A Free Church in a Free State; The Baptist Way

by   Richard Land                                                                                                                                         Vol. XI, No. 1, January 1998

Baptists have always believed "a free church in a free state is the Christian ideal" as declared in Baptist Faith and Message (BFM).

Throughout their history Baptists have believed in a "free church" composed of called-out local assemblies of believers in the Lord Jesus Christ who have followed the Lord in believer's baptism and covenanted together with the Lord and each other to be a church. Such local, autonomous congregations of Christians must be free from any state interference with their God-given right of free and unhindered access to God because "God alone is Lord of the conscience" (BFM).

From the days of Thomas Helwys and Roger Williams down to the present, Baptists have carried in their hearts and minds the absolute conviction that every man and every woman has this God given "right to form and propagate opinions in the sphere of religion without interference by the civil power" (BFM). Baptists firmly believe that a person's relationship with God is too sacred and too important to allow interference from any earthly authority, be it magistrate or king.

Baptists believe that God created human beings for fellowship with Him and that all men must be free to "work out" their "own salvation with fear and trembling" (Phil. 2:12), without interference from the government (I Tim. 2:1-6). Further, Baptists believe that ultimate allegiance must belong to God, not Caesar, i.e., the government (Matt. 22:21; Acts 4:18-20, 5:29).

While Christians must obey God, rather than man, they are also under obligation to obey the civil magistrate "for conscience sake" unless the state seeks to compel a violation of God's commands (Rom. 13:1-7; I Pet. 2:12-17).

Baptists believe in a "free state" that has, as an absolute minimum, freedom of religion which means the government recognizes and protects everyone's and every church's right to “protection and full freedom” and that “"no ecclesiastical group or denomination should be favored by the state more than others” (BFM). A "free state" never creates or recognizes a preferred or state sponsored religion. It must always be remembered that government does not create or grant religious liberty, it can only recognize and protect what is a God-given right.

The concept of a “free church” in a “free state” and the resulting separation of the institution of the church and the institution of the state have led some Americans, especially in the last half century, to argue that Christians should separate themselves from the moral and public policy debates and discussions in our society. If Christians choose not to disengage, they commit a violation of separation of church and state.

Occasionally there are those within the Christian community who argue that Christians should separate from the "worldly" issues of society and public policy and that a “free church” in a “free state” means that Christians should withdraw from engagement with government and attempts to influence public policy and concentrate on "spiritual” things.

More often, however, in 20th century America, there are those who believe church-state separation requires a Christian withdrawal from society. Many of the people who hold this position are hostile to the Christian message and seek to segregate religion from public life and to banish it to the private, family, and churchly realms alone.

Stephen Carter's The Culture of Disbelief explains "some of the many ways in which our culture has come to belittle religious devotion, to humiliate believers, and discourage religion as a serious activity." Carter, professor of constitutional law at Yale, explains how the cultural, political, educational, media and even mainline religious elites in America have been ever more effectively marginalizing religious beliefs and convictions as legitimate factors in the nation's public policy arena. He laments the increasingly anti-religious bias in American law and jurisprudence.

In fact, both the pietistic Christians and the hostile secularists are terribly wrong in their understanding of church-state separation and in their opposition to Christian involvement with society. Christians are commanded by Jesus to be the "salt" of the earth and "light” of the world. (Matt. 5:13-16). This necessarily involves Christians in active engagement with the world, preserving and purifying as "salt" and illuminating as “light.” Salt must touch and make contact in order to preserve and to purify. Christians are mandated by Jesus to be involved with society.

Our Baptist Faith and Message confession of faith affirms this call to involvement with the world when it states “every Christian is under obligation to seek to make the will of Christ supreme in his own life and in human society.” The confession also says Christians not only “should oppose, in the spirit of Christ, every form of greed, selfishness and vice,” but “should seek to bring industry, government, and society as a whole under the sway of the principles of righteousness, truth and brotherly love.”

This statement clarifies our responsibilities as Christians, and our rights as citizens. When we bring our religious and moral convictions into the public market place of ideas and involve ourselves in the political arena, we are standing solidly within the best of our traditions as Americans and as Baptists. Far too often in recent decades we have allowed ourselves to be driven from the arena of debate by false understandings and misleading applications of church-state separation and religious liberty.

President Kennedy once said, "The great enemy of truth is very often not the lie, deliberate, contrived and dishonest, but the myth, persistent, persuasive and unrealistic." One such "persistent" myth that has afflicted us as a nation is the belief that you cannot, or at least should not, legislate morality.

Nothing could be more false. All governments legislate morality. Laws against murder, laws against theft, laws against rape, and laws against racism are the legislation of morality. And in passing laws against, murder, theft, rape and racism we are not so much seeking to impose our morality on murderers, thieves, rapists, and racists as we are seeking to prevent them from imposing their immorality on their victims.

