In recent weeks, there’s been quite a dustup over a recently released book in which R. Albert Mohler Jr., president of The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, argues that “the government has the full right to restrict and punish blasphemy.” Not only was this an about-face from the position Mohler expressed previously, but, some have argued, it puts him at odds with the Southern Baptist Convention’s Baptist Faith and Message 2000. Then, in a new piece released earlier this week, Mohler retracted his support for blasphemy laws, saying, “I blew it.”
Let’s untangle some of the historical, legal, theological, and ecclesiological issues presented by blasphemy laws in order to understand why support for such laws falls well outside the Baptist consensus.
Anglicanism and Blasphemy
Blasphemy was first recognized as a crime under English common law in 1676 against a political backdrop that included the merger of church and state. The Church of England had been formed in 1534 with parliament’s passage of the Act of Supremacy, which established King Henry VIII as the head of the church in a break from the papacy. But a power struggle between the Crown and parliament over control of the church led to the English Civil War that broke out in 1642 and continued intermittently until 1651. Amid this armed conflict, parliament convened the Westminster Assembly to draft a unified standard of worship, doctrine, and church government.
The Westminster Confession of Faith that emerged from this assembly in 1646 was approved by the English parliament in an amended form (known as the Articles of Christian Religion) in 1648. Fearing clerical supremacy, parliament removed paragraph IV of chapter 20 from the Confession, which had recognized the authority of the church, in addition to the civil magistrate, to punish subjects for the “publishing of such opinions . . . as are contrary . . . to the known principles of Christianity.”
Instead, parliament retained paragraph III of chapter 23, which affirmed the magistrate’s authority and duty “to take order . . . that the truth of God be kept pure and entire; that all blasphemies and heresies be suppressed; all corruptions and abuses in worship and discipline prevented or reformed; and all the ordinances of God duly settled, administered, and observed.” Accordingly, parliament ensured that the suppression of heresy was a political and legal function, rather than a theological issue to be administered by an independent church.
Parliament ensured that the suppression of heresy was a political and legal function, rather than a theological issue to be administered by an independent church.
As the Civil War subsided, parliament passed a series of laws—together known as the Clarendon Code—that persecuted in various ways anyone practicing religion outside the Church of England. One such law imposed fines or imprisonment on attendees at religious services of more than five people held outside the Church of England, the theory being that such an assembly was “seditious.” The persecution of dissenters continued with passage of the Test Act of 1673, requiring all civil and military officeholders to take an oath of allegiance to the Church of England. The Test Act was so named because it established a “test” of religious conformity to hold government office.
It was against this political and ecclesiastic backdrop that, in 1676, Matthew Hale decided Taylor’s Case, which recognized blasphemy as an English common law crime. John Taylor, a farmer, was accused of verbally attacking Christ in language too vile even to recite here. Chief Justice Hale found Taylor guilty of blasphemy, explaining that “blasphemous words [a]re not only an offense to God and religion,” but also “dissolve[d] all those obligations whereby the civil societies are preserved” because “Christianity is parcel of the laws of England; and therefore to reproach the Christian religion is to speak in subversion of the law.” In other words, church and state having been wedded, blasphemy “tends to dissolution of all government.”
During that same century, Baptist churches first emerged in England and took a different path of political theology. The first Baptist church in England was formed by Thomas Helwys in 1612 as a dissenter assembly from the official state church. Helwys was an ardent defender of religious liberty, “for men’s religion to God is between God and themselves. The king shall not answer for it. Neither may the king be judge between God and man.”
Accordingly, the English Baptists rejected the state’s authority to proscribe blasphemy and heresy. As Helwys put it, the king had no power to punish “heretics . . . in the least measure.” When the Second London Baptist of Confession of Faith was adopted in 1689, it was largely modeled after the Westminster Confession but with some notable edits, including the exclusion of both paragraph IV of chapter 20 (which became chapter 21) and paragraph III of chapter 23 (which became chapter 24) regarding the authority of the civil magistrate to ensure religious conformity and to punish blasphemy and heresy.
Blasphemy in America
A romanticized story is often told, usually around Thanksgiving, about how English Separatists ultimately fled to America (via Holland) seeking religious liberty. In fact, those pilgrims—who weren’t Baptists—came to America for (their) religious freedom, but not religious liberty (for all). The Massachusetts Bay Colony promptly made blasphemy a capital offense in its 1641 legal code.
Ultimately, every American colony had elements of established religion, and nearly all the colonies criminalized blasphemy. Rhode Island—founded by (momentary) Baptist minister Roger Williams—stood alone in its freedom of expression, including blasphemous speech. But Baptist influence continued to grow in the new colonies.
It would be more than a century until the U.S. Constitutional Convention opened in Philadelphia on May 25, 1787, with the resulting Constitution signed in September and sent to the states for ratification. At the same time, American Presbyterians convened in Philadelphia on May 28, 1787, to debate alterations to the Westminster Confession of Faith, specifically of chapters 20 and 23 and its discussion of the authority of the civil magistrate.
