Pansy and I have supported Americans United financially for several years, and I’ll never forget the first chapter meeting I attended. When I introduced myself as a Baptist minister, you could feel suspicion rising like poisonous fumes over a swamp. Some of you thought I was a mole.
By the way, we’re not Southern Baptist. We’re Baptists in the South. Baptists have always been more traditional than most other Protestants. But a little over thirty years ago, the Southern Baptist Convention took a sharp turn to the right, politically as well as religiously. Some now call Southern Baptists the political wing of the Republican Party. We didn’t leave Southern Baptists. They left us.
You think Baptists are on the far right. But you’re going to see Baptists were the original church-state liberals. We came into being over two closely connected issues: Church-State Separation and
Church membership by personal choice.
Neither of those was an option through most of religious history. You could sum up the dominant practice across the years in these words: “The religion of the ruler is the religion of the realm.”
In the first three centuries of the Common Era, Christians were exiled or executed when they refused to burn incense at the altar of God Caesar. “The religion of the ruler is the religion of the realm.”
Then, early in the fourth century, Emperor Constantine confessed faith in Christ. Whether this conversion was sincere, historians still speculate. But it ended persecution of Christians. Christianity did not become the official religion of the Empire until some sixty years later under Emperor Theodosius (A. D. 380). Even so, “The religion of the ruler is the religion of the realm.”
If we narrow our focus to Western Civilization, we see the rise of the Roman Catholic Church as the official religion of the various European countries.
For Martin Luther, one concern which led to the Reformation movement was the union of his Catholic Church with civil government. But his objection was the minority view. His followers were labeled as Lutherans, and Lutherans became the state church of Luther’s Germany. Lutherans were the official church in Sweden until our 21st century. It was only this year that Norway disestablished. Lutherans are still the official church in Denmark and Iceland. Once again, “The religion of the ruler is the religion of the realm.”
John Calvin is the father of Presbyterianism the Reformed Church. He broke with Roman Catholics a decade or so after Luther. But Calvin worked hand-in-glove with Swiss government officials in Geneva. “The religion of the ruler is the religion of the realm.” Calvin had his "heretics" executed.
Lutherans and Calvinists persecuted, prosecuted, and executed heretics such as Anabaptists. Over Church-State Separation and Church membership by personal choice.
The name Anabaptists is derogatory. The prefix ANA is the Greek word for anew or again. These folks did not want their infants baptized into the state church. They believed baptism and church membership is a personal decision. Baptism is for people old enough to choose. So they were heretical for baptizing over again: Ana-baptists.
If we move across the Channel to England, we see England was -- and still is -- a land where “The religion of the ruler is the religion of the realm.” Everyone in England today pays for the privilege of supporting the Queen’s Anglican Church. In the 15-hundreds, England was Roman Catholic until Henry the Eighth got mad when Pope Clement the Seventh refused to let Henry get a divorce. When Henry didn’t get his way, he broke with the Pope, divorced Catherine of Aragon, and started his own church, the Church of England. “The religion of the ruler is the religion of the realm.”
Later, Henry’s daughter Mary became queen. She happened to be the daughter of Catherine, the queen Henry dumped. So she reestablished Roman Catholicism and executed Protestants. “The religion of the ruler is the religion of the realm.”
Queen Mary was succeeded by her half-sister Elizabeth the First, who happened to be the daughter of Ann Boleyn, Henry’s queen after he got rid of Catherine. So Elizabeth reestablished Anglicanism and took aim at Roman Catholics. “The religion of the ruler is the religion of the realm.” King James the First reverted to Roman Catholicism and made life unbearable for Protestants. “The religion of the ruler is the religion of the realm.” By the way, this is the same King James whose name is on the Bible many fundamentalist Christians believe came straight from Jesus.
Turn back the calendar four hundred years to the reign of King James. The only acceptable worship was Anglican liturgy from the Book of Common Prayer. James came to the throne in 1603. That same year, a London tailor, James Williams, and his wife birthed a little boy named Roger.
About the time Roger Williams started to elementary school, in 1609, there was the first stirring of a dissenting group who stand for Church-State Separation and Church membership by personal choice. Folks called Baptists. They believed so strongly in Separation and voluntary church membership, they were willing to be jailed or worse to defend those beliefs. There’s no direct organizational connection between Ana-baptists and just plain Baptists. But both object to “The religion of the ruler [being] the religion of the realm.”
