Yes, Baptists believe in the separation of church and state meaning ONLY that there should be no state church such as the Anglican church in England. Yes, there should be equal liberty of religious expression for all. This principle would include the majority of Christians openly expressing their religious belief, public prayer, and observance of religious holidays even if those in the minority cannot relate to the public atmosphere created by individuals in the majority fully acting on their rights. This is a Christian country historically and sociologically and that fact will show itself if the state does not censor speech and limit association. As long as no one is coerced to espouse something with which they disagree or are forcibly prevented from expressing their own beliefs, no one's liberty is violated. 'Coercion' should only be understood as the physical threat to one's person that one has not consented to. Feeling uncomfortable or annoyed by what others are doing or saying should not be considered coercion.

Yes, people should exercise their rights responsibly meaning that if a person does something based on his religious beliefs that individual should be held accountable for his actions if harm comes to himself or others. At the same time, we should keep in mind John Locke's distinction between action and words; words do not constitute action. Reading the Bible or praying publicly or proselytizing do not violate the rights of anyone. We must keep in our minds very clearly that rights are private spheres that each individual has exclusive control over. Listening or watching someone pray a prayer that one does not approve of does not violate a person's rights since his private sphere has not been violently intruded upon. People have no right to be considered social equals or to have their religious beliefs taken seriously since these considerations have to do with the attitudes and beliefs of others. What one believes about others should not be subject to state control. As long as one has the right to believe as he so chooses and can freely express those beliefs, then the person possesses religious liberty, even if he or the views he holds are rejected, scorned, or marginalized by others. If someone physically attacks a dissenter, then the dissenter should have recourse to legal protection of his right to religious liberty. Such claims should be treated equally in courts of law no matter the religious beliefs of the victim or the perpetrator. At the same time, if a religion cannot compete in the marketplace of ideas, then it should go bankrupt just as businesses that fail in the economic marketplace should be allowed to liquidate and close down if they cannot compete effectively.

Yes, I agree, Christians as all others, should have a right to participate in political campaigns and to petition government for redress of grievances.

I suspect that the issue being pushed here is not really freedom or liberty. Rather it is a plea for equality of result and the acceptance of the co-existence of different religions in the U.S. as the state mandates that they share equal status and influence in America. That agenda is decidedly at odds with the traditional understanding of the First Amendment and with religious liberty and tolerance.

Ever considered starting your own blog? Seriously. Most of your comments - including the comment above - are as lengthy or lengthier as the ABP article itself.

That said, I'm not sure how you reached the conclusions that you did. See your last paragraph. What's the basis for those claims? Or are you, once again, simply speculating? What's the point in writing a 600-word essay-comment only to conclude that comment with a paragraph of pure, unfounded speculation?

For what it's worth, I was at the T.B. Maston dinner. I heard both McBeth and Walker. I even took notes.

Belligerent aren't we, Gig Daddy? If you cannot defeat what someone is saying, just go for non-substantive attacks. I am glad that you took notes. What was the clear point of Brent Walker's speech?

Belligerent? Sure buddy. Your comments often approach 1,000 words. Start your own blog or something. Seriously.

My critique of your comment, by the way, is quite substantive. Your last paragraph is pure speculation (and in my opinion unfounded) and not based on anything Walker said at the dinner. It must be noted that you've offered similar speculation in previous essay-comments. Back your speculative assertions up with an actual fact-based argument and maybe quote someone in addition to John Locke. Mix things up a bit.

Well, I see more red herrings here. If one does not clearly spell out the premisses and conclusions to the arguments relied upon in one's comments, then we are just wasting our time here. An example of what can happen without clearly defending one's conclusions comes from this website in the comment section to an earlier article when you and another commentator went back and forth for a day or two trading personal insults. Such an exchange is the predictable result of not clearly spelling out your position and the reasons for the position that you espouse as well as refusing to focus on the reasoning of your online opponents.

