Participants: Lincoln Steed (Host), J. Brent Walker
Series Code: LI
Program Code: LI000241A
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00:22 Welcome to The Liberty Insider.
00:24 This is a program that brings you news, 00:26 views, discussion and up-to-date information 00:28 about religious liberty issues. 00:30 My name is Lincoln Steed, editor of Liberty Magazine 00:34 and my guest on the program is Brent Walker. 00:37 Welcome, Brent. 00:38 It's good to be here Lincoln, thank you. 00:39 You're the executive director of the Baptist Joint Committee. 00:43 And we'll share a little bit more about exactly what that is. 00:47 But I should tell our viewers 00:49 that I think you're fairly unique. 00:52 You're a lawyer and a minister of religion. 00:56 Okay, well there is lot of its running around. 00:58 Yeah. 00:59 That not, not very common 01:01 but is a number of most of that-- 01:03 That's a very good combination for religious liberty 01:06 and of course, the Baptists 01:09 have brought a very special flavor 01:11 to the discussion of religious liberty in the United States. 01:15 I studied history in Australia 01:19 and then coming to the United States. 01:20 And one of the first things 01:21 that I remember picking up was the damn-- 01:24 the letter to The Danbury Baptist 01:25 from Thomas Jefferson, where he assured them that 01:29 there would be a separation of church and state. 01:31 And tell me little bit about the Baptist Joint Committee 01:34 because I know central to your understanding 01:37 and your advocacy is upholding this separation of church 01:40 and state as a vehicle for religious freedom. 01:43 Well, Baptist Joint Committee is complete name 01:45 is the Baptist Joint Committee for Religious Liberty. 01:48 So we are a group of 15 different Baptist bodies 01:52 that have come together 01:54 with offices in Washington, D.C., 01:56 to provide a joint Baptist witness 02:00 for the importance of religious liberty 02:02 and as you suggest 02:04 the separation of church and state. 02:05 The Baptists have historically maintained 02:09 that the two must go together. 02:12 Religious liberty 02:13 and the separation of church and state 02:14 because as soon as government starts meddling in religion 02:18 for or against or takes sides in religious disputes 02:23 somebody's religious liberty is denied 02:24 at that very point and every one is threatened. 02:27 So we found briefs in the US, Supreme Court 02:32 on cases interpreting the religion clauses 02:35 in the first amendment. 02:36 We work with congress, we advice the administration 02:39 when it biased invited to do so. 02:42 Do a lot of educational projects have a very helpful 02:47 I think website and a daily blog that is attached to it 02:52 and publish on monthly magazine much the same way Adventist do. 02:56 Yeah, I was going to say. 02:58 Ours is Report From the Capital yours is Liberty Magazine. 03:02 I really enjoy your magazine. 03:03 Yours has a better title, you know. 03:04 I steal from it now and then. 03:06 Don't know really but I get ideas 03:08 and you and your staff will be very helpful over the years. 03:11 Yeah, so we're involved litigation, 03:14 legislation and education 03:16 all for the purposes of announcing and advocating 03:20 for the importance of religious liberty 03:23 and church state separation for all of us. 03:25 Now you've mentioned correctly that there is a problem 03:28 when the government meddles in religion 03:30 and you're for the separation of church and state. 03:33 You're also sensitive for the danger of church 03:36 is meddling in the government. 03:37 It's a two way street, isn't it? 03:39 Well, it can be. 03:40 Yes, it is true that the separation of church 03:44 and state does not segregate religion from politics 03:49 or script the Public Square of talk about, about religion 03:52 so people of faith can be involved in politics 03:55 and should be in, in discharging the beliefs 04:03 that we hold to of doing justice and helping the poor 04:09 and making the world a better place to live in. 04:11 But yes you're right in the sense that 04:14 one particular religious group 04:15 are not be able to takeover the government. 04:17 The structural religion, yes, an individual. 04:19 Absolutely, it should never-- Sure. 04:21 Takeover and they just take Sermon on the Mount for example. 04:23 So, so yes in that sense it is, 04:25 bilateral arrangement that we don't want 04:28 the government interfering with the church. 04:30 We don't want the church or religion generally 04:33 taking over and using for its own purposes of the government. 04:36 So, yes, there is a healthy tension 04:38 that has to be maintained there. 04:40 I know on this program and I have mentioned 04:43 but I'm sure you use from time to time 04:45 Alexis de Tocqueville had some good things 04:47 to say about America in general and very specifically 04:50 he said that the separation of the church and state 04:52 was the underlined reason 04:54 for the continued religious liberty in the centre. 