Book Review: First Freedom
Jason G. Duesing, Thomas White, and Malcolm B. Yarnell III, eds., First Freedom: The Beginning and End of Religious Liberty, Second (Nashville, TN: B&H Academic, 2016).
Introduction
Jason Duesing, Thomas White, and Malcolm Yarnell III have compiled a series of essays from various contributors that collectively offer the reader an introductory and yet wide-ranging look at the subject of religious liberty. This volume is the second edition, published in 2016 (the first was published in 2007), and the opening acknowledgments celebrate the collaborative efforts of “three seminaries, one university, the Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission [of the Southern Baptist Convention], and a Baptist publishing house.” [1] Each author offers his particular expertise to “provide an introductory look at the biblical and historical beginnings of religious liberty” as well as some descriptions of “its contemporary expression and defense.”[2] Throughout this volume, there is also an emphasis on the historical “price that was paid” by “Baptist brothers and sisters” in the past “for the establishment and defense of religious liberty.”[3]
The book is divided into three successive sections – a historical section, a pedagogical one, and a final one that promotes activity and strategies for the reader. Of course, there is an overlap of the subject matter and methodologies in each distinct section, and each chapter is written as an essay that may stand alone, but the editors have aimed at these categories for readability and logical progression. One of the weaknesses of a book like this, however – one that compiles essays from various authors – is that it is difficult to provide the reader with a consistent and coherent argument throughout the book. Duesing, White, and Yarnell have done a commendable job, and the result is a helpful introduction (even if disjointed in some places) to the concept of religious liberty from a Baptist perspective.
Book Summary
Part One
Part one of this volume offers a brief look at some versions of religious liberty as they appear in history. Both Paige Patterson (then president and professor of theology at Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary) and Thomas White (president and professor of systematic theology at Cedarville University) highlighted the historic Anabaptist emphasis on a form of religious liberty that certainly was echoed among English and American Baptists. These two authors did not address whether there is a genuine historical connection between Swiss and German Anabaptists and later Baptists in England and America, but they did make note of the common Anabaptist theme of religious liberty. Patterson and White seem to imply that there is a strong theological and philosophical connection (and maybe even a historical one?) between Anabaptists and Baptists on the doctrine of religious liberty, and this deserves to be addressed more clearly than what we are offered in these chapters devoted to providing the historical background. And yet, while this historical ground is contentious and shaky, the point remains that Anabaptists were chronologically the forerunners of later religious liberty proponents.
In the third chapter, supplying yet more historical background, Malcolm Yarnell (then professor of systematic theology, director of the Oxford study program, director of the Center for Theological Research, and chair of the systematic theology department at Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary) claimed that there are two traditions of early American political theology. The “major tradition” he called the “Virginia tradition,” and the “minor tradition” he called the “South Carolina tradition.”[4] Both are prominent streams of Baptist thought and argumentation, so Yarnell himself admitted that the “minor” and “major” labels are not so easy to assign. And yet there does seem to be a clearly recognizable difference between the Virginia and the South Carolina traditions.
Yarnell said the Virginia tradition is “identified with the rhetoric of John Leland, the agitation of the Danbury Baptist Association, and the subsequent separation doctrine in the federal judiciary.”[5] Roger Williams, Thomas Jefferson, and Hugo Black (though Jefferson and Black were not Baptists) all played their part in establishing and perpetuating the Virginia tradition of religious liberty, which is marked by an “emphasis on human and the separation of church and state.”[6] William Screven, Oliver Hart, and Richard Furman (as well as other contemporaries and theological descendants of these men) played their part in promoting and institutionalizing the South Carolina tradition of religious liberty, which is perceived through the “lenses” of “divine Providence, human constitutionality, and social orderliness.”[7]In the end, Yarnell, White, and Patterson all urged the reader to strive for a better imperfect system until the perfect comes at the arrival of King Jesus.
Part Two
Part two of this book is intended to be pedagogical. Three more authors seem focused on giving the reader a definition, an explanation, and a strategy to engage the world around with the doctrine of religious liberty. This section is important for obvious reasons, one might even say that it ought to be the core contribution of such a book, but it is quite disappointing in its delivery. Barrett Duke (then vice president for public policy and research at the Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission of the Southern Baptist Convention) contributed the least helpful and most digressive chapter of this book. The title suggests that Duke would offer a definition of religious liberty (The Christian Doctrine of Religious Liberty), but he did not.[8] What he advanced instead was an entirely new set of arguments (i.e., natural law, social, and theological) that are separated from the historical background we were given in the first three chapters. Even the theological arguments Duke presented are disconnected from the ones that were forwarded by historic Baptists (i.e., two kingdoms, jurisdictions of the church and state, etc.), and the reader is left wondering what doctrine of religious liberty Duke was arguing for.
