Delivered July 1, 2012
I have patterned
the title of this message after the bestselling book written in 1995 by Thomas
Cahill entitled “How the Irish Saved Civilization.” In that book the author
explores the period of time between the collapse of the Roman empire in the
fifth century to the early Middle Ages. He describes how the great libraries of
Europe were looted and burned by Germanic invaders. Much of the literature of
Western civilization was saved by Irish scribes only one generation past
illiteracy. Under the leadership of Patrick, a former slave who became a
missionary bishop to Ireland, these scribes copied thousands of manuscripts
that served as the repositories for Greco- Roman and Judeo-Christian culture, thereby
saving these literary and cultural treasures of Western civilization.
Before I get too far
into this message I should mention that I am preaching on this topic in
response to one of the Summer Sermon Suggestions that I received from the
congregation. Someone (not a Baptist, I should note) asked me to preach on the
“saints” of the Baptist tradition, the early leaders of the Baptist movement.
One example mentioned was Roger Williams. So that is how this sermon came
about. I know that this is a diverse congregation from many different
denominational backgrounds. Most of you aren’t Baptist, even though we are
worshiping to day in a Baptist Meetinghouse. But the history of this
congregation is Baptist and Methodist, and we are officially related to these two
denominations today. So it might be nice to know a little about Baptists.
I could focus on a
number of important contributions that Baptists made to America and
Christianity. For example this year marks the 200th anniversary of
the beginning of the American foreign missionary movement. I got a newsletter
recently from the Baptists describing the events that happened in Salem and
vicinity in February. Ann and Adoniram Judson left from Salem, Mass, on
February 20, 1812. The Judsons were the first American foreign missionaries.
Like many Baptist stories, their story had twists and turns. They were actually
commissioned by the Congregationalists and sent out by the Salem Tabernacle
Church, which today is UCC. But on the ship while traveling to India they saw
the light and converted to the Baptist faith. They left America as
Congregationalists, but by the time they reached their mission field in Burma
they were Baptist missionaries. So both Congregationalists and Baptists try to
take credit for them.
That is the way that
Baptist history tends to be. Baptist history is not neat and clean like other
religious movements. We don’t have a Martin Luther or a John Wesley as the
founder of the denomination. Roger Williams is often mentioned as a leading
figure of the first Baptists in America. He founded the first Baptist Church in
America in Providence, Rhode Island. The church is still in existence today,
and I have visited there and worshipped there. In 1636, he began the colony
of Providence Plantation, which provided a haven for religious minorities.
But the only reason Williams established this colony was that he got kicked out
of Massachusetts by the Puritans. Williams wanted a place dedicated to
religious liberty and that is how Baptists got established in America. Williams’ advocacy of freedom extended to
slavery; he is considered the first abolitionist in North America, having
organized the first attempt to ban slavery in any of the original thirteen
colonies. So Baptists proudly own Roger Williams. But the seldom told secret of
Baptists is that this early hero of Baptist history did not remain a Baptist
very long. Roger Williams only remained a part of that Providence Baptist
Church for a few months. He became convinced that Baptists didn’t have it right
either. No church on earth was good enough for him, and he never again
affiliated himself with any church again, even though he maintained cordial
relations with the Baptists. But he remained deeply religious and active in
preaching all his life.
In this message I want
to concentrate on this legacy of religious liberty, which remained the hallmark
of Baptists, even more than their trademark mode of believers baptism by
immersion. Robert G. Torbet, who has written the classic history of Baptists,
wrote: "Baptists have made a unique contribution to Protestantism, for
which the world is their debtor, in their consistent witness to the principle
of religious liberty." It is not an overstatement to say that if it were
not for Baptists, we probably would not have religious freedom in our country
today. Today churches of all denominations affirm religious liberty. That is
not the way it was back in the 17th and 18th centuries. It was the Baptists who
championed it when the American colonies had established churches and many
Christians wanted some form of Christianity to be the national church like in
England.