I have asked you previously to explain and defend your point of view on the issue of church-state separation. I received no clearly delineated explanation and justification. I never really received a clear, coherent reply to my question to you about winning others to Christ and thereby making other religions otiose. At the conclusion to that exchange, you said that you supported anti-discrimination laws protecting homosexuals with exemptions for religious organizations in reply to my suspicion that you were arguing from a commitment to equality of result. In the process, you provided no rationale for your position nor did you challenge my objections to such laws on the grounds that they violated freedom of association and contract as well as the right to private property. So, you have a track record yourself and that is one of lack of clearly constructed and defended arguments.

I see that you did not care to attempt to clarify Mr. Walker's speech and contrast his views with my own using his major points. I admit that I was not clear about the thrust of his speech as I read the report above. I said that in my original remarks. There I clarified my own understanding of concepts Mr. Walker appealed to in his speech in the recollection provided here. If he means what I mean by these terms, fine. We can all agree. If he means something different, which I suspect he does, then why not clearly distinguish what you took his position and rationale to be and show how my understandings of these concepts and terms are mistaken?

Why do I suspect that Mr. Walker is arguing not so much for liberty as understood by the Founders but for equality of result in a pluralistic America? For one reason, because Mr. Walker felt the need to address these issues. If we all took a classically liberal political and legal position such as I articulated above, then there would be no need for such a speech to an American audience--especially to a Baptist audience. The second reason for my suspicions is Mr. Walker's background. Mr. Walker has previously taken stances on church-state relations that do not reflect an historic understanding of the First Amendment. The third reason for my sensing an egalitarians motive for this speech is such comments quoted above as:

“We are free, in the words of the Great Commandment, to love God and love one another,” he said. “… And our freedom in Christ must always be exercised in the context of the responsibility we have to one another. This also involves the ethical imperative of ensuring everyone’s religious liberty. An attitude of ‘religious liberty for me but not for thee’ is self-centered, irresponsible and sinful.”

This quotation needs lots of "splaining." I provided one way of making sense of such pronouncements. I am open to having you or someone else who was present to hear Mr. Walker speak and sympathize with his point of view or Mr. Walker himself either agree with my Lockean understanding of his language quoted here or show how my understanding is wrong or why we should reject the Lockean line of reasoning on this and related issues.

Finally, I frequently quote Locke on these matters since the Founders were all Lockeans. Understanding Locke is essential to understanding the original intent of the First Amendment and the way it has traditionally been interpreted until the Twentieth Century.

OK, your last comment was longer than the original comment and longer than the ABP article itself. I'm more than willing to respond to a comment. However, I prefer not to read a new essay before each response.

And again, you can write 700 words or 7000 words, but it's all a waste of time and energy if the body of your comment does not support the conclusions you made in the conclusion section of your essay-comment. To your credit, you at least acknowledged that your conclusion was based on pure speculation with these two words "I suspect..."

Let's say informed speculation.

Informed? Informed based on what exactly? I assume something you gleaned from the actual article?

Big Daddy, you are free to read and comment on my previous post where I discussed my reasons for suspecting that Mr. Walker rejects a traditional understanding of religious liberty and the First Amendment in favor of a more equal in point of fact and multi-religious America enforced by the Federal government. Such a vision is in direct conflict with the rights of those in the majority to act on their individual rights that might as a side-effect very well make people who do not share those in the majority's religious beliefs feel out of place. Do you doubt that Mr. Walker holds these views? If so, why?

If you would like to do so, you can repudiate the vision that I suspect Mr. Walker might very well embrace. Would you like to join me in rejecting such a view as inconsistent with our traditions and with a proper understanding of liberty?

I do hope I am wrong about Mr. Walker's vision. I would be delighted to hear that he takes the view of the Framers of the First Amendment on religious liberty and the proper view of equality as equality under the law. I have seen nothing from your comments that relieves me of my suspicion that he does not uphold the Framers' Lockean understanding of liberty and equality.

