor of social work at Binghamton University. Her research focuses on LBGTQ inclusion and gender equity in Baptist congregations, Christian nationalism and faculty experiences of institutional betrayal, institutional courage and moral injury amid current political scrutiny of higher education, scholarship and teaching.