Baptist Political Theology and the Importance of Definitions

Debates over what American Baptists have historically believed about the relationship between church and state have been raging again online recently. Overwhelmingly, historians have maintained that Baptists have nearly universally held to some concept of religious liberty. Both due to their past experiences as a persecuted minority and their understanding of covenant theology and regenerate church membership, Baptists fought to keep the state and the church institutionally separate.

In recent years, historians like Obbie Tyler Todd and others, have helpfully pointed out that Baptists were more diverse politically than has often been recognized. For example, Todd has shown that a tradition of Baptist Federalism blossomed among educated Baptists in larger coastal cities. Baptists were not necessarily Jeffersonians. Nevertheless, Todd concludes, “And in such a diverse community of faith, the one political thread tying Baptists together was the greatest gift they believed the American Revolution had bequeathed to the church: religious liberty” (Let Men Be Free: Baptist Politics in the Early United States (1776 – 1835), xiv). Whether Jeffersonian or Federalist, early American Baptists nonetheless wanted institutional separation of church and state. They did not want government interfering in the decisions of the church.

However, there seems to be a growing desire among some today to deny Baptist synthesis on separation of church and state. Some point out that Jefferson’s “wall of separation” metaphor was not used by Baptists. Further, such Jeffersonian stalwarts as Isaac Backus and John Leland–perhaps the two foremost Baptist advocates of religious liberty in the early republic–at times spoke strongly in favor of Christianity influencing politics. Backus, it is pointed out, supported test laws for public office, petitioned Congress to establish a federal commission to license the publication of Bibles, supported instruction from the Westminster Confession in public schools, and supported Puritan blue laws. Leland, while more separationist than Backus, nevertheless preached at Jefferson’s invitation before Congress and served in the Massachusetts state legislature.

In light of these facts, some have argued that Baptists in America have not always held to “separation” of church and state. The problem, as I see it, is that rarely do those debating this issue define what they mean by “separation.” If separation of church and state means Jefferson’s “wall of separation” wherein the two realms remain completely distinct, then not even John Leland held that position. In fact, Daniel Dreisbach suggests Jefferson himself did not intend to completely prevent the influence of religion from American public life. Leland, according to Eric Smith, was not “a ‘strict separationist’ if that term implies the creation of a totally secular public square” (John Leland: A Jeffersonian Baptist in Early America, 94). If we define “separation of church and state” as an impenetrable wall between two distinct realms, then you will be hard pressed to find any Baptists who held that view in the early republic. Baptists have historically labored for the church to influence the state.

However, that’s not how “separation of church and state” has been historically understood. What Baptists agreed on, both then and since, is what we might call “institutional separation.” Baptists, for obvious reasons, did not want the government telling the church what to do. They fought for disestablishment in every state in the union until it was finally accomplished in Massachusetts in 1833. Baptists like Backus and Leland celebrated universal religious liberty because they believed that the church, unmoored from oppressive laws and free to preach the gospel, would eventually transform the nation, not through coercion but through regeneration. Of course, they wanted a Christian Commonwealth, but they wanted a Christian Commonwealth as Baptists. They understood that the only legitimate Christian Commonwealth was one in which all members believed the gospel and were baptized into churches.

Modern efforts to discover a magisterial tradition among early American Baptists seem agenda-driven and not historically informed. “Magisterial” cannot modify “Baptist” without drastically changing the meaning of the latter term to the point that it no longer meaningfully identifies a historic people. Historically, Baptists have advocated for religious liberty even as they sought to influence society at every level. For Baptists, the means to maximal influence, however, has been the church on mission, not Congress in session.

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