While Roger Williams was just a kid, numerous heretics, including Puritans, were being burned at stake in London, very near his neighborhood. This must have made an impression which influenced his later strong belief in civil and religious liberty. (“Roger Willams . . . A Brief Biography”)
As a teenager Roger came under the patronage of Sir Edward Coke, a powerful lawyer and Chief Justice of England. Working under Coke, Roger observed the struggle for religious freedom firsthand. Coke and others did verbal battle with King James’s son Charles who continued persecution of dissenting groups.
Roger went to Cambridge under Coke’s sponsorship and was an outstanding student. He prepared for the ministry and became chaplain to a wealthy family. He enjoyed the protection of this family and was able to preach his convictions for a time.
But by the time Roger married Mary in 1629, his ideas on freedom of worship became known. He began to feel pressure and decided to follow other Puritans to America. So, ten years after the Pilgrims landed at Plymouth, Roger boarded ship and in February 1631 arrived at Boston in the Massachusetts Bay Colony.
Bay Colony leaders immediately were impressed with him as a gifted preacher and offered him a position as teacher, not preacher, in the church in Salem. He refused the official position. But he did teach, and his teaching soon ran aground of church polity in Massachusetts. So he went to Plymouth, again working informally. Then he cane back to Salem. All in about four years. Williams questioned the king's right to confiscate Native American lands, and he stressed separation of church and state, specifically saying civil magistrates have no power over matters of conscience.
Colonial officials banned Williams and ordered him to return to England. Had he obeyed, he might have been executed. But Governor Winthrop, helped him escape. He fled during a harsh winter and was welcomed by Narragansett Indians in the area. In the spring, he went to the new territory. So, in 1636, five years after arriving on this continent, he established Rhode Island for all comers.
Williams said his main purpose was to prove, "It is the will and command of God that, since the coming of his Sonne the Lord Jesus, a permission of the most Paganish, Jewish, Turkish, or Antichristian consciences and worships, bee granted to all men in all Nations and countries.”(John M. Barry).
The late U. S. Senator Claiborne Pell from Rhode Island said this:
"Thirteen householders in the population of thirty-two in the first year formed the first genuine democracy--also the first church-divorced and conscience-free community--in modern history."
Historian John Barry declares, “Williams created the first government in the world which broke church and state apart” (Barry 389).
As Williams formed this new kind of colony, the draft of his civil compact stipulated “libertie of conscience” and made a passing reference to God’s providence. But the final draft of the compact removed all mention of God. This was extraordinary among the colonial compacts (Barry 224). Later, he said of the place he called Providence, “I desired it might be for a shelter for persons distressed of conscience.” Williams was willing to give up any special claim to power as the founder. But he insisted that Providence remain a place “for such as were destitute (especially for Conscience)” (220f).
Roger Williams was a deeply devout Christian. In two volumes of his surviving letters, every letter, without exception, is filled with references to God. Practically every paragraph refers to Bible passages and seeking God’s will in his life. So he knew where to draw the line between leading the colony and pursuing his personal faith (225). He applied his faith in all areas of life, but he did not foist his faith on others in civic pursuits.
Williams pioneered church-state separation in the colonies. But it took nearly two hundred years after he established Rhode Island for every state to do away with tax-supported churches. Massachusetts, the colony which banished Roger Williams, was the very last. Congregationalists were the state church in Massachusetts until 1833 (Shmoop).
Some of Roger and my fellow Baptists have direct influence on Thomas Jefferson and James Madison in getting the First Amendment passed. In all honesty, I have to confess Roger doesn’t stay a Baptist but a few months, but the very first Baptist church in North America is in Providence.
Also, the oldest synagogue on the continent is in Rhode Island.
Roger was about half a century ahead of William Penn in Pennsylvania. But Penn often mistakenly gets credit for establishing religious freedom in the colonies.
Williams’s Baptists and Penn’s Quakers both endured persecution from the Puritans and Congregationalists and Presbyterians and Episcopalians under the rubric of tax-supported religion.
Baptists were forerunners in the struggle for religious freedom. Baptists in various colonies and states went to jail for preaching without license.
In the museum in Culpeper, Virginia, I have seen how Baptists were jailed for refusing to submit to the official Anglican church in the Colony. The modern name of Anglicans is Episcopalian.
James Ireland was one of the Baptist preachers jailed in Culpeper. He continued to preach through the bars while his hands were blooded as his detractors cut him with knives.
Another Baptist preacher, Elijah Craig, was jailed for disturbing the peace in Orange County, Virginia. Later he moved to Kentucky where he adopted a more peaceful work distilling bourbon whiskey (Walker).