I read what you wrote and again, saw no basis for your speculation. Perhaps were your thoughts more concise, they would be easier to address point-by-point?

You should also keep in mind that Walker when he speaks about religious liberty and the separation of church and state is speaking from a Baptist understanding of those concepts - a Baptist understanding that precedes John Locke and the Framers, etc. Walker is trying to be faithful to his Baptist Heritage. I assume you too are Baptist?

Big Daddy and Xeno, why don't you two exchange emails or IM user names, or Facebook names, or something? Or why don't you both go on a holiday together... you two sound like you're married. Do you really think the comment section of a story is the place to have your weekly spat? Can you not save us the drama and either comment on the original article or make a substantive point that does not piss the other off? Please?

Robber,

Pretty sure each and every comment of mine has had something to do with the ABP article above and/or Xeno's critique of Walker.

Reading comprehension trouble? Or just prefer to read your little snarky rants?

Xeno,

Don't let them get you down. Your point was very well reasoned and written. Just remember that most do not have the intellectual capacity to understand Locke. Big Daddy is the perpetual defender of Brent Walker. He once upon a time worked for the man and acquired quite a talent for kissing donkey. In my mind Walker is no Baptist. If a man is so dense he cannot figure out abortion is murder he is not worthy of the name Baptist.

If you're going to take shots, it's only fair that you tell us the identity of "KT2005" Seems fair since you're sharing my employment history...

And what does abortion have to do with this conversation. Pretty sure that abortion is not the domain of an organization devoted exclusively to religious liberty issues.

Not often do you hear admitted speculation described as "well reasoned."

John Locke on Baptists: “The Baptists were the first propounders of absolute liberty, just and true liberty, equal and impartial liberty.”

If one cares to read the Danbury Baptists letter to Jefferson, they rely on Lockean arguments to justify their claims to religious liberty. They also argue that the only legitimate function of government is for physical protection of the innocent: "That the legitimate Power of civil government extends no further than to punish the man who works ill to his neighbor."

The authenticity of that quote has actually been called into question. Actually, it's authenticity has been questioned for at least 70 years though people still keep attributing this quote to Locke. Scholars and researchers have been unable to find a direct citation for that quote. It is believed that Augustus Strong was the first person to attribute that quote to John Locke in 1905. Versions similar to the popular quote you mentioned above were present in various texts and encyclopedia's in the mid-to-late 19th century.

Conrad Moehlman traces the quote back to the preface of Locke's "To the Reader" (1689) which states "Absolute liberty, just and true liberty, equal and impartial liberty, is the thing we stand in need of." Moehlman notes that "When the words of Locke are returned to their proper context, they become not a eulogy of the Baptists but a terrific indictment of the government and the dissenting parties of England including the Baptists...In 1689, John Locke did not praise, but indirectly severely criticized, the Baptists."

Moehlman's analysis is interesting but it does seem highly unlikely that Locke uttered the words attributed to him regarding Baptists.

Quotes from people such as Locke and many of the Founders are questioned frequently. It is hard to nail down many of these quotes unless they can be found in the personal hand of the author. I would say that Locke's defense of tolerance in his *Letter Concerning Toleration* is very consistent with the practices that Baptists have observed and advocated. The crucial point here is the line of reasoning each follows, not personal endorsements per se.

I notice, Big Daddy, that you did not question the Lockean defense of conscience and the assumption of a Nightwatchman state clearly endorsed by the Danbury Baptists. Historically and philosophically, I think it is very clear that the general trend of Baptist understanding of the proper role of the state is one of very limited government along the lines developed by classical liberal writers. This includes Roger Williams and the role for the state that he helped to lay out in the founding of Rhode Island. If we can agree to return to this vision of the body politic, then we could resolve most of these disputes over the relationship between the church and the state.

