A Voice Long Silent Speaks for Today

Isaac Backus—Baptist Defender of Religious Liberty

In recent times the separation of church and state has become an argument for barring the church from any input in the secular state. But the original idea was to bar the state from meddling in the church, not the converse. This critical distinction is evident in the thought and writing of Isaac Backus, an early defender of religious liberty.

Isaac Backus, born in 1724 into a Connecticut Congregationalist family, became one of the most important American Baptist leaders in the Revolutionary era. As a result of his conversion during the Great Awakening, Backus began to question the Congregational establishment in New England. The original Puritan vision of a pure church in a pure state had been lost. Backus’s own pastor, though a supporter of the Awakening, was an example of this changed belief about the church. His pastor interpreted the parables of the wheat and the tares to teach that believers and unbelievers would exist in the church until the return of Christ. Christians should not try to root out the tares before then. Backus became convinced that the field in the parable is the world, not the church. The church has a responsibility to see to its purity. He, along with several other men, was also concerned that the Congregational churches were moving toward a more Presbyterian polity.

For these reasons the Separates, as they came to be known, separated from the established churches and founded their own churches on the principles of a converted membership and congregational government. Soon the Separates realized that the practice of paedobaptism and their ideal of a pure church stood in tension. Eventually, many of the Separates, Backus included, became Baptists.

At this time in New England, Anglicans, Old Baptists, and Quakers were tolerated by the establishment and did not have to pay taxes to support the clergy. But the Separates, and the Baptists who came from them, were considered schismatic and were not tolerated. They also established churches in many New England communities and thus proved more of a threat to the standing order. If large parts of the community aligned with the Separates and they weren’t required to pay the ecclesiastical tax, then the tax burden on the rest of the community would go up proportionately. The New England colonies therefore worked to ensure that the Baptist churches that emerged from the Separates were not exempt from ecclesiastical taxes. In this context Isaac Backus emerged as a defender of religious liberty.¹

Backus wrote around the time of the American Revolution so the rhetoric of liberty was in the air. He did make use of some of the prominent contemporary themes, but Backus’s arguments for religious freedom are distinctly Christian. For instance, while he makes a “no taxation without representation” argument,² Backus also handles the theme of liberty with greater care than many of his contemporaries. In a 1773 book Backus comments, “It is supposed by multitudes, that in submitting to government we give up some part of our liberty, because they imagine that there is something in their nature incompatible with each other.”³ Backus says that this sentiment first appeared when the serpent tempted Eve in the garden.⁴ But, contrary to the serpent, Backus says, “It is so far from being necessary for any man to give up any part of his real liberty in order to submit to government, that all nations have found it necessary to submit to some government in order to enjoy any liberty and security at all.”⁵ Doing whatever one wishes to do is not true freedom unless what one desires the most is love to God and neighbor.⁶

Backus’s argument for religious liberty is based on the premise that God has established differing governments on earth with their own limits. He distinguishes between the civil government and church government.⁷ To the civil government God has given the sword to ensure that we fulfill our responsibilities toward others (Rom. 13:1–10).⁸ But the church is nowhere given the sword. The church pulls down strongholds with “truth and light.”⁹ On the other hand, the church is given its ministers by the ascended Lord (Eph. 4:8–11), and these ministers are to gain their living by preaching the gospel (1 Cor. 9:13, 14; Gal. 6:6, 7). Backus finds tax-supported ministers appointed by civil magistrates inconsistent with these principles.¹⁰ Finally, Christians are not to support teachers who do not give to the people the teaching of Christ. It is not the magistrate’s job to determine this for the people. The people must themselves give account to God for this, so they must have the right to make this judgment of their pastors.¹¹ Indeed, since God commanded voluntary worship, the civil government was incapable of regulating right worship.¹²

Backus’s argument for religious liberty stood in contrast to the more secular arguments.¹³ The basis of his arguments for religious liberty are firmly Biblical rather than rationalist. He also believed that the Christian religion “is as necessary for the well-being of human society as salt is to preserve from putrefaction or as light is to direct our way and guard against enemies, confusion, and misery.”¹⁴ Though the civil government was not to rule the church, it remained under the law of God. The state should support Protestant Christianity, though it should not interfere with the churches.¹⁵ He thought it right for the state to pass laws prohibiting Sabbath-breaking, gambling, blasphemy, and attendance at the theater.¹⁶ Backus envisioned a nation made up largely of Christians who were free to worship according to their consciences and who largely agreed on the morality that the state should enforce.

