There are lots of things I’m ignorant of, but one field where my ignorance shames me most is that of Baptist history. Which makes Brandon O’Brien’s Demanding Liberty: An Untold Story of American Religious Freedom an interesting introductory read.
Overall it is well-written, informative, and, from what I can tell, a good way to get a taste of the Baptist struggle for religious liberty in the mid- to late-1700s. O’Brien focuses (rightly) on the life and writings of Isaac Backus and his struggles with the Congregationalist established church in Massachusetts, as well as with the entrenched idea of having an establishment in the first place that was so dominant even among non-religious founders like John Adams.
I can cheerfully recommend the vast majority of this book.
The bits I’m a bit more hesitant about are the few times O’Brien makes moves towards modern day application. For example, when talking about Backus’ petition to the Continental Congress for religious freedom, O’Brien argues that Backus mistakenly used in-house Christian/theological language instead of appealing in the language of the dominant political culture of the time.
“To make any progress in debates and discussions about religious liberty, we have to figure out how to have the conversations in the lingua franca of the modern political system. This is especially true when the appeal for religious liberty today is perceived as a cover for misogyny, racism, or homophobia. Appeals to Scripture and the Christian tradition become shrill when the hearer doesn’t speak the language. In other words, original sin may be a helpful concept for understanding religious liberty within the family of faith. But the concept will likely come across as tone deaf in the broader culture. Advocating for our own religious liberty–and defending the rights of others–requires the mental agility to have the conversation differently with insiders and outsiders.” (123-124)
There is certainly a sense in which this is true. We shouldn’t speak in a way intentionally meant to offend the culture, and we should be wise in how we speak to the broader society. With that said, I’m not convinced of the wisdom of letting that broader culture define how we articulate our beliefs to anyone, whether ourselves or the world. It doesn’t really matter if we’re speaking inside or outside, our language should be defined by Scripture.
There are several reasons for this. For one, although there are times when the culture is more friendly and times when the culture is less friendly, at heart the culture’s basic rule of discussion is “Christians lose.” For another, we ought to be wary of having two different languages. The world will find this out (it’s not like we really keep things secret–our meetings are open to the public after all!) and both call us hypocrites and judge us by the worst possible interpretation of our beliefs. It’s not a losing game at the end of the day (read Revelation if you don’t believe me there), but it’s a game we’re not going to win in the short term or on the culture’s terms.
As another example of a point where I’m a bit hesitant about what O’Brien says, when discussing Backus’ transition from a Congregationalist to a Baptist he makes the point that we should be generously flexible:
“Public discourse in twenty-first-century America increasingly forces people to take firm stands and draw clear lines in the sand over a wide range of issues. This sort of tribalism ignores that basic fact that all opinions are under construction… In the current sociopolitical climate, churches would do well to model the kind of accommodation Backus was willing to attempt regarding the issue of baptism in his church….
A second reason we ought to extend this posture of generous disagreement to one another is that the gospel makes us humble. Or it should…. there was a time when I got some important things wrong. It should prompt us to assume that we will again in the future get something important all wrong.” (68-69)
Again, I think I’m mostly on board with this. We should be humble. We should be aware that we are wrong about something now and will be corrected on it someday. We should be tolerant of our brothers’ and sisters’ weaknesses when they are wrong. We should be broad in the spectrum of beliefs allowed in the church.
And yet, there are also some warning signs here as well. When we’re talking about the context of the church, we should be tolerant within the context of agreement on the Gospel. That is, we should tolerate each others’ differences of opinion on, say, Calvinism vs. Arminianism. But we should not tolerate differences of opinion over the Deity of Christ, the inspiration of Scripture, penal substitution, or other fundamental doctrines of the faith. In those instances, what might appear to be toleration is actually the destruction of the very foundation of the church’s confession of faith. I suspect that O’Brien agrees with this, but I could see how someone reading this book could quite easily over-read and insist on toleration as the highest good.
Aside from a handful of moments like these (mostly clustered at the end of each chapter in O’Brien’s analysis section), the book is worth your time. It has certainly convinced me that I need to read more about and by Isaac Backus and my own Baptist predecessors.
Dr. Coyle Neal is co-host of the City of Man Podcast and an Associate Professor of Political Science at Southwest Baptist University in Bolivar, MO.
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