There are a pair of remarkable op-ed columns in today’s Charlotte Observer about Baptists, presumably in reference to the N.C. pastor who put up the sign saying the Koran should be flushed (follow-up story).
The first, Baptists, remember who you are, by Paul Harral for Knight Ridder, urges American Baptists to remember “that they were pioneers — champions of not only religious freedom but a separation between church and state,” “the goal of a new effort involving two Baptist-based media organizations — Associated Baptist Press and the journal Baptists Today — and the Baptist Joint Committee on Religious Liberty.”
Greg Warner, the executive editor of Associated Baptist Press, agrees, saying that “many congregations have failed to teach a healthy understanding of human freedom, which was such an integral part of our heritage as Christians in America.” Bitter divisions over what he called “no-win social issues” stymie substantive conversation among Baptists, “even on the issue of our constitutional freedoms.”
“We want to help churches rediscover a healthy understanding of American freedom — particularly religious freedom and freedom of the press — that doesn’t force our churches into false choices between uncritical patriotism and hypercritical cynicism” …
More below:
Harral continues:
Not only is dissent discouraged in Southern Baptist Convention publications, but the “historic Baptist passion for religious liberty for all persons is not being heard from SBC leadership,” Pierce says.
(Disclosure: My wife, Harriet Harral, is on the board of ABP and the coordinating council of the Cooperative Baptist Fellowship. I attended a Washington conference on the First Freedoms Project with her.)
Part of the project’s thrust is to remind Baptists of who they are — and who they were, and why.
Advocates for freedom
Early Baptists in the United States were key players in the effort to include freedom of religion in the Constitution, culminating in what became the First Amendment.As a Baptist myself, I’ve always been proud of that heritage. But I fear that many of my brothers and sisters neither know about nor respect it.
“Many Baptists have lost touch because, as I think someone said at the conference, we are now `powerful’ and no longer `persecuted’ — at least in this country,” Walker said. “Many think we can run the show through the political process and no longer need the `counter-majoritarian’ protections afforded in the First Amendment.” …
The companion piece, Baptist Pioneers in America, is a marvelous list of the sacrifices by early members of the Baptist church. Here’s a sampling:
JOHN CLARKE (1609-1676) — Clarke started a town at Newport, R.I., and by 1644 had founded a Baptist church there. In the summer of 1651, Clarke, John Crandall and Obadiah Holmes — all members of the Baptist church at Newport — were arrested and imprisoned for holding an unauthorized worship service in the home of a blind Baptist named William Witter, who lived at Lynn, Mass., near Boston. They were sentenced to be fined or whipped. Fines for Clarke and Crandall were paid by friends. Holmes refused to let friends pay his fine and was publicly whipped on the streets of Boston on Sept. 6, 1651.
HENRY DUNSTER (1612-1659) — In 1653, Dunster, the first president of Harvard University, refused to have his fourth child baptized as an infant and proclaimed that only believers should be baptized. He was forced to resign from his position and was banished from Cambridge, Mass.
[……………………]
ESTHER WHITE — An elderly widow who lived in Raynham and belonged to the Baptist church in Middleborough, Mass., White refused to pay a tax to support the minister of the established Congregational church in Raynham on the grounds that she was a dissenter from that church and had become a Baptist. The town of Raynham put her in jail. She remained there for 13 months.
SOURCE: Mainstream Oklahoma Baptists
running through my mind recently, since my wife is forcing me to read the DaVinci Code.
Actually, it’s a good read and fits the basic spy book formula. It’s not what I thought it was going to be.
I have no idea what that book is about. Tell us.
about a secret group of people that have been keeping a secret history of Mary Magdalene for 2000 years.
The Catholic Church doesn’t want the history to see the light of day, and they arrange for the murder of the only 4 people that know the location of the documents.
But the granddaughter of one of the four people gets a few clues and sets out to find them with the help of a British Royal Historian and Harvard professor of symbology.
Meanwhile an albino monk with a limp is trying to get the documents too, so they can be destroyed.
That’s the basics without a spoiler.
An albino monk with a limp?
Is that who Tom Hanks is playing in the movie?
I expect he will be playing the Harvard professor.
It is unputdownable. I can’t wait till somebody makes it a movie. I am tempted to email M. Night Shyamalan and ask him what in the hell he is waiting for!
M. Night Shyamalan: I’m waiting for him to make a movie that doesn’t put me to sleep.
Thanks for highlighting this Susan. Paul Harral is a friend of mine who is the editorial page editor of the Fort Worth Star Telegram I’ll be sure and let him know that Booman picked up his piece.
Paul and I were both members of Broadway Baptist Church in Fort Worth while I lived there. Broadway is definitely a “Mainstream Baptist” congregation, and is one of the many Baptist Churches which took an active stand against the fundamentalists during their takeover of the Southern Baptist Convention during the 80’s. Broadway was instrumental in forming the break away Cooperative Baptist Fellowship, and in holding the Baptist General Convention of Texas away from the fundamentalists (and keeping Baylor University as a consequence in the hands of Baptist Moderates).
Paul very adroitly highlights the traditional Baptist position on Separation of Church and State in his piece, a view still held firmly by CBF and the BGCT, as well as by the Baptist Joint Committee.
It’s a wonderful piece. You may have read elsewhere that I’m a heathen, but I found his writing very important, and timely.
This is exactly why I like to refer to the Free Exercise and Establishment Clauses of the First Amendment as protecting Freedom of Conscience rather than just Freedom of Religion. The Constitution belongs to all of us, and its protections must extend to all of us, not just to those Americans who express faith.