The closest Duke came to defining religious liberty in his chapter was a list of “three useful categories of religious freedom,” which he borrowed from Philip Wogaman.[9] These are (1) “absolute religious liberty” or “the internal freedom to believe and worship as one pleases,” (2) “qualified absolute religious liberty” or “the freedom to profess or to express one’s faith verbally,” and (3) “qualified religious liberty” or “the freedom to act in accordance with one’s religious insights and values.”[10] But even here, Duke did not make it clear which (if any) of these he believed to be definitional of religious liberty, and he implied that any of the three might be warranted in various circumstances.[11] In conclusion to Duke’s chapter, he simply cited Article XVII of the Baptist Faith and Message (on Religious Liberty) without explanation or comment. This article certainly is a definition of religious liberty, but Duke did not serve the reader well by neglecting to articulate how the article connects to the rest of his chapter, what the article means in practice, or why it is part of the confession of faith for Southern Baptists.
Evan Lenow (then assistant professor of ethics, Bobby L. and Janis Eklund Chair of Stewardship, director of the Richard Land Center for Cultural Engagement, director of the Center for Biblical Stewardship, and chair of the ethics department of the Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary) contributed the second of these core chapters, and his is slightly better than Duke’s. Lenow took up his pen to explain why religious liberty is a means to an end. It is the freedom of believing citizens to proclaim the gospel of Jesus Christ without fear of state-sanctioned or state-allowed reprisals. Churches and their numerous members, and not the state or its citizens, are responsible to evangelize the world. And religious liberty provides a free platform from which to carry out this function. Lenow did, in fact, assert and defend this perspective, even though he did make a couple of minor historical errors.[12]
Like Patterson and White (in Part One), Lenow also strongly implied that the Baptists in America during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries were directly influenced by the Anabaptists in sixteenth-century Europe. And what is more, Lenow presented a truncated selection of Baptist representatives from America – the first two perceived even by their contemporaries as idiosyncratic outliers among Baptists in America – Roger Williams, John Leland, and Edgar Mullins. There is no doubt that all three of these men have had a significant impact on the Baptist views of religious liberty, but they are hardly the only influential voices on the subject, and they all represent what Yarnell called the “Virginia tradition” of Baptists in his earlier chapter. The “South Carolina tradition” is absent in Lenow’s historical summary, and this is the sort of disjointedness that seems almost inevitable in a volume with multiple contributors with varying perspectives of their own.
The third chapter of this middle section was authored by Andrew Walker (then director of policy studies for the Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission of the Southern Baptist Convention), and his contribution is far better in both substance and form than the other two. Walker’s chapter also lacks an explicit definition of religious liberty, though one assumes that Walker ought to have been able to depend upon Duke to provide such a thing in his chapter. But the reader can piece together a functional definition from what Walker asserts near the end of his chapter. He says religious liberty is “like a lineman who clears the way for a running back,” it is “a small state and a large church,” and a kind of religious “pluralism.”[13] With greater clarity, Walker says, “religion and politics must inexorably relate to one another. The exercise of religion requires nothing more and nothing less than a legal order that does not co-opt religion for state purposes nor impede the church’s mission.”[14] Such a description of various features of religious liberty does indeed provide a functional definition.
