A Baptist Case For The Freedom To Marry

I know, I know. You hear the word Baptist and you think of exclusionary televangelists or some tiny church in Kansas with colorful signs. I am constantly telling people I’m not THAT kind of Baptist. 

I am the kind of Baptist who loves freedom, even the freedom of our Baptist forbearers. 

I also believe that granting the freedom to marry is a very Baptist thing to do.

There was a time in our nation’s history that Baptists were a minority. Unlike the Congregationalists who had Connecticut or the Episcopalians who had New York or the Quakers who had Pennsylvania or the Catholics who had Maryland, we Baptists were on the fringes of the religious life in the colonies. We were relegated with other nonconformists to Rhode Island where we could do the least harm. 

But when it came time to ratify our constitution, Baptists stood up and said, what about us?

What if we don’t want to pay taxes to the Congregationalist church? What if we don’t want to have our children indoctrinated with Lutheran theology at their schools? What if we didn’t see God as an extension of the state?

So it was Baptists that insisted on the freedom of religion in the constitution. We wanted to make sure that no one spoke for us. 

Current laws restricting marriage to only heterosexual couples limits the free exercise of our religion. It is the state telling us what to believe.

Limiting freedom is antithetical to a Baptist identiy.

Freedom is our lifeblood as Baptists.  It’s part of our DNA. Denying marriage rights to any one class of people ought to make Baptists at least a bit uneasy. I want to talk about four freedoms that Baptists hold dear and then you tell me if they lead you to believe that the state ought to have its hands in limiting the freedom for two people who love each other to marry. 

The four freedoms are soul freedom, Bible freedom, church freedom and religious freedom.

First soul freedom. We believe that each person is a holy soul and has direct access to God. We don’t need an intermediary like a priest to give a blessing. Our souls are free. This means that each person has a right and a responsibility to work out their own salvation with fear and trembling.

Baptists fought and died for the right to believe as they saw fit, which often meant rebaptizing people as believers, and doing so when they knew that it would be a treasonous act. 

Baptists have always been courageous and we take that from our soul freedom—knowing that God walks with us in our triumphs and our tragedies. That’s soul freedom.

Then we have Bible freedom. Each Baptist has the right and responsibility to interpret the scriptures for themselves. It makes no sense for a Baptist to parrot what someone else says if we have not done our own study. We are people of the book who take the Bible seriously. Seriously enough to look at it with a critical and inspirational eye. 

We expect there to be different interpretations of the scripture.

Scripture is best used when we engage it in love and respect the freedom of others to interpret it differently. The word of God is not simply a book.

When people read the Bible with the Holy Spirit as the guide and the community as a sounding board, they find the word of God for their lives. Just because I’m a pastor doesn’t mean you should believe just like me just because I said so. 

Make up your own mind. And respect the freedom of your sisters and brothers to disagree with you.

That’s Bible freedom.

A good Baptist will advocate for their interpretation of scripture and defend your right to interpret it differently. 

Current law restricting marriage codifies one interpretation of scripture. That ought to make every Baptist a bit uneasy.

The next freedom is church freedom. This grows out of soul freedom and Bible freedom. All of our churches are governed differently. Just as no one can tell another Baptist what to believe, no one can tell a Baptist church who to choose for its leaders, what kind of policies to adopt and who it can marry within its walls.

We are free to make mistakes and do achieve great triumphs because of our freedom.

Imagine if during the civil rights movement, Baptist churches needed to get permission from a larger body before doing their good work.

The freedom of the local congregation is the genius of the Baptist experiment.

So, we have soul freedom, Bible freedom, church freedom and finally religious freedom. It just makes sense that we ought to be able to freely practice our religion without the coercion of the state.

Baptist preacher John Leland made sure that religious freedom was part of our constitution. 

Hear what he said at the birth of our nation:

Government should protect every man in thinking and speaking freely, and see that one does not abuse another. The liberty I contend for is more than toleration. The very idea of toleration is despicable; it supposes that some have a pre-eminence above the rest to grant indulgence, whereas all should be equally free, Jews, Turks, Pagans and Christians.

He wrote that in 1790.

In a time when colonial states had religions, Leland wrote:

These establishments metamorphose the church into a creature, and religion into a principle of state, which has a natural tendency to make men conclude that Bible religion is nothing but a trick of state.

We ought to be using our best energy to protect freedom, to stand on the side of love, to establish and support healthy families, to live as Jesus taught us: to love God with all our heart, soul, strength and mind and to love our neighbor as ourself.

As the hymnwriter said:

Though the cause of evil prosper,
yet ‘tis truth alone is strong. 
Truth forever on the scaffold,
wrong forever on the throne. 
Yet that scaffold sways the future,
and behind the dim unknown
standeth truth within the shadow
keeping watch above God’s own.

As good Baptists it is our duty to protect freedom. For once freedom starts being restricted, it is a slippery slope that leads to abuse and persecution. None of us want that.

That’s why this Baptist will advocate for equality in marriage for all couples.

Let me close with one more quote from John Leland:

Is conformity of sentiments in matters of religion essential to the happiness of civil government? Not at all. Government has no more to do with the religious opinions of men than it has with the principles of mathematics. Let every man speak freely without fear–maintain the principles that he believes–worship according to his own faith, either one God, three Gods, no God, or twenty Gods; and let government protect him in so doing.

I have been a pastor for over 23 years. I have officiated at dozens of weddings over my career.  Most of them have been opposite sex marriages and many have been same-sex marriages. 

Each time I preside at a wedding gay or straight, I find that my marriage to my wife is fortified and enhanced. Love begets love. 

Granting the freedom to marry the love of one’s life enhances love and stabilizes society. Heck, it’s conservative.

I stand by the freedom of those who love each other and who are committed to the sacrifice and gift of marriage.

I declare that all ought to have those brave unions recognized by the state.

Originally posted by the Association of Welcoming & Affirming Baptists