Journal: Journal for Baptist Theology & Ministry
Volume: JBTM 08:2 (Fall 2011)
Article: Baptists, Anti-Catholicism, And Religious Liberty
Author: J. David Holcomb

JBTM 8:2 (Fall 2011) p. 118

Baptists, Anti-Catholicism, And Religious Liberty

J. David Holcomb

Dr. David Holcomb is Associate Professor of History and Political Science at the College of Humanities of the University of Mary Hardin-Baylor. He is Dr. Holcomb’s son.

Author’s note: Over the years, Dad has stressed to me the significance of ideas in the shaping of history. I have shared his interest in intellectual history and, in this essay, highlight issues, such as religious liberty, competing interpretations of the Baptist tradition, and the relationship of Baptists to the broader culture, that mirror some of his own interests. As such, this essay is a gift to the one who has not only been a wonderful father, but also an ideal role model of the Christian teacher/scholar.

Introduction

Central to the narrative of Baptist history is the struggle for religious liberty and the separation of church and state. As dissenters from the Anglican Church in early seventeenth-century England, Baptists made passionate pleas for freedom of conscience. Consequently, Baptists frequently faced persecution for their radical notion that “men’s religion to God is between God and themselves. The king shall not answer for it. Neither may the king be judge between God and man.”1

This heritage of religious liberty carried over into colonial America, where Baptists were some of the most vocal critics of state church establishments. Led by John Leland and Isaac Backus, Baptists in early America influenced the inclusion of protections for religious freedom in the Bill of Rights. Future Baptist leaders continued to trumpet the complementary convictions of religious liberty and separation of church and state. In the twentieth century, Baptist statesman George W. Truett echoed this commitment to a “free church in a free state” as a hallmark of the Baptist identity. Indeed, the commitment to religious freedom became so coterminous with the Baptist story itself, that E.Y. Mullins once wrote that “there has never been a time in their history, so far as that history is known to us, when they wavered in their doctrine of a free Church in a free State.”2

JBTM 8:2 (Fall 2011) p. 119

This Baptist legacy has been contested in recent years. Some scholars argue that while Baptists did advocate for liberty of conscience, their commitment to separation of church and state in nineteenth- and twentieth-century America was driven as much by anti-Catholicism as it was theological principle. Constitutional scholar Philip Hamburger has recently argued that there was an evolution of Americans’ understanding of religiou...