A Free Church in a Free State

Galatians 5:1-15
The Sixth Sunday after Pentecost 2010
The Fourth of July

My country, ’tis of thee,
Sweet land of liberty, of thee I sing;
Land where my fathers died,
Land of the pilgrims’ pride,
From every mountainside, let freedom ring.

“Let freedom ring!” On August 28, 1963, the Baptist preacher the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., at the close of one of the most famous speeches in the history of American oratory, combined the words of that familiar patriotic hymn with the words of an old Negro spiritual, “Free at last”: “Free at last! Free at last! I thank God, I’m free at last!” King didn’t know at the time that he was reciting his own epitaph, words that would one day be engraved on his crypt at the King Center in Atlanta. What I don’t know whether King knew or not is that the words of the familiar patriotic hymn he quoted as he stood that day on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial in Washington, D.C., were written by another Baptist preacher, Samuel Francis Smith.

Smith was born in Boston in 1808, and the words he penned, “My Country ’Tis of Thee,” were first performed publicly on the Fourth of July in 1831 at Boston’s Park Street Church. Rev. Smith's hymn quickly became, in effect, the first national anthem of the United States; and it served in that capacity for nearly a century until Congress officially and unfortunately, I think, adopted Francis Scott Key’s poem “The Defence of Fort McHenry” in its place in 1931. On this Fourth of July, 179 years after “My Country ’Tis of Thee” was written by Rev. Smith and 47 summers after Rev. King recited it in his speech, I want us to consider for just a few minutes what those two American songs, “My Country ’Tis of Thee” and “Free at Last,” along with the Paul’s words in Galatians 5, can tell us about a free church in a free state.

In a nutshell, the phrase “a free church in a free state” expresses the religious and political ideal of a commonwealth in which religious communities are unencumbered by state interference or support either one, and the state is free from the control or interference of religious bodies. The origin of the mutual freedom of the church and the state in their relationship with each other is grounded not alone in political theory or philosophy but in theology as well. In Galatians 5, we read some of the apostle Paul’s most stirring words on freedom in all of his writings: Paul writes in v 1, “For freedom Christ has set us free,” He could have written, “Free at last! Free at last! I thank God, we’re free at last!” In v 13 Paul writes, “For you were called to freedom, brothers and sisters.” He could have written, “Let freedom ring!”

He wrote those words in the context of an argument he was making that the essence of the gospel of Jesus Christ is best expressed in living freely and faithfully rather than legalistically and exclusivistically. After Paul had started the church to whom he is writing in the Roman province of Galatia in Asia Minor or modern-day Turkey, other teachers of the Way passed through and convinced at least some members of the congregation that in order to be a follower of Jesus you had to follow Moses. To follow Jesus, they said, it was necessary to observe the dietary restrictions and festivals and seasons and male circumcision that are written in the Torah, the first five books of the Bible. In terminology that fits our day—but not theirs—they said in effect that in order to be Christian you must be Jewish. Paul’s sarcastic response to that kind of legalistic and exclusivistic understanding of the gospel and of the church was to say, “Fine. You want to go that way? Go that way. Go all the way. Cut it off. Cut it all off,” he says in v 12. One widely read religious encyclopedia claims that a free church in a free state means “an emasculated church.” But the apostle Paul had already claimed that metaphor in the first century of the church’s life when he insisted that it is legalism and exclusivism—not freedom—that emasculates.

Now the truth of the matter is, in the grand sweep of the history of religion, we Christians are far more Jewish than most of us will ever understand or admit. Not because we follow the dietary restrictions and the festivals and seasons (though Pentecost is one of them!) or because at least some among us are circumcised. But because Paul’s call to freedom—and ours—is grounded in an understanding of God that is at least as old as Moses, who announced on behalf of God to an oppressive Pharaoh, “Let my people go!” (Exodus 5:1). It is as if Moses said, “Let freedom ring!” Paul’s call to freedom—and ours—is grounded in an understanding of God who announced through a prophet, “Is not this the fast I choose: to loose the bonds of injustice . . . to let the oppressed go free, and to break every yoke?” (Isaiah 58:6). It is as if the prophet said, “Let freedom ring!” Paul’s call to freedom—and ours—is grounded in an understanding of God of whom the psalmist sings, “Happy are those whose help is the God of Jacob, whose hope is in the Lord their God, who made heaven and earth, the sea, and all that is in them; who keeps faith forever; who executes justice for the oppressed; who gives food to the hungry. The Lord sets the prisoners free” (Psalm 146:5-8). It is as if the psalmist said, “Free at last! Free at last! I thank God I’m free at last.” The idea of a free church in a free state is grounded in a profoundly Jewish and Christian understanding of God who sets people free.

The fourth verse of Samuel Francis Smith’s appeals to that understanding of God when the song that begins as a hymn to “America” becomes a prayer to God, “author of liberty, to Thee we sing. Long may our land be bright with freedom’s holy light. Protect us by thy might, Great God our King.” “My Country ’tis of Thee” and “Free at Last” are both reminders that the freedoms that make this country great are grounded in a religious or theological or spiritual impulse that understands the very Creator of the cosmos as the author of liberty. “Liberty and justice for all” is not merely a social contract; it’s a cosmological imperative. The “sweeping statement of human rights” with which the American Declaration of Independence begins, the self-evident truths that all persons “are created equal” and “are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights,” are expressions of Ultimate Reality, not merely political philosophy. The free church in a free state proclaims that God is the author of liberty and the Ultimate Proponent of freedom.