The Baptist
concern for religious liberty came out of two sources. One was the Christian
scriptures. Baptists have always been a strongly biblical people. Was it not the lack of religious liberty which
nailed Jesus to the cross? The Roman governor Pilate said he found no fault in
him. But because the established religious authorities at the time wanted him
dead, he was executed. It was nonconformity to the established religion that
crucified Jesus. It was the lack of religious freedom in Israel that led early
Christians in Jerusalem to be imprisoned, flogged, and put to death by stoning
or the sword. It is interesting to note that today in Israel, Christian
evangelism, though technically legal, is opposed by the Israeli government
according to a 2010 US State Department report on religious freedom in Israel.
In our scripture lesson
today from the Book of Acts we heard a story of the apostle Paul. Paul had come
to the Jerusalem temple to worship. But his presence caused an uproar among the
Jews because he had been preaching the Gospel to Gentiles and bringing them
into the church. They dragged him out of the temple and begin to beat him; the
Roman soldiers intervene. They take him into custody after allowing him to give
a brief sermon from the temple steps. Then they decide to interrogate him under
scourging, that is, to whip him until he confessed. But as they were binding
him, Paul asks in 22:25, "Is it lawful for you to scourge a man who is a
Roman citizen?" This caused a stir among the soldiers. They sent for the
commanding officer, who asked Paul if he is a Roman citizen. He replies,
"I am." The commander said, "I bought my citizenship with a
large sum of money." Paul replies, "I was born free." Paul
always stresses his Roman citizenship and the rights that went with it. As such
he is the model for Baptists.
Baptist
stress on religious liberty also comes from the experience of being a
persecuted people from the very beginning in the early 1600’s. The first
Baptists were persecuted in England and fled to Holland, returned to face
persecution again in England and then fled to America. They hoped to find
freedom in America but found only more persecution at the hands of the Puritans
in the Massachusetts Bay Colony. So they fled again and founded their own
colony in Rhode Island. Baptists had arrived in Virginia also, and received the
same type of reception. In Virginia it was the Church of England rather than
the Puritans who were doing the persecuting.
One of the
early Baptists in the 1700's to suffer persecution in Virginia was Lewis Craig.
At his conversion he could not contain his joy and so he started preaching the
gospel to whoever would hear. He was immediately arrested for preaching without
a license. "I thank you, gentlemen, for the honor you did me," said
Craig to the grand jury that indicted him. "While I was wicked and
injurious, you took no notice of me. But now, having altered my course of life
and endeavoring to reform my neighbors, you concern yourselves much about
me." Craig's remarks struck to the heart of one of the jury, a
colorful character known as "Swearing Jack" Waller, notorious for his
foul language as well as his gambling and his opposition to Baptists. God
worked in his heart, and he was baptized by immersion in 1767. The next year
John Waller and four of his friends were arrested for preaching the gospel. The
authorities offered to set them free if they would agree not to preach, but
Waller and two others refused and were sent to jail.
Another early
Baptist was James Ireland, an immigrant from Scotland. He began preaching in
Virginia in 1769. The authorities ordered him to stop. He later wrote: "I
sat down and counted the cost, freedom or confinement, liberty or prison.
Having ventured all upon Christ, I determined to suffer all for him." He
was imprisoned and preached to his congregation through the bars of the
prison.
Another Baptist
of this era was John Leland. He originally was from Massachusetts but moved to
Virginia. He was an influential part of the opposition to James Madison as a
delegate to the Constitutional Convention putting together our U. S.
Constitution. Leland was a Baptist preacher and well known for his efforts to end
slavery in Virginia, eliminate the state church in Virginia, and his support of
religious liberty on a national level. He was against ratifying the
Constitution because it had no safeguards protecting religious liberty. He met
with Madison and they reached an agreement. He agreed to support Madison if he
would promise to do everything he could to secure a religious freedom amendment
to the Constitution. Madison agreed. Leland was not alone in his objections to
the Constitution. Many delegates refused to sign it unless it protected
religious liberty. To persuade them to sign, the delegates promised to amend
the Constitution by adding a Bill of Rights at the very first session of the
new Congress. Two years later that promise was kept. The first of those
amendments read: "Congress shall make no laws respecting the establishment
of religion or prohibiting the free exercise thereof."
