Walter Shurden on Baptists and Keith Ellison
The swearing-in controversy over congressman-elect Keith Ellison's decision to use the Koran in his ceremony has lit a fire under Walter Shurden, writing in the newest issue of Mercer University's Baptist Studes Bulletin. Then again, I think Dr. Shurden's fire stays lit always...
Of all people―OF ALL PEOPLE―we Baptists ought to understand and endorse Ellison's call for free expression of religion! Our ancestors went to jail for that kind of freedom! Our ancestors suffered idiotic indignities for that kind of freedom. Our ancestors struggled for a century and a half in this country for that kind of freedom!! Some of our ancestors suffered physical abuse for that kind of freedom.Read the whole thing.
Do we Baptists not remember any of our history at all? Have we really forgotten the sorry saga of Roger Williams being chased out of Massachusetts by Christian zealots and his subsequent heroic founding of Rhode Island where religious freedom could flourish? Have we forgotten the sad tale of Baptist fathers John Clarke, Obadiah Holmes, and John Crandall being jailed for conducting a worship service in a blind man's house in Lynn, MA? Have we forgotten Obadiah Holmes' bloody whipping on the streets of Boston? Do we not remember that long list of jailed Baptist ministers in eighteenth century Virginia?