John Clarke and the Complications of Liberty

In the historiography of English and American Baptist movements there is no more familiar convention than this: Baptists early and late championed freedom of the religious conscience, rejected the use of force in spiritual affairs, and, either expressly or by implication, accepted the corollary of religious pluralism. With few exceptions, modern scholars have either assumed or implied by the logic of their arguments that the historic Baptist commitment to religious liberty was not only strong but categoric. By implication also, it did not evolve but arose full blown in the initial Anglo-American Baptist insurgency itself in the seventeenth century. To take one example: in a chapter-length treatment of the “struggle for religious liberty,” a currently authoritative history of American Baptists affirms that colonial Baptists “led other dissenters in championing the cause of religious liberty” and the separation of church and state. Then as later, the advocacy of freedom “for persons of all faiths—or no faith” was their “genius.“ Genius—here is the key claim. Liberty of religious choice and practice is joined to conversion or adult baptism as a principle of the faith both original and definitive. Baptist intoleration in any form becomes a virtual oxymoron.