I see that you can deal with substance when you want to. You seem though to be evading the central issues I asked you to clarify above. If you are familiar with Mr. Walker's positions, then you should be able to fill in the missing premisses to his pronouncements in Dallas. I presented a classically liberal take on his main points. I can certainly endorse what he is saying if he is to be understood along the lines that I suggested in my opening post. If not, then what meanings does he pour into the terms and phrases that he is recounted as using in his speech? Again, I invite you to fill in those details speaking for yourself alone if you feel that you too are unclear about the full meanings of Mr. Walker's phraseology.

Ok, I'll go back and offer a few points:

You wrote: "Yes, Baptists believe in the separation of church and state meaning ONLY that there should be no state church such as the Anglican church in England."

Focusing in on your caps use of the word ONLY, this is obviously incorrect. John Leland would disagree. George Truett would disagree. Baptist Sunday School teachers and Supreme Court Justices Charles Evans Hughes and Hugo Black surely disagreed. So, while perhaps *some* Baptists would share that perspective, I would argue that *most* do not. Heck, even Southern Baptists like Richard Land interpret the No Establishment clause to mean something more restrictive than just a prohibition on the establishment of an official state church.

Instead of dealing with what I described as "unfounded speculation" and you charitably called "informed speculation," let's deal with Walker's own words from the ABP article itself.

WALKER (referring to the Religion Clauses of the First Amendment):

“Both ensure religious liberty; both require an institutional separation of church and state as a means to that end,” he said. “As soon as government starts to meddle in religion or takes sides in religious disputes, someone’s religious liberty is denied and everyone’s is threatened.”

Ok, what's to disagree with here? The idea of an institutional separation does seem to jive well with your interpretation of the Establishment Clause. You can't have an official state church when the institutions are indeed separated.

WALKER: “Every time we say ‘no’ to government’s attempt to promote religion to uphold the Establishment Clause, we should find a way to say ‘yes’ to its Free Exercise counterpart. This allows us always to seek to find a ‘win-win’ solution and keep these two clauses in proper balance.”

All Walker is saying here is that religious liberty advocates should try to strike a balance between support for both clauses. I don't recall the specific examples that Walker used. However, I think a good example would be the BJC's strong opposition to proposed Constitutional Prayer Amendments coupled with their support of free-exercise legislation like the Equal Access Act and RFRA, etc.

Tension between Religious freedom and responsibility:

Walker is merely alluding to the idea of Individuals-in-Community. We are individual Christians who worship and take part in a Christian community. We have the freedom to read and interpret Scripture but we also have to be responsible in doing so and thus owe responsibility to the Christian community that we are a part of, etc.

Tension between Civil Withdrawal and Engagement:

This point was simply to stress that Baptists generally have not chosen to isolate themselves from the rest of society. We don't take a Niebuhrian Christ Against Culture approach but more of a Christ Transforming Culture approach. This particular point was largely a response to a blog entry posted on the CBF by an employee who advocated that Christians should not be involved in the political process, don't vote, and instead just "be the Church."

Now, what specific Walker quotes do you particularly take issue with?

One more comment. Thanks for acknowledging that many of the quotes attributed to the Founders are challenged on grounds that they are not authentic. However, in light of these challenges, doesn't this make any argument on behalf of Original Intent less convincing? How can we go about the daunting task of determining original intent when we can't even be sure of the authenticity of many popular quotes? Even Scalia the textualist has dismissed theories of original intent.

Big Daddy, thanks for your replies to my request for clarifications on Mr. Walker's speech reported on above. I just read your replies tonight and do not have time just now to write a reply. I shall try to write one within a day or two as I take what you have said very seriously.

I do appreciate the tone and substance of your replies here. I still am not sure, even with these thought provoking comments, that we are getting at the real nub of our apparent disagreement. But we shall see. Please stay tuned.