Sadly, in an era in which the name “Baptist” has an overwhelmingly negative connotation among the American public because of a recent penchant among certain Baptists for promoting legalism and exclusivism rather than freedoms, it could be easily overlooked or forgotten that no communion of the Christian faith has done more or suffered more to ensure the freedoms and liberties that all Americans enjoy. On May 16, 1920, another Baptist preacher, a native of western North Carolina, the Rev. George W. Truett, who after his family’s move to Texas in 1889 became pastor of the First Baptist Church of Dallas, stood on the steps of U.S. Capitol and delivered what is widely regarded as one of the finest sermons on religious liberty that has ever been preached. Listen to what Truett said about the Baptist contribution to American government and Western Civilization. It’s couched in the language of the 1920s, but it is no less true for that. Truett said,

the supreme contribution of the new world to the old is the contribution of religious liberty. This is the chiefest contribution that America has thus far made to civilization. And historic justice compels me to say that it was pre-eminently a Baptist contribution. The impartial historian, whether in the past, present or future, will ever agree with our American historian, Mr. [George] Bancroft, when he says: “Freedom of conscience, unlimited freedom of mind, was from the first the trophy of the Baptists.” And such historians will concur with the noble [British philosopher] John Locke who said: “The Baptists were the first propounders of absolute liberty, just and true liberty, equal and impartial liberty."

That’s what Truett said and Bancroft said and Locke said. When we gather in this place to worship God in a congregation whose middle name is “Baptist,” some of us do so with a tinge of discomfort on account of that name. But it is in this place and among this people that you can worship in “freedom of conscience, unlimited freedom of mind,” in “absolute liberty, just and true liberty, equal and impartial liberty.”

Far ahead of his time, George W. Truett went on to address the difference between “toleration” and “right.” Truett said this—and would that it were as true of Baptists in the early 21st century as it was in the early 20th century:

Baptists have one consistent record concerning liberty throughout all their long and eventful history. They have never been a party to oppression of conscience. They have forever been the unwavering champions of liberty, both religious and civil. Their contention now is, and has been, and, please God, must ever be, that it is the natural and fundamental and indefeasible right of every human being to worship God or not, according to the dictates of his conscience, and, as long as he does not infringe upon the rights of others, he is to be held accountable alone to God for all religious beliefs and practices. Our contention is not for mere toleration, but for absolute liberty. There is a wide difference between toleration and liberty. . . . Toleration is a concession, while liberty is a right. Toleration is a matter of expediency, while liberty is a matter of principle. Toleration is a gift from man, while liberty is a gift from God. It is the consistent and insistent contention of our Baptist people, always and everywhere, that religion must be forever voluntary and uncoerced, and that it is not the prerogative of any power, whether civil or ecclesiastical, to compel men to conform to any religious creed or form of worship, or to pay taxes for the support of a religious organization to which they do not belong and in whose creed they do not believe. God wants free worshipers and no other kind.

The next time you are inclined to be embarrassed because you are a Baptist or are associated with Baptists, I hope you will remember that no middle name in all of church history has stood up more strongly or more consistently for “freedom of conscience, unlimited freedom of mind,” for “absolute liberty, just and true . . . , equal and impartial.” That’s why this former Lutheran kid is never embarrassed to be called a “Baptist,” even by people who think I should be. Because I follow in the way of the Rev. Samuel Francis Smith, the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., and the Rev. George W. Truett, who spoke out of and for a way of following Jesus that renders to Caesar what is Caesar’s and renders to God what is God’s (Mark 12:17), and steadfastly refuses to confuse the two.

The idea of a free church in a free state has been called by some “the Christian ideal” and by others “an impracticable dream.” And that intersection of the imperative of the ideal and the impracticableness of the dream brings us back to August 28, 1963, on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial. You may or may not know that the manuscript that the Rev. Dr. King had prepared for that occasion made no reference at all to the most memorable and enduring part of his speech. It was only in the course of his delivery—and late in his remarks, no less—that the great gospel singer Mahalia Jackson called out to King, “Tell them about the dream, Martin! Tell them about the dream!” And so he did. And did he ever. And an impracticable dream became forever linked in American oratory and in American conscience with the imperative of the ideal, “Let freedom ring!” and “Free at last! Free at last!” Ideals and dreams are always considered “impracticable” by some people. But history has shown us again and again that all that ideals and dreams require is individuals and communities with the courage and the fortitude to put them into practice.

And that brings me to a final note on a free church in a free state. Freedom is never free. It’s the most costly human right of all. If you didn’t know it already, Baxter Wynn’s wonderful treatment of “Two Sons of Atlanta” has taught you that Martin Luther King, Jr., grew up in a privileged and affluent family, a family in which college educations and doctoral degrees and European travel were par for the course. King’s family looked a lot like a lot of the best-educated families in our congregation. But I would remind you that when King was assassinated on April 4, 1968, he was in Memphis, TN, standing up for garbage collectors. Garbage collectors. The son of an educated and affluent Atlanta family died for garbage collectors. He died in the course of an effort to give others a character and quality of life that he enjoyed but they did not.

But we have already heard the apostle Paul tell us it should be that way. In Galatians 5:13-14, Paul wrote, “For you were called to freedom, brothers and sisters; only do not use your freedom as an opportunity for self-indulgence, but through love become slaves to one another. For the whole law is summed up in a single commandment, ‘You shall love your neighbor as yourself.’” That’s the law beyond legalism; that’s the gospel beyond exclusivism; and that’s the cost of a free church in a free state.

“Let freedom ring!” so that one day “all the peoples of the earth” can sing, “Free at last! Free at last! Thank God Almighty, we’re free at last!”


This material is Copyrighted © 2010 by Jeffrey S. Rogers. It may be copied or disseminated for non-commercial use, provided this notice is included. The author can be contacted at jeffrogers110@bellsouth.net.