Welcome to The Liberty Insider.
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This is a program
that brings you news,
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views, discussion and
up-to-date information
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about religious liberty issues.
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My name is Lincoln Steed,
editor of Liberty Magazine
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and my guest on the
program is Brent Walker.
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Welcome, Brent.
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It's good to be
here Lincoln, thank you.
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You're the executive director
of the Baptist Joint Committee.
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And we'll share a little bit
more about exactly what that is.
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But I should tell our viewers
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that I think
you're fairly unique.
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You're a lawyer and
a minister of religion.
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Okay, well there is
lot of its running around.
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Yeah.
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That not, not very common
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but is a number
of most of that--
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That's a very good combination
for religious liberty
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and of course, the Baptists
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have brought a
very special flavor
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to the discussion of religious
liberty in the United States.
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I studied history in Australia
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and then coming
to the United States.
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And one of the first things
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that I remember
picking up was the damn--
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the letter to
The Danbury Baptist
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from Thomas Jefferson,
where he assured them that
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there would be a
separation of church and state.
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And tell me little bit about
the Baptist Joint Committee
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because I know
central to your understanding
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and your advocacy is upholding
this separation of church
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and state as a
vehicle for religious freedom.
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Well, Baptist Joint
Committee is complete name
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is the Baptist Joint
Committee for Religious Liberty.
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So we are a group of 15
different Baptist bodies
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that have come together
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with offices in
Washington, D.C.,
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to provide a
joint Baptist witness
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for the importance
of religious liberty
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and as you suggest
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the separation
of church and state.
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The Baptists have
historically maintained
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that the two must go together.
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Religious liberty
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and the separation
of church and state
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because as soon as government
starts meddling in religion
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for or against or takes
sides in religious disputes
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somebody's
religious liberty is denied
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at that very point and
every one is threatened.
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So we found briefs
in the US, Supreme Court
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on cases interpreting
the religion clauses
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in the first amendment.
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We work with congress,
we advice the administration
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when it biased invited to do so.
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Do a lot of educational
projects have a very helpful
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I think website and a daily
blog that is attached to it
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and publish on monthly magazine
much the same way Adventist do.
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Yeah, I was going to say.
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Ours is Report From the Capital
yours is Liberty Magazine.
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I really enjoy your magazine.
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Yours has a
better title, you know.
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I steal from it now and then.
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Don't know
really but I get ideas
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and you and your staff will
be very helpful over the years.
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Yeah, so we're
involved litigation,
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legislation and education
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all for the purposes of
announcing and advocating
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for the importance
of religious liberty
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and church state
separation for all of us.
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Now you've mentioned correctly
that there is a problem
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when the
government meddles in religion
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and you're for the
separation of church and state.
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You're also sensitive
for the danger of church
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is meddling in the government.
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It's a two way street, isn't it?
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Well, it can be.
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Yes, it is true that
the separation of church
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and state does not
segregate religion from politics
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or script the Public Square
of talk about, about religion
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so people of faith can
be involved in politics
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and should be in, in
discharging the beliefs
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that we hold to of doing
justice and helping the poor
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and making the world a
better place to live in.
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But yes you're
right in the sense that
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one particular religious group
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are not be able to
takeover the government.
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The structural
religion, yes, an individual.
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Absolutely, it
should never-- Sure.
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Takeover and they just take
Sermon on the Mount for example.
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So, so yes in that sense it is,
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bilateral
arrangement that we don't want
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the government
interfering with the church.
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We don't want the
church or religion generally
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taking over and using for its
own purposes of the government.
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So, yes, there
is a healthy tension
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that has to be maintained there.
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I know on this
program and I have mentioned
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but I'm sure you
use from time to time
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Alexis de
Tocqueville had some good things
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to say about America in
general and very specifically
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he said that the separation
of the church and state
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was the underlined reason
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for the continued
religious liberty in the centre.
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He says everybody that
he met universally said
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oh this is what enables it.
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But I hadn't realized till
last night I was looking online
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and John Locke
sighted there that the Baptist
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were really the first
proponents of absolute liberty.
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He didn't qualified
as just religious liberty
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but we know that the
Baptists concept of liberty
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had everything to do with
religious freedom to know.
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It did, you know, absolutely.
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And yes Locke was involved
and the enlightenment thinkers
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sort of came up along side
of our Baptist fore barriers
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both seeking religious liberty.
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I think with Locke though may be
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he was more in tuned
with the idea of toleration.