As I said in my promissory note to you, Big Daddy, I believe that your last response was helpful but it still lacked the transparency and breadth to get to the root of these sorts of disagreements. I understand that Mr. Walker is a lawyer, and so he might very well frame his arguments to avoid broader issues that do not directly relate to a position he is taking on a particular question. While a minimalist approach might be wise in a legal case that is being argued before judges who come at these problems from a variety of perspectives, narrowly drawn solutions can be unhelpful to those of us who are trying to get a clear bearing on the nature and origin of the controversy.

Another reason that Mr. Walker might articulate his arguments in terms of bare essentials is to make his case in universal terms that can influence those who not only do not come from a Baptist or Protestant background but who are not American or operate in the liberal tradition broadly conceived. Since the BJC works for religious liberty around the world, this approach could have merit in those contexts as a practical tactic to increase liberty in countries without our traditions. But, once again, we are not working in such a context.

When we are discussing the American political and legal system, then we are talking in terms of classical liberalism and American traditions and understandings of religious liberty. Even though Baptists could be anywhere in the world living in all sorts of political systems and legal regimes, discussing religious liberty in the context of American law and the Constitution requires us to restrict our scope to America and England at the time that we were colonies of England. We know basically where the Founders of the U.S. were coming from on the provisions in the Constitution and laws they passed since we have their writings on these matters whose authenticity is unquestioned. We understand the philosophical underpinnings of these laws and the Framers’ fundamental understandings of how to apply these laws from their extant writings and their actions. We also know the cultural, political, economic and religious milieu of the time of their writings and the controversies they focused their attention on. These considerations are critical to properly understanding American traditions of law and religion as well as other matters.

So, theories of law such as textualism, original intent, and purposivism are essential to our understanding of the U.S. Constitution and subsequent laws at the time they were written. Otherwise, there is no reason to have a constitution. In fact, without some grasp of the intention of the speaker or writer, language would be pointless. Without being tethered to the text of the law, courts exercising judicial review simply become a super-legislature or even a running Constitutional Convention continually overriding the sitting legislature or the Framers of the Constitution with their own set of guiding principles or even whim. It is one thing to apply principles placed into law to cases that arise in contemporary settings with facts that the Framers were not aware of and another to completely ignore the text and its traditionally understood meanings.

Now to your specific replies to my asking you to clarify Mr. Walker’s vague remarks on religious liberty summarized in the article above.
First, you challenge my assertion that the Framers only intended to ban state churches in the Establishment Clause of the First Amendment. If you look at the debate on the earlier attempts to finalize the wording of the First Amendment, especially wordings offered by Madison, there is really no doubt that what they were attempting to do was prevent a national government ordained and supported official church of the United States. The motivation for this prohibition on government was to prevent the Federal government from coercively imposing religious doctrine and practice on the citizenry or preventing people from freely expressing their religious beliefs in daily life. This impulse included looking askance at the Feds forcibly collecting tax money from members of Religious Group A and redistributing it to the clergy or officials or members of Religious Group B. The same impulse was at work at the state level when those who opposed established churches wrote state constitutional bans on state churches.
As we shall see below, subsidies to churches were considered a key issue in the controversies over establishment. So, I would include opposition to state subsidies directly to churches or religious institutions under the issue of establishing a state church. I too oppose subsidies to churches.
At the state level is where things get a bit more interesting. Here lines are more clearly drawn on some of these issues and, I believe, misinterpretations of the Constitution have their seed. As I understand the historical record, after the Revolution most of the overt persecution of religious minorities came to an end. What became the key sticking point of the controversies over establishing a particular church as the official church of a state where they retained their established church was taxing the citizens of the state including dissenters to pay for the salaries of established church’s ministers. Dissenters saw this policy as a violation of their conscience. We can see how such forcible redistributive efforts were viewed in this time period when we consider *The Virginia Act for Establishing Religious Freedom* written by Thomas Jefferson:
“…that to compel a man to furnish contributions of money for the propagation of opinions which he disbelieves, is sinful and tyrannical…”
The entire act focuses on banning state action that imposes or threatens physical act of violence in attempts to regulate religious belief and expression.
Attempts to ban transfer of income and wealth from dissenters to ministers of the established churches were made by separation advocates by employing precise wording in legislation to head off close legal distinctions in terms used by establishmentarians who tried to present the image of religious liberty while maintaining their favored position. Included in these attempts were legal demands for equality and impartiality. Baptists were at the forefront of these efforts.
The principle that Baptists living in the late Eighteenth Century such as Isaac Backus, Samuel Stillman, and others demanded the state realize in phrases such as “all men by their nature are equal,” (Stillman) and “ to have this partiality entirely removed” (Backus), was equality in the eyes of the law. They refused to be coerced to support others’ religious beliefs and dissemination of those beliefs as they were placed at a competitive disadvantage by having to pay taxes that, in effect, penalized them for their religious beliefs.
Over time, this demand for equality in the eyes of the law to be free of physical coercion, which I completely agree with, has morphed into demands by religious minorities for the state to coerce those in the majority to acknowledge the beliefs and practices of the minority are on par with their own, which I disagree with. Thus we have seen court decisions such as the 1992 case Lee v. Weisman where Justice Kennedy found that those who were present at public school graduations were “psychologically coerced” into listening to a prayer with which they could not conscientiously take part in. Then we get the crossover to equality of result in a subsequent decision in 2000 of Santa Fe Independent School District v. Doe based on Lee v. Weisman where people who could not conscientiously take part in a prayer were made to “feel like outsiders.”