The contemporary American situation is more pluralistic than Backus’s situation. But a number of lessons can be learned from Backus that are applicable today. First, the separation of church and state need not entail a secular public square. Indeed, it ought not, for secularism is not a neutral but an ideological player in the debate over religious ideas.¹⁷ While recognizing that we now live in a pluralistic society, Christians should not shrink from making public policy arguments from explicitly Christian premises.¹⁸ Put simply, believers should be prepared to oppose ungodly policies on the basic grounds that they are wrong.

Second, Backus teaches us that religious freedom extends to more than worship alone. American Christians today have the freedom to worship. But will Christian employers be permitted to exclude abortion-inducing drugs from their health plans? Will military chaplains be permitted to teach that homosexual lusts and actions are sinful? Will Christian employers be permitted to hire employees based on Biblical based ethical criteria? Since the Christian life extends to more than what we do at church, our religious liberty must also include these freedoms. Christians should resist all attempts to limit religious freedom to worship alone.

Though Isaac Backus lived in different circumstances than modern Baptists, his Biblical arguments for religious freedom remain relevant today.

Brian Collins (PhD, Bob Jones University) serves as an elder at Mount Calvary Baptist Church and on the Bible integration team at BJU Press.

(Originally published in FrontLine • September/October 2013. Click here to subscribe to the magazine.)

1. Biographical and historical information based on William G. McLoughlin, Isaac Backus and the American Pietistic Tradition (Boston: Little, Brown and Company, 1967) and Stanley Grenz, Isaac Backus—Puritan and Baptist (Macon, GA: Mercer University Press, 1983), 63–91. [↩]
2. Isaac Backus, An Appeal to the Public for Religious Liberty (Boston: John Boyle, 1773), 56–60; Isaac Backus, “Government and Liberty Described [1778],” in Isaac Backus on Church, State, and Calvinism: Pamphlets, 1754–1789, ed. William G. McLoughlin (Cambridge, MA: Belknap, 1968), 357. [↩]
3. Backus, Appeal, 3. [↩]
4. Ibid., 5. [↩]
5. Ibid., 8; Backus, “Government and Liberty,” 350. [↩]
6. Backus, Appeal, 9. [↩]
7. Ibid., 9. [↩]
8. Ibid., 11–12. [↩]
9. Ibid., 14. [↩]
10. Ibid., 17–18, 22–23. [↩]
11. Backus, “Government and Liberty,” 358. For instance, the magistrate ought not simply decide that paedobaptism was the doctrine of Christ and force a convinced Baptist to support paedobaptist ministers. [↩]
12. McLoughlin, 143. [↩]
13. McLoughlin, 142–43, 149. [↩]
14. Backus, “Policy as Well as Honesty [1779],” in Pamphlets, 372. [↩]
15. Backus, Appeal, 27–28; cf. McLoughlin, 150; James Leo Garrett, Baptist Theology: A Four-Century Study (Macon, GA: Mercer University Press, 2009), 162. [↩]
16. McLoughlin, 149. [↩]
17. Hunter Baker, The End of Secularism (Wheaton: Crossway, 2009), 106–107. [↩]
18. Harvard professor Michael Sandel comments, “Asking democratic citizens to leave their moral and religious convictions behind when they enter the public realm may seem a way of ensuring toleration and mutual respect. In practice, however, the opposite can be true. Deciding important public questions while pretending to a neutrality that cannot be achieved is a recipe for backlash and resentment. A politics emptied of substantive moral engagement makes for an impoverished civic life. … To achieve a just society we have to reason together about the meaning of the good life, and to create a public culture hospitable to the disagreements that will inevitably arise” (Michael J. Sandel, Justice: What’s the Right Thing to Do? [New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2009], 243, 261). [↩]