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Toleration is not
the quite the same thing
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interpretation
and Locke himself.
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And I'm not sure it was for
theological reasons that he,
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that he made that appeal
more for a political experience
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so the people would
talk killing one and another.
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It could be more tolerant
of each others religious views.
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We're not gonna be
engaging in religious wars
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that plagued
Europe during that times.
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So but that said I think
Locke was very instrumental
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in getting us thinking from
more of a secular point of view.
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Yeah, making in turn it
from religious point of view
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but as I told you in
discussion before this program
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on Liberty
Magazine we had a graphic
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recently with the
picture of John Locke
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as the sun shining down
upon the American Republic.
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He is
acknowledged by those who know
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but I think in the popular
law we sometimes forget that
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his ideas were seminal
in developing the concepts
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that we enjoy now
in the United States.
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And here in late 18th
century when the constitution
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was being written
in the bill of rights.
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You see a joining
together of the suns
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of the enlightenment
with the children of the God.
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You know, they come together
to seek to build institutions
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and constitutional
constructs that would protect
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what one group thought to
be the rights of conscience
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and the other group
thought to be religious liberty
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as a gift from God.
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And so they came at it from
two different points of view
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but they worked
together for a common end
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that would
protect the conscience
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and the what we Baptists
have always called soul freedom
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that God infused
liberty of conscience
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that we all we enjoy just
because of how God placed here.
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Isaac Backus was
along with the soul liberty.
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No that was--
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No it goes back
to Roger William.
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Roger William, of course.
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Yeah, Roger
William but Isaac Backus
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is a hundred years later
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and John Leyland
from Massachusetts
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who was an
evangelist down in Virginia
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during the heady
decade at the 70s-80s
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working with
Madison and Jefferson.
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He supposedly propose
the first of amendment.
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Absolutely, yeah.
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He was instrumental
in convincing Madison
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that we did need a spelled out
guarantee of religious liberty
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because Madison at first
didn't think we needed it, yes.
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I know, he wasn't against them
he just thought they were so,
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self evident that you
just can't enumerate them.
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His constitution
did the job he thought.
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We had the
states delegating powers
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to the new federal government
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and since they
didn't delegate any power
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to do anything about religion
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then they didn't have the power
to do anything about religion.
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I'm very pro Madison.
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Yeah, I'm too. I'm too.
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There's been one of our
study on this whole topic.
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But Leyland helped to
convince him that yeah,
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that might be true but
it would help whole lot of
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we had to spell that
guarantee for religious liberty
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in the first
amendment and he came through.
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Yeah, it was good.
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Now I don't know if you
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I'm sure you
noticed that a year ago
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there was a public television
special on religious liberty
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I'm trying to
remember the title of it.
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It's a two hour
docudrama on religious freedom
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beautifully done.
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And there was a scene there
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I don't remember
reading about it beforehand
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but it strongly brought out that
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James Madison was
influenced as the young man
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by seeing Baptists
preachers imprisoned.
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And in particular
he heard one preaching
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through his prison bias that.
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The Culpeper jail in Virginia.
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Yes, and the reason I'm
bringing that up is that
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I just want you comment
on the fact that Baptists
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well southern
Baptists bit large sort of
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have an aura of
control and dominance
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in the United States
that in the early days
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but Baptists were
even in the United States
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ostracized in prison.
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They suffered
quite a bit around.
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That's one reason why
Baptist have always been
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so committed to
religious liberty
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it's because that
how we read the Bible,
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its because of our
theology or understanding of God
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and how He created us
but its also existential.
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You know, we experienced
in the early days you know
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the beauty of
persecution from government
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back in, back in England
and the colonies as well.
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Certainly,
Massachusetts I mean Roger,
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we have already
mentioned Roger William he
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I think chased
off from Massachusetts
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for his views on
church and state.
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And went down from
the what turned out to be
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the colony of Rhode Island
but the city of providence
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and founded the first Baptists
church on north American soil.
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And the same in Virginia
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the Anglicans
were in charge there.
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Of course, and they wanted
preachers to have a license
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before they could
go out and preach.
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Well, then getting
back to the real issue.
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And that's why the Baptist
preachers where thrown in jail
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because they
would go hand in hand
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to get a license from Anglican.
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Well, I read recently a comment
that John Bunyan was a Baptist.
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I never really
thought of him as a Baptist
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but he was one of
these independents
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that without a license he
was subject to imprisonment.