One more Baptist example: A man who was whipped and spent one hundred thirteen days in jail. John Waller went by the nickname “Swearing Jack” Waller. Let’s hope that was a pre-conversion nickname (Walker).
These Baptists knew from experience: “The religion of the ruler is the religion of the realm.”
This made the Baptists in Virginia all the more resolved to work for freedom of religion as independence was declared and as the Constitution was written. Baptists exerted political influence. A traveling Baptist evangelist, John Leland, personally lobbied James Madison.
Leland agreed not to oppose Madison’s bid to be a delegate to the Constitutional convention if Madison would promise to seek specific guarantees for religious liberty. Madison made good his promise and two years later wrote the first 16 words of the First Amendment: “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof” (Walker).
Now, does it make sense that I said Baptists were liberals on church-state? If left wing means anything, Baptists were left-wingers.
All of us in Americans United cherish the term, “separation of church and state.” But where did that term comes from? I cannot document Williams using that full expression. But in 1644, he wrote a book called The Bloody Tenent of Persecution. In it, he referred to [a] “hedge or wall of separation between the garden of the church and the wilderness of the world."
Let’s trace this term further: While Thomas Jefferson was president, he received a letter from the Danbury Baptist Association in Connecticut in which they expressed concern about adequate protection for complete freedom of worship. They said this:
Responding to the Danbury Baptists, President Jefferson wrote to reassure that he, too, saw religion as “a matter between God and individuals,” and not a matter government should get involved in. He cited the religion clauses of the First Amendment and said that by inserting those words, the legislators were “thus building a wall of separation between Church & State.”
Jefferson was not exactly a devout Christian, despite assertions by so-called historian David Barton. You know Jefferson edited his own version of the Bible, omitting all miracles, cutting out the Christian keystone belief in the resurrection of Jesus. But Jefferson respected and wanted to protect religious people as well as people who claimed no religion.By the way, do you know his three accomplishments Jefferson instructed to be on his grave marker at Monticello? He was proudest that he was “Father of the University of Virginia,” “Author of the Declaration of American Independence,” and “of the Statute of Virginia for religious freedom.” So religious freedom ranked up there with Independence and higher education.
That Statute of Virginia for Religious Freedom set the pattern for the religion clauses in the First Amendment. When the Statute passed in the Virginia legislature in 1786, it overturned the Anglican Church as the official tax-supported religion. He uses pious language in making his point. I brought copies of the full text of that Statute. It’s on the table at the back of the room along with other literature. But listen to a few lines:
“Almighty God hath created the mind free, that all attempts to influence it by temporal punishments or burthens . . . are a departure from the plan of the Holy author of our religion, who being Lord both of body and mind, yet chose not to propagate it by coercions on either. . . . ”
The Statute’s final paragraph condemns forced attendance or financial support of any church: “That no man shall be compelled to frequent or support any religious worship, place, or ministry whatsoever, nor shall be enforced, restrained, molested, or burthened in his body or goods, nor shall otherwise suffer, on account of his religious opinions or belief; but that all men shall be free to profess, and by argument to maintain, their opinion in matters of religion, and that the same shall in no wise diminish, enlarge, or affect their civil capacities.”
Though the precise expression “separation of church and state” is not in the Constitution, this document which inspired the First Amendment makes it crystal clear that the two must remain separate.
The pious language in that document from Jefferson may surprise you. But keep in mind, he is writing a bill he wants men of varied religious outlooks to approve. Also Jefferson was no atheist or agnostic. He was principally a deist in outlook. A short definition of a deist is a person who believes in God but does not believe God intervenes in the affairs of the human race.
We also need to give a nod to James Madison, a man who merits much more than a nod in our discussion of church-state separation. We probably should call Madison, along with Jefferson, a deist,
although he was a member of the Episcopal church.
Madison is frequently and justifiably called the Father of the Constitution.
We’ve already noted how Baptist John Leland persuaded Madison to put religious freedom in the Bill of Rights. Madison also gives us Article Six, Section Three, which says, in part, “no religious Test shall ever be required as a Qualification to any Office or public Trust under the United States.”
Madison also frequently spoke of separation of church and state. So this is not just some offhand term Jefferson used in attempting to mollify a little side group of Baptists.
Now, that’s probably enough on Where did church-state separation come from?
Now to bring us to the present: Where Are We Now?
Church-state separation has never been a settled issue and probably never will be. Tension is inevitable between the establishment clause and the free exercise clause of the First Amendment.
