BAPTISTS AND RELIGIOUS LIBERTY – Truett’s message is a mixture of American history, Baptist history, and Biblical doctrine.
REPOST BY: Jon Kammeraad Baptist History Preservation – Facebook
Baptists and Religious Liberty, George Truett | The Reformed Reader
J.H. Spencer Historical Society
July 3, 2023 · BAPTISTS AND RELIGIOUS LIBERTY
On May 16, 1920, George Truett stood on the steps of the United States Capital and delivered the most famous sermon of his life. Truett was then pastor of the First Baptist Church of Dallas, Texas, one of the largest churches in the world. The estimated 15,000 gathered to hear his message included congressmen, Supreme Court justices, cabinet members, military leaders, ambassadors, and multitudes of Baptist church members.
Truett spoke that day on “Religious Liberty.” Below are some quotes from this powerful sermon:
“We shall do well, both as citizens and as Christians, if we will hark back to the chief actors and lessons in the early and epoch-making struggles of this great Western democracy, for the full establishment of civil and religious liberty. Back to the days of Washington and Jefferson and Madison, and back to the days of our Baptist fathers, who have paid such a great price, through the long generations, that liberty, both religious and civil, might have free course and be glorified everywhere.”
“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.”
“Our contention is not for mere toleration, but for absolute liberty. There is a wide difference between toleration and liberty. Toleration implies that somebody falsely claims the right to tolerate. 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 government, 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.”
“On and on was the struggle waged by our Baptist fathers for religious liberty in Virginia, in the Carolinas, in Georgia, in Rhode Island and Massachusetts and Connecticut, and elsewhere, with one unyeilding contention for unrestricted religious liberty for all men, and with never one wavering note. They dared to be odd, to stand alone, to refuse to conform, though it cost them suffering and even life itself. They dared to defy traditions and customs, and deliberately chose the day of non-conformity, even though in many a case it meant a cross. They pleaded and suffered, they offered their protests and remonstrances and memorials, and, thank God, mighty statesmen were won to their contention. Washington and Jefferson and Madison and Patrick Henry, and many others, until at last it was written into our country’s Constitution that church and state must in this land be forever separate and free, that neither must ever trespass upon the distinctive functions of the other. It was pre-eminently a Baptist achievement.”
Truett’s message is a mixture of American history, Baptist history, and Biblical doctrine. It was published by the Southern Baptist Sunday School Board in booklet form. The sermon can be read in its entirety at: https://www.reformedreader.org/baptistsandreligiouslibert…
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