Graceworx Community Church, like many congregations throughout the United States, sees in the secular festivities surrounding Independence Day a natural springboard for reflecting also on the spiritual blessings we enjoy as a nation—the greatest of which, many would argue, is religious liberty.
Yet religious liberty isn’t readily achieved; it isn’t easily protected and preserved, nor is it always fully understood.
For example, the Pilgrims, who came via the Mayflower to Massachusetts in 1620, sought a safe haven where they could live and worship according to their own beliefs. But their commitment to religious liberty was extremely limited.
They wanted religious liberty for themselves. But dissenters were subjected to civil punishments just as severe as the Pilgrims had faced back in England.
In what became the Massachusetts Bay Colony, religion and civil government to a great degree merged. The church played a major role in establishing all rules and laws, and the government played a major role in enforcing them. The results weren’t pretty. People were publicly shamed for religious infractions, locked in stocks and even flogged. And don’t forget the Salem witch trials. Certain aspects of Puritan history make for bleak reading.
But that began to slowly change with the arrival of a Puritan preacher named Roger Williams, a man of deep conviction, indomitable courage and great insight. Williams began preaching that government and religion should be separate.
His views so raised the ire of both religious and government leaders that he was excommunicated from the church and banished from the colony. But instead of being silenced, he became all the more vocal in his call for true religious liberty.
Some 150+ years later, most of the ratifiers of the United States Constitution were committed to Roger Williams’s perspective concerning religious liberty.
Article VI of our Constitution guarantees that “no religious Test shall ever be required as a Qualification to any Office or Public Trust . . . .” And the very first words of the First Amendment in the Bill of Rights, which was added not long after the Constitution’s ratification, says: “Congress shall make no law respecting the establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof.”
In other words, Congress will not make laws that pick winners and losers among our nation’s various faith traditions and denominations within those traditions. And barring truly compelling reasons, Congress will let people live out whatever religious beliefs they hold.
Religious liberty deserves to be celebrated along with all our other outpourings of gratitude on Independence Day.
Upcoming at Graceworx
June 29. In a sermon titled “What Religious Liberty Is and Is Not,” Pastor Jim Coffin will take a nuanced look at how our nation’s founders viewed religious liberty, as well as how their vision is currently in jeopardy.
July 6. Pastor Jim Coffin’s sermon will focus on Luke chapter 4 as part of an extended sermon series on the Gospel of Luke, which will run every Saturday for most of the balance of 2024.
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