The First Baptists Fighting For Religious Liberty
It’s easy for us to assume that it’s always been common for churches to believe that the Bible is the believer’s sole authority for faith and practice; that water baptism is to be by immersion, and only after a person has made a profession of personal faith in Jesus Christ; that the church is to be independent of the state; and that Christians are always to be striving to win souls and plant new churches. MANY Protestants and evangelical churches in our day believe these things. But it HASN’T always been so common; there was a day when very FEW churches believed that the Bible is the believer’s sole authority for faith and practice; that water baptism is to be by immersion, and only after salvation; that the church is to be independent of the state; and that Christians are always to be striving to win souls and plant new churches. And the churches that DID believe these things were not considered to be the “mainstream” churches; they were thought of as fringe, as fanatics, as outsiders.
Throughout the last 2000 years, there have always been churches, New Testament churches, who believed and stood for the authority of the Bible, for baptism by immersion after salvation, for the autonomy of the local church, and for obedience to the Great Commission. These churches haven’t always been called Baptist churches; but those who have called themselves Baptists in recent centuries, and have understood why they do, have followed in the doctrinal footsteps of these New Testament churches that can be identified in every century, throughout the world, all the way back to the early churches. And because the churches who have believed in these Scriptural distinctives have been willing to stand and to endure times of great testing, these Scriptural distinctives are more common in a variety of church groups today.
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“The phrase “wall of separation between church and state,” used by President Jefferson, has certainly been twisted and misinterpreted over the years “
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One of these times of great testing for Bible believing New Testament churches was in the colonial days of America. In the New England colonies, it was required that, in order to establish a new settlement, a town had to have a minimum of families, usually 20 or 25; AND they were required to have a pastor. This second requirement was both good and bad. It was good in the sense that these pastors were almost exclusively pastors of the Christian faith, indicating that these settlements were essentially Christian settlements. It was BAD in that it set a very dangerous precedent, the precedent of there being an established town church. It wasn’t uncommon for the town to have its worship services in the very same meetinghouse where they held their town business meetings. And it was also very common for the PASTOR to be on the town payroll. While this may sound like a good thing to Christian people, it was contrary to the principle of religious liberty…so the bad ultimately outweighed the apparent good.
The people who felt the blow of the Congregationalist state churches the most were those who believed in the authority of the Bible, in baptism by immersion after salvation, in the autonomy of the local church, and in winning souls and planting churches… you guessed it, the Baptists!
During the founding of our country, the Baptists worked hard to persuade the framers to establish a government that was FREE of any state church. These efforts are reflected in the first amendment of our Constitution. And yet, even after we became a nation, in the application of religious liberty, many town governments were still strongly tied to their official town church. In Danbury, CT, the Congregational church was right downtown, closely associated with town hall; while the two Baptist churches were way out on the outskirts of town, the First Baptist church, five miles up a hilly, winding road, on the north side of the city, and the Second Baptist Church about five miles on the south edge of town, in a place that’s STILL known as “Miry Brook.”
These two little churches, along with two dozen other Baptist congregations from nearby towns, which made up the Danbury Baptist Association, decided to write a letter to the newly- elected third president of the United States, Thomas Jefferson. Here’s what they wrote:
“Our sentiments are uniformly on the side of religious liberty: that Religion is at all times and places a matter between God and individuals, that no man ought to suffer in name, person, or effects on account of his religious opinions…But sir…Religion is [still] considered as the first object of Legislation, and therefore what religious privileges we enjoy (as a minor part of the State) we enjoy as favors granted, and not as inalienable rights.”
The amazing thing about this letter from the Danbury Baptists, is that President Jefferson ANSWERED them:
“Believing with you that religion is a matter which lies solely between Man & his God, that he owes account to none other for his faith or his worship…I contemplate with sovereign reverence that act of the whole American people which declared that their legislature should “make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof,” thus building a wall of separation between Church & State.”
The Danbury Baptists sought relief from the oppression of the official town church, and they received confirmation from the President of the United States that they had the Constitutional right to expect it.
The phrase “wall of separation between church and state,” used by President Jefferson, has certainly been twisted and misinterpreted over the years; but the churches of
the Danbury Baptist Association knew firsthand the abuses that a state church could inflict, and they knew the necessity of a state that is not run by a church, and a church that is not run by the state.
Every substantive conversation about the separation of church and state will make reference to Jefferson’s letter to the Danbury Baptists. I pass the foundation of the original First Baptist Church of Danbury building every day. I often thank God for the faith and the courage of those godly Christians, and I ask the Lord to help me stand for the Bible principles that define my faith, as THEY stood, over 200 years ago.
Christian, God has great things ahead for you…stay the course!