People of no faith or minority faith feel school boards or county councils, in effect, establish Christianity when prayers at their meetings are consistently prayed “in Jesus’ name.” But government bodies in majoritarian Christian communities tend to feel such prayers uphold free exercise.
The federal faith-based initiative provides money to religious groups who provide social services. Conflicts arise when money is awarded to groups which require participants to attend religious instruction before they receive aid. Begun by George W. Bush, the program has continued under President Obama.
Families who want their children to be taught alternatives to the theory of evolution could claim free exercise. And on we could go with tension between establishment and free exercise.
Some parents claim their free exercise of religion is being violated if they are denied tax money to send their children to parochial school. But those who oppose such support say this is tantamount to establishing religion by giving special privileges to those who want to go to a church school.
Back in 1947, some people -- led by Baptists, by the way -- objected to a school board’s providing free bus rides for Catholic children to their school. The Protestants went to court and lost. It went all the way to the Supreme Court, and the Court upheld the transportation as legal. So, because they objected to what they considered special treatment for Catholics, the protesters formed an organization known as Protestants and Other Americans United for Separation of Church and State. After a while, larger issues were put on the table, so they dropped the words “Protestants and Other” and thus became known simply as Americans United for Separation of Church and State.
Where Are We Going?
Now, as I take out my crystal ball and look into the future, I see no basic change with regard to faith-based initiatives after the re-election of President Obama. Right-wing religious groups will continue trying to evangelize. They will try to turn social services into outright social ministries.
Undercover evangelists will continue seeking to infiltrate public schools. Others will continue trying to get tax money to run their parochial schools. We need to remain alert to scofflaw right wing pastors who defy the law by telling their congregants which candidates to vote for. Catholics will try to control birth control.
Roy Moore won re-election as Chief Justice of the Alabama Supreme Court. So expect him to try again to make the Ten Commandments the Law of Sovereign State of Alabama. The religious right, embodied in Roy Moore, would like to make us a theocracy. I don’t think we are headed there, but we need to stay vigilant because in a theocracy, “The religion of the ruler is the religion of the realm.”
Now, one thing more.
I confess, I fully expected that when we met here today, Barack Obama would be a lame-duck, and President-Elect Romney would be on his way to the White House. I’m glad this is not the case. But my relief has little to do with his religion. I was concerned over what he and Paul Ryan wanted to do with Social Security and Medicare and Medicaid and other safety nets.
I don’t think Romney as president would have tried to turn us into the United States of Mormon, any more than Obama has tried to make us the United States of African-Americans, as some were sure he would. Romney probably didn’t see himself as the Messiah the Mormon founder Joseph Smith is alleged to have predicted--the one who would ride in on his Great White Horse to usher in the End Time. It’s not clear whether Joseph Smith ever made that prediction, but some Mormons apparently expect that to happen some day soon. Also, I doubt that Mitt Romney would have started getting himself baptized on your behalf after they buried you.
But I’ll tell you what I do think: You and I -- Americans United of ALL people -- You and I should feel good that one of the major parties nominated a man from a “strange” religion. I would like to think that means we’ve turned a corner. That religion is no longer an issue in electing a president. Some of us hoped that was the case in 1960 when Roman Catholic Jack Kennedy was elected. I have my doubts with this election. Deep down, are you glad a Mormon was not elected? I don’t mean glad about the loss by the Republican who happened to be a Mormon. I mean you’re simply relieved a Mormon didn’t get in.
Here’s a question: Do you and I in Americans United want equality for all degrees of faith and unfaith? Or do we feel some religious stances are more equal than others? How will you feel when YOUR party nominates a follower of Islam? I remember a year or so back, there was some mumbling and grumbling when I invited a Muslim to speak to one of our meetings. Just how far are we prepared to go with this religious freedom thing?
Remember Article Six, Section Three: Are you prepared to say “no religious Test shall ever be required of a Muslim or a Mormon or an atheist or a Who-Shot-Johnny as a Qualification to any Office or public Trust under the United States”?
When you find the answer to that one, you will find where YOU are going with church-state separation in the future.
“Church and State,” Shmoop, http://www.shmoop.com/church-and-state/timeline.html.
John M. Barry, Roger Williams and The Creation of the American Soul. New York: Viking, Published by the Penguin Group, 2012.
Smithsonian Magazine, (http://www.smithsonianmag.com/history-archaeology/God-Government-and-Roger-Williams-Big-Idea.html#ixzz2BSNeK0nn
Stanley Lemons, “Roger Williams Champion of Religious Liberty,” Official Website of the City of Providence, Rhode Island.
Brent Walker, Baptist Joint Committee on Line,
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