Religious
freedom and democracy are precious to Baptists. Thomas Jefferson once said that
the Baptist Church was the purest form of democracy he had seen. The hymn
"My Country 'tis of Thee" was written in 1832 by a Baptist minister
named Samuel Francis Smith. The "Pledge of Allegiance to the Flag"
was written in 1892 by Francis Bellamy, a Baptist minister. This is the Baptist
heritage in this country.
II. What of
today? Religious liberty is still a very important issue in the world today. It
is continually in the news. Most recently we have seen it surface in the controversy
concerning healthcare and the new government requirement that Roman Catholic
institutions pay for birth control. Catholics say that is a violation of their
religious liberty. The issue is also being raised concerning several cases of
crosses that have been on government land for decades; their presence is now
being challenged by atheist groups on the grounds of separation of church and
state. The issue of religious clothing worn in the workplace and at school
comes up regularly, as does the right of Muslims to build mosques in certain
communities. The issue of religious liberty is as important today as it was 400
years ago when Baptists began.
Baptists have
historically been champions of the separation of church and state. In 1773,
Isaac Backus, a prominent Baptist minister in New England, observed that when
"church and state are separate, the effects are happy, and they do not at
all interfere with each other: but where they have been confounded together, no
tongue nor pen can fully describe the mischiefs that have ensued." The
phrase "[A] hedge or wall of separation between the garden of the church
and the wilderness of the world" was first used by Baptist Roger Williams in
his 1644 book The Bloody Tenent of Persecution. The phrase was later adopted
and adapted by Thomas Jefferson as a description of the First Amendment in an
1802 letter to the Danbury Baptists. Yet today the Baptist witness on this
issue is not as clear as in ages past on the issue. Many are backing off it or
reinterpreting it. But Baptists have historically thought it was the only sure
way to protect the church from the state, as well as the other way around. Baptists
have been champions of tolerance for all people, standing on Roger Williams
legacy of making America a haven for religious minorities. In fact it is said
that the central T in Baptist stands for tolerance.
That is not always the
case today. Unfortunately when Baptists are in the news today it is more likely
to be for intolerance. My church history professor in seminary was a man named
Bill Leonard. Today he is a professor of Church History and Baptist Studies at
the School of Divinity, Wake Forest University. In May he wrote an
editorial entitled “A Baptist Shame.” The first line of the article read: “Tonight
I am ashamed to be a Baptist.” The reason for his shame was a sermon preached by
Charles Worley, pastor of Providence Road Baptist Church, an Independent
Baptist congregation in Maiden, N.C., the state where he lives. In a May 13
sermon that “went viral” on the internet, he proposed building concentration
camps in America to put all homosexuals in until they die out. He is not the
only Baptist preach to say such things recently. Last month Pastor Curtis Knapp
of the New Hope Baptist Church in Seneca, Kansas, another independent Baptist
church, said that he believes that gays should be put to death by the
government. We are also regularly confronted with the antics of Pastor Fred
Phelps and the members of the Westboro Baptist Church of Topeka Kansas, who
picket military funerals with placards so hateful that I will not repeat them.
When things like this
hit the evening news I – like my former professor – feel ashamed to be a
Baptist. But I know Baptist history and I know that these individuals and
churches have veered away from their Baptist heritage. And I know that there
are other groups – like the Baptist Joint Committee for religious Liberty in
Washington, DC, who are championing traditional Baptist values. There is a need
for all Baptists today to reclaim their heritage. I am not ashamed of my
Baptist heritage or the values that Baptists historically stand for. It is
because of these early Baptists that we enjoy the right to religious liberty in
this land, and have avoided the religious wars and conflicts and terrorism and
persecution that have plagued so many other lands today. God has blessed
America, and it is because in no small part because of the religious liberty
championed by the Baptists. And I am grateful for that heritage.
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