Converting to Christianity in 1741 as an effect of the Great Awakening, Isaac Backus became a separatist Baptist Congregationalist and head of the Warren Association of Baptists who championed religious freedom in America. Through the work of his piestic writings and petitions to Congress and State legislatures, the Massachusetts Baptist pastor vied for the separation of church and state in order to ensure and protect individual liberty of consciousness.
An Appeal to the Public for Religious Liberty (1773) poses as one of Backus’ most renowned works that
details legal, Biblical, and Enlightenment rationale to support his position
which stresses the importance of true liberty, the role of the government, and the
differences between civil and ecclesial structures. Backus
clearly defines the distinction between each government type, stating that
"all acts of executive power in the civil state, are to be performed in
the name of the king or state they belong to; while all our religious acts are
to be done in the name of the Lord Jesus." He goes onto say that due to
the nature of civically elected systems, “putting any men into civil office is
of men, of the people of the world; so officers have truly no more authority
than the people give them."[1] Justification
for the Patriots’ separation from the mother-country fell along these lines, with
Colonies abject to Britain’s refusal to acknowledge their rights as Englishmen
or fairly represent the interests and concerns of citizens.
Similarly,
having endured decades of religious persecution due to the arrangement of
state-sponsored churches, Backus and other religious dissenters saw hypocrisy
in how Revolutionaries decried civil subjugation while spiritually subjugating
their fellow compatriots who theologically differed from the traditional Congregational
and Anglican Church structure which dominated Colonial religious life.
Backus’ Appeal to the Public illustrates that “while
his thoughts were similar to John Locke, he maintained a distinctly pietistic
interpretation of man's natural obedience to God. [The two ordained systems of
government held] purposes and natures [which] were distinctly different and should
never be linked together.”[2] He relied upon Biblical
narratives and the sovereign examples of David and Solomon to reveal that God
erected covenants with nations and that the creation of laws ensured the
protection of liberty. However, Backus appealed to notions of God’s ordained
order, the distinctive nature of man’s depravity, and how though the
Revolutionary Era’s mindset adhered to the idea that civil liberty ought not to
be denied, he proposed that religious liberty shared the same fundamental importance.
Patriotic cries against a
neglectful sovereign were validated however, when the “same cry was raised by
Backus and the Baptists in protest against religious taxes imposed by civil government,
it was perceived as an unnecessarily divisive ploy by fanatical rabble-rousers.”[3] Due to their association with other groups desiring religious
freedom, such as pacifistic Quakers, Baptists were viewed as non-patriotic and
their petitions, letters, and public addressment of religious concerns were
largely ignored. However, Backus managed to utilize the “rhetorical strategies
of the more elite New England revolutionaries in support of the minority
opinion that their right of conscience, like the patriots' rights with Great
Britain, had been unjustly denied.”[4] Through the War for
Independence, Backus preached to the Continental Army, met with Congressional
members, and traveled about the colonies sermonizing the importance of
religious autonomy. He consistently readdressed the Baptist “position in
relation to the colonial bid for freedom emphasizing that religious taxation
without representation was just as unjust as civil taxation without
representation.”[5]
Historian Thomas Kidd
eloquently specifies how the “evangelical
tradition supplied spiritual propulsion to the Patriot cause that was
unsurpassed by any other element of Patriot ideology"[6] Though differing doctrinally, these “individuals of
such varied theological strands [agreed] that religion had political
implications.” Communal convictions
and adherence to republicanism strengthened both the religious and irreligious
alike as a core principle acknowledged was
that the “disestablishment of state churches was the best means to
promote religious tolerance and freedom of conscience. Following the war,
evangelicals and rationalists often joined politically in agreement on the
public role of religion and that the government had no business legislating
religion.”[7] Dissenters amicably account that the “war in Virginia
was not only a war against British rule but also a war against religious
establishment. Religious liberty was not the result of republicanization, but
republicanization was the result of the concerted efforts by dissenters to gain
religious freedom from the establishment in exchange for mobilization against
the British.”[8] Furthermore, the advance of religious liberty in
America is revealed to be “not inevitable, nor was it the natural outcome of
the American victory in the Revolution. It had to be won, not from Britain per
se, but from the established church which was at war with the British. Thus,
religious liberty was won through petitions and negotiations more than on the
battlefields of the Revolution.”[9] Despite
theological disputes, Backus supported the Revolution, and by relying on Biblical
and civil arguments vindicating the rights of man, he became known as the “most
forceful and effective writer America produced on behalf of the pietistic or
evangelical theory of separation of church and state."[10]
Ultimately, political
change ushered in a reconfiguration of state and church structure in America.
As new state constitutions were designed and adopted, a more inclusive
awareness emerged towards dissenters as sects, such as the Baptists, were
gradually accepted into the fold of mainstream Protestantism. The voluntary
service of dissenters during the Revolution additionally aided their plight, as
the conscientious objectors to imposed theocracy had proven themselves loyal to
the new republic through blood and Christian fervor. The hold of Anglican and
Congregational churches slowly began to weaken, yet it was not until the mid-19th
century that the final ties between church and state were officially severed.[11]
[2] Sewell
Jr. and Edward H. “Isaac Backus’ Plea for Religious Freedom, 1770-1776.” Today's Speech 23, no. 2 (1975): 39-47.
[3] Ibid.,
45-6.
[4] Ibid,.
[5] Sewell
Jr. and Edward H. “Isaac Backus’ Plea for Religious Freedom,” 44.
[7] Matthew Hill, “God of Liberty: A Religious History of the
American Revolution.” Fides Et Historia 43, no. 1 (2011): 93-4.
[8] John A. Ragosta, Wellspring
of Liberty: How Virginia’s Religious Dissenters Helped Win the American
Revolution and Secured Religious Liberty, 2010.
[9] John D. Wilsey, “Wellspring of Liberty: How Virginia’s
Religious Dissenters Helped Win the American Revolution and Secured Religious
Liberty.” Fides Et Historia 45, no. 1 (2013): 156-7.
[10] William G. McLoughlin, “Isaac Backus on Church, State, and
Calvinism: Pamphlets, 1754-1789,” (1968): 1.
[11] Sewell
Jr. and Edward H. “Isaac Backus’ Plea for Religious Freedom,” 45.
Image - Isaac Backus, Government and Liberty Described and Ecclesiastical Tyranny Exposed, 1788.
Image - Isaac Backus, Government and Liberty Described and Ecclesiastical Tyranny Exposed, 1788.
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