Sunday, April 6, 2014

Religious Liberty Defined

Jefferson radically supported religious freedom—for this we are grateful—but there was a flaw in his political opinion. He thought and hoped loss of state help would end the church as it was then known, especially the established Anglican Church.  He hoped all would eventually be Unitarians.


Jefferson had no clue the Baptists he agreed with on religious liberty, would become, along with Methodists, a tidal wave unleashed to make Bible Christianity a force to be reckoned with in the USA. When state support ended, every pastor became an entrepreneur, having to find a way to survive or die. Most of them endured and succeeded. This resulted in fertile soil being created for the explosive growth of Bible Christianity in the USA.


Commitment to religious liberty remains a high priority in the USA. The State Department's 2010 Report on International Religious Freedom clarified our nation's understanding of religious freedom as including "the right to raise one's children in one's faith, to share one's faith peacefully with others, to publish religious materials without censorship, to change one's religion—by choice, not coercion, and to practice no religion at all."