Walker’s chapter is most concerned, however, not with defining religious liberty, but with exploring the relationship between religious liberty and the public square. For this purpose, Walker did provide a definition of the public square: “a matrix and amalgamation of cultural forces that provide a horizon of meaning for public life… In short, the public square is a function of our shared interaction within the institutions of culture.”[15] And our shared interaction within the institutions of our present culture is changing dramatically, says Walker. Two specific features of the moral revolution that has taken place are (1) the “clash of orthodoxies” between the LGBTQ+ advocates and traditional Christians and (2) the presumption on the part of non-religious people in American culture that religious adherents have bad or nefarious motives for clinging to their ethical standards.[16]
Walker provided arguments for a paradigm shift, for the adoption of various strategies, and a comprehensive proposal. The paradigm shift he urged the reader to embrace is to view “religious liberty as hospitality and… as accommodation.”[17] The sort of accommodation Walker promoted is one of religious pluralism, where all citizens seek understanding and give respect to those with whom they may disagree. The strategies Walker presented generally call for a return to the “ethos and intellectual milieu that birthed American principles, namely, natural rights.”[18] Ultimately, the rights of citizens will be grounded in something that transcends government, or they will merely be decided and distributed by the government itself. Walker claimed that the natural rights argument is a common-ground approach for Christians to contend for pre-political rights that are endowed by our Creator. And, finally, Walker’s proposal is an invitation (even an urging) for some Christians to commit themselves to political and public engagement for the sake of gospel and ecclesiastical advancement in American culture. Like missionary sponsors in the nineteenth century, public advocates today can “hold the ropes for those who labor to plant churches, evangelize, and equip the body of Christ.”[19]
Andrew Walker’s chapter serves as a foundation and a pivot point for this book. As I mentioned earlier, Duke and Lenow contributed chapters that should have offered more substance, but they largely failed to provide anything significant or unique in their chapters or to meaningfully develop the theme of religious liberty in a cohesive way with the rest of the authors. Walker, on the other hand, did some of their work for them as well as his own. And his work was to urge the reader to public engagement of some sort, even if only as an understanding and hospitable neighbor. Though Walker certainly hoped for more from some of his readers.
Part Three
The remaining section (Part Three) and its four chapters provide the reader with a summary of several challenges to religious liberty, which have only become more apparent since the publication of this book. In chapter seven, Russell Moore (then president of the Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission of the Southern Baptist Convention) argued for a gospel and ecclesiastical emphasis in “the Baptist struggle for religious freedom.”[20] American Evangelicals may indeed vote largely as a block, but they need not primarily think of themselves as a political interest group. The Baptist interest in religious liberty, from the beginning, is centered on the meaning of Christian salvation and the doctrine of the church. Therefore, says Moore, we must maintain a “firm grasp of the gospel,” and we must “protect the centrality of the church.”[21]
Albert Mohler (president and Joseph Emerson Brown professor of Christian theology at the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary) contributed chapter eight, which offers yet more data and commentary on the clash between religious liberty and sexual freedom in American culture. Earlier in the book, Duke only touched this subject and Walker addressed it a bit more thoroughly, but Mohler here advanced his thesis: “we now face an inevitable conflict of liberties,”[22] and “if we lose religious liberty, all other liberties will be lost, one by one.”[23] According to Mohler, “Human rights and human dignity are temporary abstractions if they are severed from their reality as gifts of the Creator.”[24] Thus, the state must recognize a moral standard above itself, or it will become a capricious enforcer of whatever moral regime may wield its authority. Mohler’s chapter did point to the horizon and help the reader see the gathering storm, but he did not offer much in the way of a call to specific action.
Thomas White made a second appearance, in chapter nine, having specific expertise as a Christian university president. His aim was to help the reader “prepare well to understand the coming challenges” and also to meet them with a faithful testimony.[25] White listed several specific challenges for those connected with institutions of higher education, including the potential loss of tax exemptions (and various hardships that might precipitate), legal penalties for Title VII and Title IX infractions, and the potential loss of accreditation. White also offered a handful of strategies for meeting these challenges. First, he said that every institution should get their documents in order. Next, he said that faculty and staff ought to be required to affirm those documents, including an explicit statement or confession of faith. Then, White said that universities would do well to lean into their distinctive Christian education, even making a biblical worldview part of the basic curriculum plan. Fourth, White said that schools ought to require chapel and emphasize the importance of spiritual growth and discipleship on campus. And last, he said that universities should require a personal profession of faith from prospective students. These strategies effectively double down on the distinctly Christian character of Christian education, and White argued that this is the way forward in an increasingly antagonistic environment for religious liberty.
In chapter ten, Travis Wussow (then director of international justice and religious liberty and general counsel for the Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission of the Southern Baptist Convention) explained and argued for a foreign policy effort to promote religious pluralism worldwide, especially in those countries that are Muslim-dominated and often antagonistic to this sort of religious liberty. Wussow acknowledged that international law cannot be enforced in such a way so as to require foreign states to grant their citizens the kind of religious liberty that is enjoyed by citizens of another state. However, he did argue that international law does have influence, and there are economic levers to pull in an effort to promote various foreign policy goals. Wussow did note two specific applications of religious liberty in modern Islamic countries: one, by aiming to remove criminal penalties for “apostasy,” and two, by encouraging Muslims to view religious conversion away from Islam as something other than “apostasy.”[26] While Wussow pointed to some positive advancements, it seems highly unlikely that either of these applications is likely to gain much ground in the near future.