Another source of misunderstanding surrounding church state separation is founded in a conceptual confusion that revolves around the foundation of the laws governing civil society. Establishmentarians argued that the civil order is supported by law; law is founded upon objective morality; objective morality is founded upon religion. They then concluded that since religion is foundational to law and civil order, the state must subsidize or maintain a state church. The pivotal point in reasoning here is that if something is crucial for the good of society, then it must be provided for by the state. Most anti-establishmentarians in Europe and England accepted this premiss in the Establishmentarian argument and focused their fire on another key aspect of their opponents’ argument. As they accepted the premiss that if something is crucial for the good of society, then the state must provide it, they focused their attack on the link between religion, morality, and the law. Many of the European advocates for disestablishment argued that morality and law are independent of religion. Joseph Priestly in England is one who made such a case, however haltingly. These advocates for church-state separation argued that religion is mostly a private affair while the civil code is established by reason without religious foundations. We can see that contemporary advocates of this position have also pushed morality over into a purely private sphere breaking its link with the law entirely. I might note that even the likes of Antonin Scalia, William Rehnquist, and Robert Bork have fallen prey to this line of thinking in their embrace of legal positivism.
American Baptists, by and large, rejected the English and European line of analysis and accepted the Establishmentarian analysis with the key exception that since the church inculcates religious devotion then it should be provided by the state. Here they followed more consistently the classical liberal view of leaving all matters to private individuals and institutions except the provision of physical protection and some basic rules of order. Baptist political thinkers and advocates for separation argued for a religious society as thoroughly as the Establishmentarians sought. They simply did not want religious belief to be coerced or restricted by coercion. They did not seek to minimize the influence of religion in daily life but to extend and strengthen its reach by deregulating religion. One who took this view was none other than John Leland.
On the American Baptist view, if government coercively restricts religion, then such actions by the state are not consistent with sound public policy nor with the right to religious expression. The whole thrust of deregulation of religion is to unleash it, not to restrict it.
There is no balancing test to be struck between free expression and establishment on this rationale for disestablishment. Many of the positions taken by Mr. Walker and the BJC have the effect of removing religious influence from daily life. This is especially true nowadays with the increased role of government in the daily lives of many Americans. Removing religious expression from the mainstream of society is exactly what the European, especially the French, advocates of separation called for but is in direct conflict with the vision of free and extensive religious (in the U.S. read Christian) expression and influence on the civil society.