|
John Leland was a Baptist preacher in Colonial America. He joined the Baptist Church in Bellingham, Massachusetts, in 1775. By 1776, he was in Virginia, pasturing a church. He returned to Massachusetts in 1791. He died in Cheshire, Massachusetts, on January 14, 1841. He had preached his last sermon six days earlier. The inscription on his tombstone reads, “Here lies the body of John Leland, who labored 67 years to promote piety and vindicate the civil and religious rights of all men.”
While in Virginia, Leland pastored the church that would become Culpeper Baptist Church. However, it is not the Culpeper Church, but the Culpeper jail that is historically most significant for Baptists. In America’s colonial days, Baptist preachers in the area often found themselves incarcerated in Culpeper Jail for preaching without a license. The laws and customs of the day heavily favored the established church and made life more than a little difficult for our Baptist forebears. James Ireland, another early pastor of Culpeper Church, is reported to have preached to a crowd through a window of the jail. Such was the conviction and determination of early Baptists.
In light of his experiences as a Baptist Pastor in Virginia during the late 1700s, Leland wrote, “The notion of a Christian commonwealth should be exploded forever…government should protect every man in thinking and speaking freely, and see that one does not abuse the other. The liberty I contend for is more than toleration. The very idea of toleration is despicable; it supposes that some have a pre-eminence above the rest to grant indulgence, whereas all should be equally free, Jews, Turks, Pagans and Christians.” One might think that such words were written by a radical atheist or perhaps a devout secular humanist, but they were not. They were written by a Baptist preacher who found his life’s purpose in preaching the Gospel of Jesus Christ and baptizing those who were converted to it.
I was reminded of Leland’s words last week while visiting with the staff of the Baptist Joint Committee for Religious Liberty in Washington, D.C. If the Baptist Joint committee did nothing more than remind us of words spoken long ago by persecuted Baptists, that would be a great service. Of course that is not all they do. Supported by 14 Baptist bodies in the United States, the Baptist Joint Committee endeavors to defend and extend religious liberty for all while upholding the Baptist principle that religion must be freely exercised, neither advanced nor inhibited by government.
In every generation, there seems to those who, like Esau, are willing to trade their birthright for a mess of pottage. They see only the benefits of a short-term solution with little regard for the long term impact. Even in our own day, we hear constantly from those who are anxious to use the power of government to impose their notion of religion and morality upon us all. No good can come from such an entanglement; no good ever has. The religion of the Bible, of Christ, and of Calvary, is a gift. It is freely given and meant to be freely received. To under gird it with government aid or to advance it by state policy invariable makes it something other than God intended, The Gospel of Christ can stand on its own merits. It does not need the government to advance it, nor should the government interfere with its practice. Or, as John Leland so aptly put it long ago, “The notion of a Christian commonwealth should be exploded forever.”
Joy and peace,
Ed
|