The last three decades in American life have witnessed an ever more aggressive, secularizing "neutrality" which is hostile to, and discriminates against, Americans' right to bring their religious convictions into the public arena.

Most Southern Baptists and most Americans believe this hostile censorship and suppression of the people's (including public school students') religious free exercise rights have gone way too far. They believe John Adams expressed the "original intent" of our founders when in 1798 he said, "We have no government armed in power capable of contending in human passions unbridled by morality and religion. Our Constitution was made for a moral and a religious people. It is wholly inadequate for the government of any other."

Our forebears intended--and the Constitution, as amended by the Bill of Rights, provided--a balance between morality and public virtue. This delicate constitutional balance is endangered, and it must be put right by the means provided by the Constitution itself—a constitutional amendment.

Five years ago, in a cover story entitled, “One Nation under God: Has the Separation of Church and State Gone Too Far?” Time magazine concluded "For God to be kept out of the classroom or out of America's public debate by nervous school administrators or over-cautious politicians serves no one's interest. That restriction prevents people from drawing on the country's rich and diverse religious heritage for guidance, and it degrades the nation's moral discourse by placing a whole realm of theological reasoning out of bounds. The price of that sort of quarantine, at a time of moral dislocation, is—and has been—far too high. The court needs to find a better balance between separation and accommodation, and Americans need to respect the new religious freedom they would gain as a result" (Time, Dec. 9, 1991). Most Southern Baptists and most Americans agree!

However, in their quite appropriate and justifiably righteous indignation at the persistent attempts to curtail their God-given freedom to propagate their faith and to fully participate in the moral and public policy life of the nation, Baptists must always resist the temptation to enlist the power of the state in favor of their religious views. As the Baptist Faith and Message says, “The church should not resort to the civil power to do its work.”

The great Southern Baptist theologian E. Y. Mullins defined religious liberty as "the right of every man to worship God as his conscience dictates. It means equality before the law, not only of all forms of the Christian faith, but also other religions." It is no coincidence that this cherished Baptist belief is a significant part of our American heritage. Baptists played a critical role in securing a Bill of Rights which protects this fundamental, unalienable right from interference by government power.

Government discrimination against any person on account of religious belief, exercise, or expression simply must not be tolerated. Baptists must always remember that freedom denied to anyone today can be freedom denied to everyone tomorrow.

Also, government should not be allowed to prefer either majority or minority views with respect to religion. First, as James Madison, the "father" of the Constitution reminds us, "the same authority which can establish Christianity...may establish with the same ease any particular sect of Christians, in exclusion of all other sects...the same authority which can force a citizen to contribute...for the support of any one establishment, may force him to conform to any other establishment." (A Memorial and Remonstrance)

Second, history teaches us that when religious people, even well-meaning evangelical Christians, turn to the state for preferential treatment, it compromises the Gospel message. When government promotes or sponsors religion, it thinks it owns it and it can dictate to the church which Gospel should be preached. Government sponsored religion is always government controlled religion and that means government dictated, government-distorted, government-diluted religion.

Most Southern Baptists understand the inherent damages of government-sponsored religion and do not want state subsidy or sponsorship of religion. Their Baptist "genetic code" makes them inevitably wary of such a suffocating, spirit-chilling, government embrace. However, they also do not want continued government censorship and suppression of religious expression in public places, including students in public schools.

What they desperately desire, and will insist upon, is government accommodation of their right as citizens and students to express their religious convictions in the public arena and in public life. Baptists do not ask for, and do not want government’s help in expressing our belief or acknowledging our religious heritage. The majority of Baptists know the most and best government can do is to guarantee a level playing field and then stay off the field.

Christians should never seek to have government sponsor the propagation of their religious convictions. However, once those religious convictions have been formed through the church's efforts, then those convictions become the moral beliefs of those individuals who accept them. Those religiously based moral convictions have profoundly influenced our nation throughout its history.

These individuals have the right as citizens to bring their moral beliefs into the public arena. And, if they are able to convince a majority of the country that they are right, they have the right to enact those moral values into law. That is what is known as the democratic process.

There would have been no abolitionist and anti-slavery movement without the leadership and support of people of faith. There would have been no child labor reform movement without the impetus of religious conviction. There would have been no civil rights movement without the moral imperative provided by people of religious conviction. Our Baptist ancestors believed their moral convictions left them no choice but to be involved. They found no contradiction between such action and their commitment to church-state separation.

Clearly, as American citizens we have the right to be involved in the public and legislative arena. As obedient Christians, we have the responsibility to be involved.

Christians are called not just to enjoy, but to exercise, not just to preach, but to practice their liberties. Surely, there could be no better thing for Americans and for America than for Christians to awaken to the exercise of their rights and to the fulfillment of their responsibilities.

[Richard Land is president of the Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission of the Southern Baptist Convention. Article reprinted from The Indiana Baptist, 10 June 1997. Emphases in original.]