Today’s article is the fourth and final edition of the occasional series on what it means to be Baptist. It’s based on the “Four Fragile Freedoms” from Walter Shurden’s book, The Baptist Identity. Prior articles included short descriptions of Bible Freedom, Soul Freedom, and Church Freedom. If you’re reading this article on the church’s blog, then you can just click those freedoms to instantly transport you to each article. If you’re reading on a piece of paper, you can poke those words all you want, all you’ll get is a sore finger.
If you’ll suffer the briefest of recaps, then I’ll remind you that the Baptist way is all about preserving and ensuring the God-given freedom that each of us has been endowed by our Creator. God is not locked behind a priest’s collar or a seminary degree. God is active and alive to each of us because we are, each of us, a beloved child of God. So God speaks to us directly through the words of Scripture, listens to us directly through prayer, and directs us if we dare to listen back. That’s the essence of freedom in the Baptist way and the holy task before us is to use that freedom responsibly.
So the last freedom, the fourth, is the logical consequence of all of the others. It’s Religious Freedom. Each person is free to elect their faith, which also includes the possibility of electing no faith. Most publicly, this is the principle that insists that government must not infringe upon the freedom of people to practice their faith without influence or preference from the State.
Baptists (see the picture below for one) were part of the founding of the USA and were the strongest voices in insisting that we enshrine that freedom in our Constitution. In order for faith to be real, it must be free. If the government has its finger on the scale, then are we following the leading of God’s Spirit or just the whim of the king (or prime minister, or president, or dictator)? Our religion must be free from that kind of influence.
John Leland: Abolitionist, Champion of Religious Freedom, and Baptist Pastor. Read up on this man!
Originally, Baptists were an extreme minority in the country, so this religious freedom was a matter of their survival. If the government determined religion, the Baptists would have lost every which way. Ironically, the most numerous and influential Protestant denomination in America is a Baptist one, the Southern Baptist Convention (not one we affiliate with, by the way). The sad irony is that they are wanting to use the government to enforce their way of faith upon the rest of society. In other words, they would like to mandate at least part of their religion upon everybody. That is strictly against Religious Freedom, a core tenet of what it means to be Baptist!
It’s easy to support freedom when it benefits us. We can hoot and holler for freedom when it means we get what we want. But the real test of our conviction is when it benefits those who disagree with us? Do we still believe in freedom if that means some people will freely choose to not be a part of our faith? As a Baptist who holds to these 4 Fragile Freedoms, I must. Because if I forced someone, it wouldn’t be faith, not really. It would be something less, something wrong.
In order for faith to be real, we have to honor the work of God in each person’s life. We have to give them the same regard as would want to receive from others. We have to give them freedom, just as we have received freedom. Because when they do make a choice to come to Jesus, we’ll know, without a shadow of a doubt, that it is the work of God in their lives. And that will be something worth celebrating.