The state of Church – state cases presently in the courts suggest the contemporary relevance of this issue. Much ahs been written on the church – state question many historical surveys, legislation and court evaluations, and important biographies have been written; but little or nothing has been done in detail that examines the theological ground of church – state beliefs. This book attempts to fill this void and in so doing stimulate, and help guide, the thinking of those engaged in the endless battle for liberty of conscience against state encroachment.
Robert Dalton has been a pastor, school teacher and administrator, businessman, and Executive Director of two Christian school associations. He earned his BS (secondary education) and MA (Church history) at Bob Jones University. He received his Doctor of Ministry degree from Crown Theological Seminary and has done graduate work at Middle Tennessee State and The University of Alabama. At present he teaches Church History and Theology at Crown College and Seminary in Knoxville, Tennessee.
INTRODUCTION
This book is about church-state conflict in colonial America. It will focus on the church-state theology of three Baptist leaders who led the struggle for religious freedom: Roger Williams (1603-1683), Isaac Backus (1724-1806), and John Leland (1754-1841). It is not primarily biographical nor will it concern itself to any significant degree with other Baptist doctrines or issues. The final chapter compares the current educational freedom debate with the colonial struggle for religious liberty.
Roger Williams, the pioneer of religious liberty in America, helped to found with John Clarke, Rhode Island, the first colony to write complete religious liberty into its laws. Isaac Backus, a Baptist pastor, historian, and theologian, led the Baptist battle for liberty of conscience in the Revolutionary era. He opposed the Congregational religious establishment in New England. John Leland, a friend of James Madison and Thomas Jefferson, led the Baptists in their bitter fight against the religious establishments in Virginia and, later, in New England. Not dying until 1841, John Leland lived to see his labors crowned with success. Perhaps the most popular preacher in Virginia, he did much to rally Baptists behind the successful effort to enact Jefferson’s Bill for Establishing Religious Freedom in 1786. Leland returned to Massachusetts in 1791 to join Backus in the struggle against the Puritan religious establishment.
The burden of this work examines the limits these Baptist leaders sought to place upon the state as it established religion through such controls as taxation, licensure, certification exemptions, and other instruments of regulation. In sum, it seeks to discover where and upon what basis these Baptist spokesmen sought to secure religious liberty by disestablishing the state church.
The spate of church-state cases presently in the courts suggests the contemporary relevance of this issue. Much has been written on the church-state question. Many historical surveys, legislative and court evaluations, and important biographies have been written; but little or nothing has been done, in detail that examines the theological ground of church-state beliefs. This book attempts to fill this void and in so doing stimulate, and help guide the thinking of those engaged in the endless battle for liberty of conscience against state encroachment.
Chapter two is an historical overview of church-state developments. Beginning with the late Roman Empire, this survey of religious establishment seeks to explain its pervasive and almost unyielding grip on American colonial culture. From Constantine in the early fourth century until John Leland in the early nineteenth, it was an unquestioned assumption by most that government had a primary responsibility to impose and secure religious orthodoxy on those within its jurisdiction.
Under Constantine and his successors, the Roman Empire united church and state erasing vital distinctions between civil and ecclesiastical authority. The Theodosian and Justinian law codes of the Roman Empire laid the legal foundation for the enforcement of religious establishments for well over a thousand years. Roman Catholic, Lutheran, and Calvinistic church-state theories were simply refinements on Caesar’s legislation. The Protestant establishments in colonial America were transplants from England. These colonial establishments derived their governing assumptions from the Protestant Reformation, which in turn had drawn upon the medieval Catholic church-state synthesis.
Chapter three examines Roger Williams and the limits he placed on the state’s authority in religious concerns. The convictions of Williams are studied in the context of his conflict with the Puritan religious establishment in Massachusetts which sought to impose a Congregational church order on the colony. His church-state beliefs surface in his quarrels with the Massachusetts Bay General Court and in his pamphlet war with John Cotton, the chief architect of the Puritan theocracy.
Williams carefully scrutinized the theological and socio-political assumptions of the Congregational establishment. His writings illustrate his biblical hermeneutics, powers of analysis, and didactic use of history. William’s attempt to separate church and state is centered in his efforts to delineate what he believed to be the mutually exclusive roles of the church and the state. He concluded that complete religious liberty produces the political and social harmony necessary for a prosperous church and a well-ordered state.
