by Bruce T. Gourley
Published September/October 2015
(Baptist Studies Bulletin Archives Index)
To the shores of America Syrian immigrants are coming soon, Muslim refugees viewed with fear, loathing and hatred by many conservative Christians. Surely, the new arrivals intend to transform the “Judeo-Christian nation” into a potpourri of pluralism. “Do we shoot them?” someone asks.
The same fear, loathing and hatred greeted yesteryear’s Baptist immigrants. In early colonial America, theocratic Christian officials and thugs beat, whipped, tortured and imprisoned Baptists for heresy.
Why were Baptists despised by Christian colonial leaders? Religious freedom applied to the majority only, a liberty to dictate the beliefs and actions of all citizens. Baptists, however, refused to conform. Instead, they advocated for the unthinkable in a pre-Enlightenment era — freedom of conscience for everyone, religious liberty for all, and church state separation. The state, Baptists insisted, should be secular, equally accommodating of all religions, yet neither dependent upon nor supportive of any.
Baptists of yesteryear and Muslims of today, threats to traditional Christian hegemony.
Baptists of yesteryear eventually won their battle for freedom for all, their principles enshrined in the First Amendment to the United States Constitution, separating church from state. Today’s American Muslims, beneficiaries of Baptist victories of old, have the same rights of conscience and religious liberty as do all other Americans.
Except that they don’t … in the fantasy world of many majoritarian contemporary Christians, including, incredulously, far too many Baptists.
It is here that the story becomes especially contorted.
Tragically and inexplicably, a large segment of American Christianity is committed to the same basic pre-Enlightenment national religious ideology as are many fundamentalist Muslims throughout the world. Christians insistent that America is a “Judeo-Christian nation” and Muslim extremists violently devoted to Sharia Law drink from the same common religious well: the biblical Old Testament.
Today’s Religious Right demands that America uphold Old Testament law, the root of Islamic Sharia law. Christian and Muslim fundamentalists alike insist that nations honor the God of the Old Testament and enforce Old Testament sexual and gender laws. Both in their respective majoritarian homelands reserve full religious freedom for themselves only, an exclusionary freedom allowing them to discriminate, persecute and, in some instances, resort to violence against their ideological opponents.
Against this backdrop, more and more Muslims come to America in order to escape pre-Enlightenment ideology. Here they enjoy freedom of conscience and religious liberty for all. Here they are free from Muslim extremists demanding conformity. Here they live in a nation that does not allow violence in the name of religion. And yet here they encounter Christian fundamentalists who … demand that America conform to their ideology.
Thus we return to the current fear among many conservative Christians of Muslim immigrants. Little do they realize that their own religious ideology shares inherent similiarities with the extremist Islamists from whom many Muslims are fleeing.
By a significant majority, Muslim immigrants bring to America a progressive version of Islam. Reflecting patterns among American Christianity at large, most American Muslims recognize the validity of multiple interpretations of their scriptures, more are embracing gender and sexual rights and equality, and acceptance of pluralism is widespread.
In effect, the American experience ushers Muslims into the modern world, a push back against religious extremism that ultimately cannot help but ripple throughout the pre-Enlightenment Muslim world beyond America’s borders.
American Christians, and especially Baptists, can do their part by actively upholding church state separation, modeling a commitment to religious liberty for all, and celebrating freedom of conscience for all. Equally important is the condemnation, in America, of government favoritism of any one or all religions and violence in the name of religion.
Ironically, the existential challenge that Muslim immigrants pose for American Christians is the bigoted temptation, on the part of some, to exhibit the same violent behavior as colonial establishment Christians practiced against early Baptists, and today’s Muslim extremists deploy against perceived heretics within and without their own faith.
Baptists came to colonial America with a New Testament faith of freedom and equality. Contemporary Christians would best be served by evidencing the same such faith.
Some Southern Baptists of today agree. Speaking to the current uproar over Muslim refugees in his home state, D. J. Hoton, recent president of the South Carolina (Southern) Baptist Convention noted, “It’s very hard to read your Bible, especially your New Testament, and refuse refuge to people who are vulnerable.”