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But the Anabaptist
that go back further than
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what we typically talk of
is Baptists in the American
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and indeed English environment
they were often persecuted
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just for the baptism
not beset the freedom views.
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And when you think
about the Church of England
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which was not structurally
and may be not doctrinally
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changed from Roman Catholicism
clunked to sprinkling
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rather than literal baptism.
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So they were quite ready to
persecute Baptist for taking
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what I know you and
Seventh-day Adventist
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believe to is a biblical concept
of Baptism of immersion, right.
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Yes
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And you would think
that's fine people have a right
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to decide that but
many Baptist were drowned.
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Absolutely. That's amazing.
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That's was the
part of the punishment.
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You know, they came in to
baptize we will baptize you
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until you can't breath
anymore and many drowned.
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And that's phenomenal.
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Much of it was meted
out against the Anabaptist
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which came up during the
reformation in 16th century,
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Baptist in 17th century.
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Yes, we were little bit
later but we count them as
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just at as cousins
but they still yeah,
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they believed in immersion
and believed in baptism
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and religious liberty
and were persecuted for it.
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Yeah, sure.
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Now there is a picture that
I saw not too long ago woodcut
00:12:10.91\00:12:14.69
I think it was in England
of them dunking of Baptist
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in the pond in the middle
of town and barbaric you know.
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So I can understand seeing that
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and reading about
that type of thing
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that when Danbury
Baptist wrote to Jefferson
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it wasn't just you
know point of theory
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they had some misgivings.
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Perhaps history would
repeat itself and would this
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new republic would honor their
right to practice their faith.
00:12:41.97\00:12:46.32
Well, they felt the
constrains imposed by the
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religious
establishment in Connecticut,
00:12:51.72\00:12:53.75
the congregational church
and they were at discerning sect
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at that time.
00:12:57.97\00:12:59.84
And, yeah, they wrote
Jefferson a letter saying,
00:12:59.87\00:13:02.60
you know, can you
help us what do you think.
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And Jefferson responded
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with a very
thoughtful letter 1802
00:13:06.42\00:13:10.27
as the president of
United States talking about
00:13:10.30\00:13:12.69
the importance
of religious liberty
00:13:12.72\00:13:15.65
and stating that he
had sovereign reverence
00:13:15.68\00:13:19.33
for the act of
the American people
00:13:19.36\00:13:21.20
in his words that
passed the first amendment
00:13:21.23\00:13:25.28
and those first 16 words
ensuring religious liberty
00:13:25.31\00:13:28.50
and thus in his
words "setting up a
00:13:28.53\00:13:30.48
wall of separation
between church and state."
00:13:30.51\00:13:33.15
You played into
it giving my hands.
00:13:33.18\00:13:35.07
Because, you know, I'm sure
you have been at meetings like
00:13:35.10\00:13:37.48
I have in the last
several years particularly.
00:13:37.51\00:13:39.62
Well, meaning
people of faith will get up
00:13:39.65\00:13:42.11
and they'll actually
say there is no such thing
00:13:42.14\00:13:44.18
as the wall of separation.
00:13:44.21\00:13:45.24
No such thing in
the constitution.
00:13:45.27\00:13:47.14
Well, narrowly
speaking they're correct
00:13:47.17\00:13:49.55
but I think
they've been disingenuous
00:13:49.58\00:13:51.21
because here the
guy that had the most
00:13:51.24\00:13:53.93
to do with
formulating that first amendment
00:13:53.96\00:13:55.87
said that particularly that
erected a wall of separation.
00:13:55.90\00:13:59.11
Well, it's much to
glib a response to say
00:13:59.14\00:14:01.21
that the constitutional
doctrine is not there
00:14:01.24\00:14:03.29
because it doesn't
reflects certain words
00:14:03.32\00:14:07.44
actually you can point out.
00:14:07.47\00:14:08.51
And you know federalism
is not in the constitution.
00:14:08.54\00:14:11.18
There's a lot to discuss.
00:14:11.21\00:14:12.24
There's a lot in
there to discuss.
00:14:12.27\00:14:13.56
We will take a short break
00:14:13.59\00:14:14.72
and we'll back to
continue this discussion
00:14:14.75\00:14:16.71
with Brent Walker and
the Baptist joint committee
00:14:16.74\00:14:20.08
and the history of
American religious liberty.
00:14:20.11\00:14:23.43
Stay with us.
00:14:23.46\00:14:24.55