04:56 He says everybody that he met universally said 04:59 oh this is what enables it. 05:02 But I hadn't realized till last night I was looking online 05:04 and John Locke sighted there that the Baptist 05:08 were really the first proponents of absolute liberty. 05:12 He didn't qualified as just religious liberty 05:14 but we know that the Baptists concept of liberty 05:16 had everything to do with religious freedom to know. 05:19 It did, you know, absolutely. 05:21 And yes Locke was involved and the enlightenment thinkers 05:24 sort of came up along side of our Baptist fore barriers 05:29 both seeking religious liberty. 05:33 I think with Locke though may be 05:35 he was more in tuned with the idea of toleration. 05:39 Toleration is not the quite the same thing 05:42 interpretation and Locke himself. 05:44 And I'm not sure it was for theological reasons that he, 05:49 that he made that appeal more for a political experience 05:54 so the people would talk killing one and another. 05:56 It could be more tolerant of each others religious views. 06:00 We're not gonna be engaging in religious wars 06:03 that plagued Europe during that times. 06:05 So but that said I think Locke was very instrumental 06:09 in getting us thinking from more of a secular point of view. 06:12 Yeah, making in turn it from religious point of view 06:17 but as I told you in discussion before this program 06:19 on Liberty Magazine we had a graphic 06:21 recently with the picture of John Locke 06:24 as the sun shining down upon the American Republic. 06:28 He is acknowledged by those who know 06:30 but I think in the popular law we sometimes forget that 06:32 his ideas were seminal in developing the concepts 06:36 that we enjoy now in the United States. 06:39 And here in late 18th century when the constitution 06:43 was being written in the bill of rights. 06:46 You see a joining together of the suns 06:48 of the enlightenment with the children of the God. 06:51 You know, they come together to seek to build institutions 06:56 and constitutional constructs that would protect 07:01 what one group thought to be the rights of conscience 07:05 and the other group thought to be religious liberty 07:08 as a gift from God. 07:09 And so they came at it from two different points of view 07:13 but they worked together for a common end 07:16 that would protect the conscience 07:18 and the what we Baptists have always called soul freedom 07:23 that God infused liberty of conscience 07:25 that we all we enjoy just because of how God placed here. 07:28 Isaac Backus was along with the soul liberty. 07:31 No that was-- 07:32 No it goes back to Roger William. 07:34 Roger William, of course. 07:35 Yeah, Roger William but Isaac Backus 07:37 is a hundred years later 07:38 and John Leyland from Massachusetts 07:41 who was an evangelist down in Virginia 07:45 during the heady decade at the 70s-80s 07:47 working with Madison and Jefferson. 07:49 He supposedly propose the first of amendment. 07:51 Absolutely, yeah. 07:53 He was instrumental in convincing Madison 07:57 that we did need a spelled out guarantee of religious liberty 08:00 because Madison at first didn't think we needed it, yes. 08:02 I know, he wasn't against them he just thought they were so, 08:05 self evident that you just can't enumerate them. 08:06 His constitution did the job he thought. 08:09 We had the states delegating powers 08:11 to the new federal government 08:12 and since they didn't delegate any power 08:14 to do anything about religion 08:16 then they didn't have the power to do anything about religion. 08:20 I'm very pro Madison. 08:21 Yeah, I'm too. I'm too. 08:22 There's been one of our study on this whole topic. 08:24 But Leyland helped to convince him that yeah, 08:28 that might be true but it would help whole lot of 08:31 we had to spell that guarantee for religious liberty 08:34 in the first amendment and he came through. 08:37 Yeah, it was good. 08:38 Now I don't know if you 08:40 I'm sure you noticed that a year ago 08:43 there was a public television special on religious liberty 08:46 I'm trying to remember the title of it. 08:47 It's a two hour docudrama on religious freedom 08:51 beautifully done. 08:53 And there was a scene there 08:55 I don't remember reading about it beforehand 08:57 but it strongly brought out that 08:59 James Madison was influenced as the young man 09:02 by seeing Baptists preachers imprisoned. 09:05 And in particular he heard one preaching 09:06 through his prison bias that. 09:08 The Culpeper jail in Virginia. 09:11 Yes, and the reason I'm bringing that up is that 09:13 I just want you comment on the fact that Baptists 09:16 well southern Baptists bit large sort of 09:20 have an aura of control and dominance 09:23 in the United States that in the early days 09:26 but Baptists were even in the United States 09:28 ostracized in prison. 09:32 They suffered quite a bit around. 