For Baptists of old, freedom of religious thought and practice was more than an academic hold-over from previous generations. Being sent to jail for proclaiming your beliefs tends to make it personal. To them it was a right granted by God but not yet recognized by any official government. That changed in 1636 when Roger Williams, who was then a Baptist, established the colony of Rhode Island and with it the first government on the face of the earth to grant true religious freedom.
Jim White
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Along with the belief that human beings should be allowed to worship according to their consciences came respect for the human beings themselves. The colony was settled on land bought, not taken, from Native Americans and in 1774 one of the first anti-slavery laws was passed. In May of 1776, a full two months before the continental congress passed such a resolution, Rhode Island had declared its freedom from British rule.
In Virginia, Baptists ran afoul of authorities and several ministers were imprisoned, suffered bodily harm or both. One of these ministers, Elijah Craig, preached through the bars of his Orange County jail in 1768 and attracted a crowd of listeners. Among them was James Madison, who in later life authored much of the U.S. Constitution.
In 1771, Baptists in North Carolina organized in protest against corrupt governor William Tyron and were crushed by Tyron’s militia at the Battle of Alamance. After the battle, survivors were hanged. As a result, the membership of the historic Sandy Creek Baptist Church dropped from 606 to 14. Some of the members fled into neighboring South Carolina and Virginia and ignited fires of religious fervor and freedom there.
John Leland, a Baptist preacher, lived near Madison. In 1788, Madison visited with Leland, asking him to support the ratification of the proposed U.S. Constitution. Out of that meeting came Leland’s support in exchange for Madison’s promise to include a Bill of Rights to include freedom of religion. This would provide for the new nation the same rights guaranteed by Virginia’s Act for Establishing Religious Freedom authored by Thomas Jefferson and passed in 1786. Leland’s meeting with Madison was discusssed along with citations in the Oct. 18, 1934, issue of the Religious Herald.
I cite all this to illustrate that in our history, religious freedom was a driving force that embraced other freedoms as well.
Before his death in 1880, Jeremiah Bell Jeter, former editor of the Religious Herald, published a series of articles on Baptist principles. In 1901, a subsequent editor, Robert Pitt, collected these articles and the Religious Herald published them in a book called Baptist Principles Reset. I can’t imagine why Pitt felt the need to “reset” them unless he believed they were in peril of slipping away with the passing of time.
From time to time Baptists have felt the need to reassert those primary truths and tenets that helped shape us into the people we became — as in 1920 when George W. Truett spoke on freedom of religion from the capitol steps in Washington, D.C.
He said, “Baptists have one consistent record concerning liberty throughout all their long and eventful history. They have never been party to oppression of conscience. They have forever been the unwavering champions of liberty, both religious and civil. Their contention now is, and has been, and, please God, must ever be, that it is the natural and fundamental and indefeasible right of every human being to worship God or not, according to the dictates of his conscience, and, as long as he does not infringe upon the rights of others, he is to be held accountable alone to God for all religious beliefs and practices.”
In our day Baptist principles are again being “reset,” as in a book called Distinctly Baptist: Proclaiming Identity in a New Generation, published last year by Judson Press. Why do these “principles” continue to be “reset?” It isn’t because we need to reaffirm being Baptist so much as the consequence of forgetting these principles are disastrous to our foundational, God-given rights as human beings.
Jeter wrote, “Baptists, under all the names which they have borne, in different countries and in different centuries, have been unswervingly loyal to the principles of religious liberty. Whatever may have been their faults — and they have neither been infallible in judgment nor irreproachable in conduct — they have been free from the guilt of persecution. They have not only been the earnest advocates of religious liberty but have supported it in its fullest extent. They have not only claimed it for themselves, but have accorded it to others — Jews and pagans, as well as Christians.”
It is not unusual for a persecuted minority to clamor for religious freedom. What is remarkable is when the majority demand it for the persecuted minority. Among the minorities are the atheists who have become increasingly missional. Some even contend that atheism has become a religion in America.
Last week, a U.S. District Court ruled that officials in a Rhode Island school, in which a prayer banner had hung since 1963, would have to immediately remove it. The ruling was the result of a suit filed by a student, Jessica Ahlquist, 16, who is a self-described atheist activist. Predictably, a lot of people are upset. Jessica has received numerous threats and police officers were stationed at the school in case violence erupted.
Many Baptists are among those angry at Ahlquist’s action. It is at such times that we have to “reset” our principles. It would be easy to join the chorus of those protesting the removal of the prayer. Some are even perceptive enough to ask if the removal of the prayer is, in effect, promoting the religion of atheism! Others contend that Ahlquist’s action was prompted less by offense taken and more by the satisfaction of forcing the issue.
But regardless of her motives, we have to examine our response in light of our own principles. However much we wish that such questions would simply go away, they won’t. And our principles — what we believe in our hearts to be right — require us to defend her right to take down our prayers from buildings she (as a member of the public) helped pay for. Even if we are not happy about it.
Jim White ([email protected]) is editor of the Religious Herald.