The amended chapter 20 removed the language authorizing the civil magistrate to punish the publishing of erroneous religions opinions, while paragraph III of chapter 23 (which Baptists had stricken in toto from the Second London Baptist Confession) was wholly rewritten to eliminate the authority of the civil magistrate to punish blasphemy and heresy. These alterations were formally adopted by a synod a year later, in May 1788, just weeks before the ninth state ratified the U.S. Constitution.
Many Baptists had opposed ratification of the Constitution because it lacked an explicit religious liberty protection. Ratification by Virginia was an open question in early 1788, due in large part to opposition by Baptist minister John Leland as well as the state’s Baptist General Committee. Leland, in particular, had been an ardent defender of the right of “every man [to] speak freely without fear—maintain the principles that he believes—worship according to his own faith, . . . and let government protect him in so doing.” To seal the deal for ratification in Virginia, James Madison promised to introduce a bill of rights when the first federal Congress convened.
Many Baptists opposed ratification of the U.S. Constitution because it lacked an explicit religious liberty protection.
True to his word, Madison introduced a series of constitutional amendments (including what became the First Amendment) that were approved by Congress in September 1789. The result was a political and legal context at the federal level that differed from the context in which Taylor’s Case had been decided in England. The U.S. Constitution, as amended, expressly forbade political tests for office and prohibited an established state church at the federal level.
But Madison’s amendments, which we know as the Bill of Rights, limited only the powers of the federal government (“Congress shall make no law”) and, as the Supreme Court quickly confirmed, had no application to the power of the states. At the same time, the First Amendment prohibited the federal government from precluding established religion in the states.
In fact, some states continued to require religious tests for political office, impose taxes for the support of churches, and occasionally punish blasphemy under their criminal law into the early years of the 19th century. But for the most part, established religion at the state level was eradicated by 1844, by which time blasphemy prosecutions had almost entirely passed as well.
Southern Baptists and Blasphemy
Around that same time, the Southern Baptist Convention (SBC) was founded (1845). Consistent with Baptists’ historical opposition to religious establishment and their defense of religious liberty, the SBC has opposed blasphemy laws, both explicitly and implicitly.
From the 1925 version through the 2000 version of the SBC’s Baptist Faith and Message (BF&M), the Convention has consistently affirmed its belief that “the state has no right to impose penalties for religious opinions of any kind” and that people have “the right to form and propagate opinions in the sphere of religion without interference by the civil power.” As the BF&M 2000 puts it, “Church and state should be separate.”
In a commentary on the BF&M 2000 coauthored by Mohler, the authors were emphatic that “no church is to be preferred [by the state] over another,” and “legislation favoring one denomination or one religion more than others is foreign to the Baptist conception.” It’s hard to see how this language could allow for criminal laws punishing speech blaspheming Christianity, which would necessarily amount to the law favoring Christianity more than other religions.
It should come as no surprise, then, that no resolution adopted by the SBC has ever called for governmental punishment of blasphemy, and the only resolution to address the question “reject[ed] any government coercion or enforcement of religious belief, including blasphemy laws.” And Mohler has previously written passionately in opposition to blasphemy laws.
The freedom to speak against current cultural dogmas protects us today, allows us to push for change tomorrow, and ensures we can spread the gospel that alone will save in the end.
So how did Mohler arrive at his support of blasphemy laws? At the root of his argument is a position that Baptists have historically resisted: compelled religious acknowledgment. As Mohler puts it in the book, “Acknowledgment of the essentially Christian character and foundational conviction of the national government” should be requisite for citizenship or public office.
Yet religious acknowledgments, albeit of a different sort, were precisely what the British Crown used to exclude dissenting Baptists and other Separatists from participation in civil government in the 1600s. Once one accepts the propriety of governmentally compelled religious acknowledgment, contrary to more than four centuries of Baptist teaching that “God alone is Lord of the conscience,” it’s a short step to affirming blasphemy laws. As Mohler put it, “The law should restrict and punish blasphemy as a threat to the civil order” and “undermin[ing] the legitimacy of the state and nation.”
In his new piece this week, Mohler attributes his support of blasphemy laws to his “argu[ing] for blasphemy laws to be effectively redefined in the context of constitutional acknowledgment.” In fact, Mohler defines blasphemy as Chief Justice Hale did, echoing the reasoning Hale used to recognize the common law crime of blasphemy in 1676—namely, that blasphemy is seditious to the religious state. Mohler’s foundational error, from a historical Baptist perspective, was not redefining blasphemy but rather imposing what is, in effect, a religious test (“acknowledgment”) for public office and full citizenship.
Freedom to Speak
As should be evident, support for blasphemy laws would be, at a minimum, out of step with Baptist history if not also the SBC’s BF&M 2000. In a culture increasingly hostile to the Christian faith, it would be foolish in the extreme for Baptists to abandon their tradition in favor of government power to punish dissenters.
The freedom to speak against current cultural dogmas protects us today, allows us to push for change tomorrow, and ensures we can spread the gospel that alone will save in the end. Maranatha.
The Gospel Coalition