In the final chapter of this book, Jason Duesing (provost and associate professor of historical theology at Midwestern Baptist Theological Seminary) ended much where he began. He summarized the book’s aims: “first, to show how Christians have defended religious liberty throughout history;” “second… to present the biblical and rational defense for the practice and protection of religious liberty;” and “third… [to] review the present and future threats to religious liberty.”[27] Duesing invites the reader to consider the “end goal” of religious liberty by contemplating the humbling sacrifice and the glorious exaltation of the Lord Jesus Christ described in Philippians 2. He said that there is both a warning and a hope, as well as an implied commission to use the time between the sacrificial cross and the judgment throne. Duesing concluded by saying, “Hope. Warning. Good news that Jesus is Lord shared while there still is time even at the risk of one’s security, safety, and rights – all for the glory of God. This is the true end of religious liberty.”[28]
Conclusion
Like all books with various contributing authors, some are better contributors than others, and some parts are of greater value than the whole. This short introduction to the topic of religious liberty is also hindered by its cultural and political moment. The challenges to religious liberty (which comprise a good portion of the substance and interaction of this book) are somewhat dated after nearly ten years. In some ways, the challenges articulated have become greater and more clearly defined with time, but the challenges themselves and the proposed strategies to meet them are inevitably limited to the priorities and structures of the moment in which they were written.
No doubt, some of the proposals and truth-claims in this book are timeless, and these will be applicable to any audience. Because this is true, and because this book does provide some good historical background for the concept of religious liberty among the Baptists, it seems that the reader may benefit from reading it. There are better books and other resources that will give readers a more comprehensive, consistent, and historically conversant exposure to religious liberty, but First Freedom can certainly be a decent introduction. It is easy to read, it has several quality chapters, and it is a hope-filled and thoughtful call for Christians to live today as ambassadors for Christ while King Jesus is still receiving new converts into His kingdom. One day religious liberty will be no more, but until then, let us seek its true end.
[1] Jason G. Duesing, Thomas White, and Malcolm B. Yarnell III, eds., First Freedom: The Beginning and End of Religious Liberty, Second (Nashville, TN: B&H Academic, 2016). xi.
[2] First Freedom, 7.
[3] First Freedom, 7.
[4] First Freedom, 51.
[5] First Freedom, 51.
[6] First Freedom, 79.
[7] First Freedom, 78.
[8] In his introduction, Jason Duesing says that Duke provides “several definitions of religious liberty, including the entire article from the Baptist Faith and Message 2000” (First Freedom, 6). However, I am unable to find even a single definition of religious liberty in Duke’s chapter, other than the article from the Baptist Faith and Message that is tacked onto the end. And one wonders why Duke offered nearly no comment on the article from the BF&M. It is merely appended as something of an afterthought.
[9] First Freedom, 107.
[10] First Freedom, 107.
[11] Duke said that “government must step in to protect its citizens” when “some people… abuse any liberty” (First Freedom, 107). But Duke did not explain what sort of religious liberty he wanted to promote or what sort of qualifications he would like to have marking off the parameters of religious liberty.
[12] One example of a historical error is Lenow’s assertion that Christianity “became the official religion of the [Roman] empire under Constantine” (First Freedom, 112). Of course, Constantine did issue the Edict of Milan in 313 AD, but this was an edict of toleration and legalization, not conscription. It was Theodosius the Great who issued the Edict of Thessalonica in 380 AD which did officially mandate Nicene Christianity as the state religion.
[13] First Freedom, 154-155.
[14] First Freedom, 152.
[15] First Freedom, 128-129.
[16] First Freedom, 129.
[17] First Freedom, 145.
[18] First Freedom, 146.
[19] First Freedom, 155.
[20] First Freedom, 160.
[21] First Freedom, 165.
[22] First Freedom, 174.
[23] First Freedom, 170.
[24] First Freedom, 170.
[25] First Freedom, 182.
[26] First Freedom, 240-241.
[27] First Freedom, 249.
[28] First Freedom, 257.