Chapter four treats Isaac Backus and his attempt to dismantle the religious establishment of New England in the Revolutionary era. Backus, a student of the writings of Roger Williams, was a careful historian, a competent theologian, and a lover of the rights of conscience. His political and theological ideas are found in his massive History of New England Baptists (1796), numerous pamphlets, and theological treatises. Since most of the Supreme Court decisions since the Everson ruling (1947) have drawn upon the historical context of the Revolutionary and Constitution – making era to justify its decisions, this book will attempt to compare the views of Backus, Jefferson, and Madison with those of the modern court. This exercise in historiography will show how modern church and constitutional historians treat these issues and how they have influenced the members of the U.S. Supreme Court. An examination of where Backus, Jefferson, and Madison wished to erect the wall of separation between church and state and how they understood this concept will indicate how well the modern court has interpreted, and has been served by, its historical sources.
Chapter five is a review of English and Virginian establishment legislation and the Baptist literary response to the “law religion” which it secured. From the beginning Virginia’s laws reflected their English antecedents. The great struggle for religious liberty in Virginia is better understood against this legislative background.
Beginning with Henry VIII, British monarchs had Parliament pass legislation which established the Anglican Church as the official state church. In 1534 Parliament passed the Supreme Head Act (also called the Supremacy Act), which made Henry the “Supreme head” of the church with power to determine orthodoxy and punish dissenters. Two Acts of Uniformity were passed, the first under Elizabeth I in 1559, and the other in 1662 under Charles II. This legislation forced every minister to conform to the Church of England or resign. The Act of Uniformity under Charles was part of the Clarendon Code (named after the Lord Chancellor, Earl of Clarendon). This code was a series of laws passed by Parliament over five years (1661-1666) which required all ministers to pledge allegiance to the Church of England. Among other stipulations, these acts required all to attend the Church of England, to subscribe to the Anglican Prayer Book, and to refrain from illegal religious meetings (called conventicles) and unauthorized preaching. The Clarendon Code also forbad non-Anglicans to hold political office or be a teacher or professor without the permission of a bishop.
In the early seventeenth century, English Baptists began to write important treatises in the defense of complete religious liberty. Roger Williams drew upon this literary tradition for his arguments for religious freedom, and against religious establishments. Isaac Backus and John Leland further developed and added to this freedom literature. Like Williams and Backus, John Leland was a philosopher in action. Leland was a political activist, historian, pamphleteer and, above all, an evangelist. He wrote extensively on politics, theology, and church-state separation. Although he was born in Massachusetts, Leland, in his early twenties relocated to Virginia. Becoming a pastor-evangelist and formidable foe of the Anglican establishment, he led the Virginia Baptists in their attempt to win religious liberty. To continue his struggle for the rights of conscience, he later returned to Massachusetts, where he pastored a church and served in the legislature.
Chapter six examines Leland’s church-state theology revealed in his extensive essays and other writings. Attention is given to the basis of Leland’s convictions as he policed the jurisdictional boundary between church and state. This examination includes a look at the strategies used in the implementation of those convictions as he sought to mold opinion and influence legislation.
Chapter six considers today’s public-private education controversy in the light of the colonial struggle for religious liberty. Parallels are drawn between the colonial conflict and the contemporary battle for educational freedom and diversity. Just as the friends of religious freedom resisted the colonial religious monopolies secured by state coercion, so today there are those who dissent from the state’s attempt at educational monopoly. The state establishes this monopoly through such regulations as state licensure, certification, taxation, and compulsory attendance laws – the same requirements imposed by the colonial religious establishments. Parents seeking educational freedom have been fined, harassed, and jailed in their attempt to educate their children free of what they consider to be the state’s immoral, and often untested, educational dogmas. They deem the philosophy of public education hostile to the religious values taught in their home just as religious dissenters considered the doctrines of the established church heretical.
For example, public school officials have sought to license and regulate non-public schools and compel state certification of non-public school teachers. Some states have sought direct curriculum control, or indirect control, through state-mandated testing standards which ultimately shape the curriculum. State university systems have sought to exclude home schoolers and others who have not graduated from state licensed or approved schools. Dissenting parents fear the imposition of, what they consider to be, the state’s alien moral values hidden in these regulations.
At the root of both the colonial and contemporary struggle is the issue of liberty of conscience. In colonial America, it was a struggle for religious freedom; today it is a fight for educational liberty over whose values shall be instilled in the hearts of children. Many see this cultural war as ultimately a religious question. This final chapter will compare this school-state conflict with the church-state conflict in colonial America.