Written by Don Byrd
You don’t want to read me today. You want to read Bill Leonard.
On Friday, Leonard accepted the Baptist Joint Committee’s J.M. Dawson Religious Liberty Award at the Religious Liberty Council Luncheon, delivering a powerful speech on the Baptist heritage of religious liberty. Read the whole thing (Word Doc). Here is a snippet:
[P]luralism was relatively easy for Protestants until now. Early Baptists affirmed pluralism and conscience as a distinct, sometimes persecuted minority in America. As religious liberty became more normative, they discovered something else. One, that Americans to this day and in spite of the First Amendment, tend to grant religious liberty grudgingly (just ask Baptists, Quakers, Shakers, Mormons, Jehovah’s Witnesses, Christian Scientists, Roman Catholics, Jews and Muslims); and Two, once Protestantism gained privilege in American religious life, talk of religious liberty became less dangerous for Baptists as they became part of the religiously privileged class. Liberal and conservative alike could use the rhetoric of religious liberty generously since they owned much of the culture, particularly in the South and Southwest. But something happened in our generation. The pluralism that Baptists anticipated and defended, often much earlier than most American Protestant groups, has prevailed. Cities and towns large and small are now populated by multiple religious groups, including many non-Christians, each claiming a place at religio-political table. These days, our consciences are sometimes distressed because we are experiencing the death rattle of Protestant privilege in American culture, especially in the South/Southwest. This loss of religious hegemony forces us to ask: What will become of our commitment to religious liberty now?
Other sections of the speech include something of a response to the current Catholic concern for religious liberty. Enjoy.
Congratulations, Bill on this well-deserved honor.
