Editor’s note: The following is the final installment of a four-part series devoted to the role of Baptists in the development of religious liberty in America in advance of the nation’s 250th anniversary July 4. See Part 1 here, Part 2 here and Part 3 here.
The passage of the First Amendment, ratified in 1791, was the end of a long struggle for Religious Freedom in America. A struggle that arguably began in 1170 with the murder of “a bother-some priest” named Thomas Becket on the altar steps of the Canterbury Cathedral because he dared to speak truth to power. Forty-five years later, in 1215, the Magna Carta was signed, whose first article states: “the English Church is to be free, and to have its full rights and its liberties intact. …”
Three hundred years later the English Reformation in 1534 further laid the groundwork for dissenters seeking freedom to worship. The following century saw the English Civil War, a religious war pitting Puritans against Cavaliers, followed by the Glorious Revolution, which resulted in the 1689 Act of Toleration, allowing religious dissenters in England and her American colonies more, although limited, religious freedom.
In 1775 as the American Revolution began, persecuted Virginia Baptists who had been pleading and yet been denied “religious toleration” under English law changed their petitions to the Virginia Assembly and began calling for “religious freedom.” In 1779, Thomas Jefferson put forward the Virginia Bill for Religious Freedom, passed in 1786. It was the blueprint for the First Amendment of the Bill of Rights, ratified in 1791.
The First Amendment was the end of a long struggle to codify religious freedom; at the same time, it was the beginning of a new struggle to guard it.
As the nation began the work of developing new federal and state constitutions, existing laws regarding church and state varied greatly. Maryland and Pennsylvania had a long history of religious tolerance while Massachusetts still maintained a state church. Provisional constitutions of some states required all office holders be of the “protestant” faith. Religious liberty and the separation of church and state were foreign concepts to a society accustomed to state support of religion.
In Georgia, Gov. Lyman Hall, a former Congregational pastor who had been one of Georgia’s signers of the Declaration of Independence, proposed a “general assessment” tax be raised to support “all religions” and a state university be established “to train ministers.” Georgia Baptists responded by organizing the Georgia Baptist Association in 1784. One of its first acts was to successfully lobby the Georgia legislature to oppose state support of religion.
Georgia Baptist pastor Jesse Mercer would influence much of the legislation in Georgia regarding church and state. In South Carolina, Richard Furman was elected to the South Carolina Constitutional Convention in 1790. He too continued to campaign for religious liberty and the elimination of state support of religion.
In Virginia, future President James Madison ran for Congress as the adoption of the Bill of Rights was pending. John Leland, an itinerant Baptist preacher and ardent supporter of religious liberty, opposed Madison and was a strong voice in favor of the proposed legislation. The two met and reached a compromise, after which Leland backed Madison.
The Massachusetts concept of religious freedom extended only to members of the Congregational (state) Church. Persecuted Baptists fled Massachusetts and found shelter in Rhode Island, which had been founded in 1636. Pastor William Screven and a congregation of Baptists were forced to flee Kittery, Mass., (later Maine) in 1682, moving to Charleston, S.C., and establishing the first Baptist church in the South. It was not until 1833 that state support (taxes) for religion was repealed in Massachusetts.
Persecuted Baptists in Virginia began to be called “Apostles of Liberty.” Most of them remained in Virginia after the Revolution, but many scattered to other colonies, which spread the ideas of religious liberty even further. John Leland returned to his home state of Massachusetts in 1791 after 15 years in Virginia.
Add to their numbers those who fled North Carolina because of persecution in 1771 following the Battle of Alamance. To those, add the voices of those whose pastors had been imprisoned in Virginia and who migrated following the Revolution. Their experiences shaped the views of church and state in their new homes. They too became Apostles of Liberty.
In January 1802, President Thomas Jefferson received a letter from Connecticut’s Danbury Baptist Association in reference to church-state relations. Jefferson’s written response has since become part of the country’s legal canon, explaining the First Amendment’s “establishment clause” had virtually built “a wall of separation between Church and State,” ensuring religious freedom.
Leland delivered a 1,235-pound wheel of cheese to the White House in recognition of Jefferson’s election and in appreciation for his role of championing religious liberty. On the wheel was inscribed a motto adopted by Jefferson, “Rebellion to Tyrants is Obedience to God.”
Beginning with the days of persecution, followed by the struggle for independence and the legislative battles which produced the First Amendment, Baptists were at the forefront in the struggle for Religious Freedom. Since the Constitution was ratified in 1791, Baptists have continued in a new and continuing struggle, to guard religious freedom from tyrants who would take it away.
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