09:34 That's one reason why Baptist have always been 09:36 so committed to religious liberty 09:39 it's because that how we read the Bible, 09:41 its because of our theology or understanding of God 09:44 and how He created us but its also existential. 09:47 You know, we experienced in the early days you know 09:51 the beauty of persecution from government 09:55 back in, back in England and the colonies as well. 10:00 Certainly, Massachusetts I mean Roger, 10:02 we have already mentioned Roger William he 10:04 I think chased off from Massachusetts 10:06 for his views on church and state. 10:08 And went down from the what turned out to be 10:12 the colony of Rhode Island but the city of providence 10:14 and founded the first Baptists church on north American soil. 10:18 And the same in Virginia 10:19 the Anglicans were in charge there. 10:22 Of course, and they wanted preachers to have a license 10:27 before they could go out and preach. 10:28 Well, then getting back to the real issue. 10:31 And that's why the Baptist preachers where thrown in jail 10:33 because they would go hand in hand 10:35 to get a license from Anglican. 10:37 Well, I read recently a comment that John Bunyan was a Baptist. 10:41 I never really thought of him as a Baptist 10:43 but he was one of these independents 10:46 that without a license he was subject to imprisonment. 10:49 But the Anabaptist that go back further than 10:52 what we typically talk of is Baptists in the American 10:56 and indeed English environment they were often persecuted 10:59 just for the baptism not beset the freedom views. 11:03 And when you think about the Church of England 11:06 which was not structurally and may be not doctrinally 11:11 changed from Roman Catholicism clunked to sprinkling 11:14 rather than literal baptism. 11:15 So they were quite ready to persecute Baptist for taking 11:20 what I know you and Seventh-day Adventist 11:23 believe to is a biblical concept of Baptism of immersion, right. 11:27 Yes 11:28 And you would think that's fine people have a right 11:30 to decide that but many Baptist were drowned. 11:34 Absolutely. That's amazing. 11:35 That's was the part of the punishment. 11:36 You know, they came in to baptize we will baptize you 11:39 until you can't breath anymore and many drowned. 11:41 And that's phenomenal. 11:43 Much of it was meted out against the Anabaptist 11:47 which came up during the reformation in 16th century, 11:53 Baptist in 17th century. 11:54 Yes, we were little bit later but we count them as 11:58 just at as cousins but they still yeah, 12:01 they believed in immersion and believed in baptism 12:05 and religious liberty and were persecuted for it. 12:09 Yeah, sure. 12:10 Now there is a picture that I saw not too long ago woodcut 12:14 I think it was in England of them dunking of Baptist 12:18 in the pond in the middle of town and barbaric you know. 12:23 So I can understand seeing that 12:27 and reading about that type of thing 12:28 that when Danbury Baptist wrote to Jefferson 12:31 it wasn't just you know point of theory 12:34 they had some misgivings. 12:38 Perhaps history would repeat itself and would this 12:41 new republic would honor their right to practice their faith. 12:46 Well, they felt the constrains imposed by the 12:51 religious establishment in Connecticut, 12:53 the congregational church and they were at discerning sect 12:57 at that time. 12:59 And, yeah, they wrote Jefferson a letter saying, 13:02 you know, can you help us what do you think. 13:04 And Jefferson responded 13:06 with a very thoughtful letter 1802 13:10 as the president of United States talking about 13:12 the importance of religious liberty 13:15 and stating that he had sovereign reverence 13:19 for the act of the American people 13:21 in his words that passed the first amendment 13:25 and those first 16 words ensuring religious liberty 13:28 and thus in his words "setting up a 13:30 wall of separation between church and state." 13:33 You played into it giving my hands. 13:35 Because, you know, I'm sure you have been at meetings like 13:37 I have in the last several years particularly. 13:39 Well, meaning people of faith will get up 13:42 and they'll actually say there is no such thing 13:44 as the wall of separation. 13:45 No such thing in the constitution. 13:47 Well, narrowly speaking they're correct 13:49 but I think they've been disingenuous 13:51 because here the guy that had the most 13:53 to do with formulating that first amendment 13:55 said that particularly that erected a wall of separation. 13:59 Well, it's much to glib a response to say 14:01 that the constitutional doctrine is not there 14:03 because it doesn't reflects certain words 14:07 actually you can point out. 14:08 And you know federalism is not in the constitution. 14:11 There's a lot to discuss. 14:12 There's a lot in there to discuss. 14:13 We will take a short break 14:14 and we'll back to continue this discussion 14:16 with Brent Walker and the Baptist joint committee 14:20 and the history of American religious liberty. 14:23 Stay with us. |
Revised 2014-12-17