Political Sermons of the American Founding Era: 1730–1805: In Two Volumes

11. An Appeal to the Public for Religious Liberty [1773]

- - I I - AN APPEAL TO THE PUBLIC FOR RELIGIOUS LIBERTY Isaac Backus BOSTON I 7 7 3 ISAAC BACKUS (I724-I8o6). Born in the village of Yantic in Norwich township, Connecticut, Backus converted to Christianity in I74I as a result of the Great Awakening preaching of the theologian Eleazar Wheelock. For the decade prior to I756, when he settled in Middleborough , Massachusetts, Backus was a separatist Congregationalist . From I756, he was pastor of the Middleborough First Baptist Church until his death. He is ranked with Roger Williams, John Leland , Thomas Jefferson, and James Madison as a preeminent figure in the establishing of freedom of conscience in America. In William G. McLoughlin's words, Backus "was the most forceful and effective writer America produced on behalf of the pietistic or evangelical theory of separation of church and state" (Isaac Backus on Church, State, and Calvinism: Pamphlets, 1754-IJ81) [Cambridge, Mass., I968], p. I). Intellectually, the chief attainment of Backus was his idea that "religion is ever a matter between God and individuals" (as he stated in I783). Institutionally, his major accomplishment was the cultivation of the role of the Baptist church, and the religious sphere generally, as outside the jurisdiction of civil magistracy. As an evangelist-statesman , Backus preached the gospel far and wide; he calculated that during the period I748 to I802 he had made 9I8 trips longer than ten miles each and traveled a total of 68,6oo miles, mostly on horseback. Backus was a trustee of Brown University from I765 to I799· He served as an "agent" for the Warren Association from r77r onward, looking after all Baptist interests, somewhat like a modern lobbyist. In that capacity, he conferred with the delegates to the First Continental Congress in I774 in Philadelphia, upholding religious liberty, for Baptists in his day had suffered imprisonment for their views and practices. A supporter of the Revolution, he afterwards continued his battle for liberty of conscience in the states of the new Union. He served as a delegate from Middleborough to the Massachusetts convention that ratified the federal Constitution in r788. He rejoiced in the coming of the Second Awakening to the Kentucky and Tennessee frontier in the early I8oos, having participated personally in camp meetings a decade earlier in North Carolina and Virginia. He renewed his efforts in the last years of his life to stir the embers of religious revival in New England. p8 AN A p p E A L T 0 T I-IE p U B L I C F 0 R RELIGIOUS LIBER'1-1Y, Againft the Oppreffions of the prefent Day. E~ Isaac .Backus. Brethren, ye have been called unto Liberty ; only ufe not Liberty for an occafion to the Flelh, but by lo\'e ferve one another. GAL. V. 13. BOSTON Printed by joHN BoYLE in Marlborough-Street. MDCCLXXIII. 330 ISAAC BACKUS An Appeal to the Public (1773) is prefaced with an essay on political theory that shows charter rights and divine or supernatural rights to be fundamental to Backus's argument at this stage of his thinking. Natural rights of a Lockean kind he had not yet reconciled with his view of human depravity derived from John Calvin. The body of the piece explores in some detail the problems of church-state relations that so vitally interested Backus and the Baptists. Backus's most famous work is his "Baptist History," or A History of New-England with Particular Reference to the Denomination of Christians Known as Baptists (3 vols.: Boston, 1777-96; 2-vol. rev. ed.: David Weston, 1871). INTRODUCTION nasmuch as there appears to us a real need of such an appeal, we would previously offer a few thoughts concerning the general nature of liberty and government, . and then shew wherein it appears to us, that our religious rights are encroached upon in this land. It is supposed by multitudes, that in submitting to government we give up some part of our liberty, because they imagine that there is something in their nature incompatible with each other. But the word of truth plainly shews, that man first lost his freedom by breaking over the rules of government; and that those who now speak great swelling words about liberty, while they despise government, are themselves servants of corruption. What a dangerous error, yea, what a root of all evil then must it be, for men to imagine that there is any thing...