Tuesday, February 26, 2013

Champions of Freedom #2

This is the second in my three stories about Baptist Champions of Freedom

In my last blog I mentioned King James 1 who was persecuting Catholics and Puritans, including burning heretics at the stake. He was replaced in 1625 by King Charles 1 who began another campaign of persecution against the Puritans.


Roger Williams was a Church of England minister who left the Church of England to become a Puritan because he became convinced in his beliefs of separation of church and state, so after Charles began his campaign Williams and his wife Mary sailed to America. After challenging the government in Massachusetts Bay in 1635 about the way it tried to regulate religious matters and its appropriation of land from Native Americans, Roger and Mary Williams were banished from the colony.


They headed south from Massachusetts to Rhode Island where they purchased land from the local Naragansett Indians and founded Providence where Williams organised the first Baptist Church in North America. In 1652 Williams wrote a pamphlet entitled “The Bloudy Tenent yet More Bloudy” which discussed the separation of church and state. His work on this subject has been credited by US Presidents, Thomas Jefferson and James Madison as providing the original influence for the first amendment of the US Constitution.


Just as Helwys, who I described in my last blog, was critical to English thinking about religious freedom and freedom of conscience, so Roger Williams, another Baptist, provided the impetus for fresh thinking about religious tolerance in North America and as a result influenced the decision-makers.

Monday, February 18, 2013

Champions of Freedom #1

Understanding our roots is always important to helping us identify where we come from and guiding us into the future. A couple of years ago I ran a series of posts looking at three people I call champions of freedom.  They were significant people in the Baptist movement and highlight one of the distinctives of the Baptist Church since it began in the 17th century, that of religious liberty and freedom of conscience. I am repeating these stories because I think they're worth repeating.

Born in England around 1550, Thomas Helwys joined an independent church at Gainsborough in England at a time when independence was not looked upon favourably by the church-controlled Government. In 1607 the High Court of Ecclesiastical Commission began putting intense pressure on independent churches and a group of people, including Thomas Helwys, made their way to Holland where the first Baptist Church was established by John Smyth.

After some time Helwys became concerned at the persecution of both Catholics and Puritans that was occurring in England under King James (the guy who authorised the translation of the Bible we now call the King James Version) and in 1612 he decided to return to England shortly after Edward Wightman, a Baptist, became the last person in England to be burned at the stake for heresy. Helwys found a publisher for his book, “A Short Declaration on the Mystery of Iniquity” and dedicated a copy of it in his own handwriting, to King James. The Mystery of Iniquity was the first exposition in the English language to fully express the concept of liberty of conscience and religious liberty for all people, including those who claim to have no religious attachment. Helwys was imprisoned for his efforts and probably died in prison.

Monday, February 4, 2013

Happy Birthday Rosa

If she were still alive, Rosa Parks would be 100 today.

Rosa Parks has been described as the "first lady of civil rights" and the "mother of the freedom movement".

On December 1, 1955, in Montgomery, Alabama, Parks refused to obey a bus driver's order to give up her seat in the colored section to a white passenger, after the white section was filled. Her act of defiance and the subsequent boycott of buses in Montgomery became important symbols of the modern Civil Rights Movement.

While history will tell us that Rosa, who was the secretary of the Montgomery branch of the National Association for the Advancement of Coloured People, did not act independently, there is no doubt that her courage to defy widely accepted practices of discrimination was a personal strength and she suffered personally because of what she did.

The great significance of the civil rights movement was that Rosa Parks' actions and others who championed the cause, like Martin Luther King, maintained that non-violence was critical to their cause. Courage and justice not only involved standing up against discrimination, but doing it in a way that was filled with grace.

On Rosa Parks' 100th birthday it is appropriate that we spend a moment to reflect on courage and justice, which are values held by Baptistcare, and what these values mean for us in Western Australia in 2013.