For Baptists in the United States, the question of whether America is a Christian nation is as urgent as ever. As Obbie Todd demonstrates in Let Men Be Free, the key to answering this question—predicated on the foundational Baptist belief in religious liberty—requires delving into the formative early years of the Republic.

The book considers the “diversity of the Baptist program” for religious liberty (p. xv). An excerpt encapsulates the apparent contradiction between the Baptist quest to excise ecclesiastical bodies from the American government and Baptist patriotism and political activism. “Baptists today,” writes Todd, “are often accused of yoking themselves with political leaders who diverge significantly from their beliefs, but such conditions have always been a mainstay in Baptist–and American–politics. Indeed, without these coalitions the First Amendment would not have been possible” (p. xvi). A bold and robust claim, the author devotes eight chapters to showing how this unfolded, what has changed, and what has remained.

In the first chapter, “The Baptist Quest for Religious Liberty,” Todd provides evidence of surprisingly diverse Baptist views on religious liberty. He notes, “For some, it was simply the lack of preferential treatment of any one Protestant denomination. For others, it was the free exercise of religion without any support for the state whatsoever.” Two influential New England Baptists, Isaac Backus and John Leland typified this divide. Backus, a Federalist, believed in a “sweet harmony” between church and state (p. 7), while Leland went as far as to claim that Muslims should be granted equal rights as Protestant Christians (p. 31). Todd shows that most Baptists felt the tension between the ideal of a Christian legislator and the logical, if politically realist, position defended by Leland.

Patriotism among Baptists was, in the author’s own words, “a kind of patriotism-under-protest” (p. 36). Contrary to popular opinion, some Baptists were accused of being unpatriotic on the eve of the Revolution. Opposition to taxation for the Congregational ministry aroused suspicion that they were British loyalists. Henry Sharp, for example, a deacon at a Baptist church near Savannah, who freed George Liele, America’s first black Baptist missionary, died fighting for the crown (p. 41). The majority of Baptists, however, proved fervent patriots whose pastors served as military chaplains. Todd notes that scholars have not dealt with how patriotism among Baptists developed after the Revolutionary War and proposes that “Baptists walked a fine line between persecution and patriotism, between manifest destiny and marginalization” (p. 50).

In chapter 3, Todd explains how Baptist primacy on conscience—whose freedom was believed to be imperiled by state-supported churches—made theological enemies political allies (p. 63). Baptist partisans waded deep into politics, in the case of John Leland, to the highest levels of the American government. Granted, Federalist Baptists believed in religious liberty like their Republican brethren. Todd summarizes the reason for their respective divergence. “In general, Baptist Republicans emphasized the restraint of government and the importance of individual rights while the Baptist Federalists stressed the responsibility of government and the importance of public virtue” (p. 72).

These lesser-known Baptist Federalists, the subject of the book’s fourth chapter, “sought to curtail the democratization and atomization of American society.” Although they opposed established state religion, they believed in the necessity of a “reputable, virtuous, ecumenical class” (p. 84). Herein lies Todd’s contribution to Baptist scholarship: that a significant number of Baptists in the republic desired that Christianity pervade American culture and were revolted by the French Revolution, and that their longest enduring contribution was educational institutions—Brown University being the earliest and most elite (p. 97).

With respect to liberty for enslaved black Americans, Todd remarks that “white Baptists were more hopeful than helpful” (p. 102). Only one Baptist congregation in Ashfield opposed slavery before the War of Independence. Baptists, therefore, maintained an “awkward stance” on slavery (p. 104). Diligent in ministering to blacks to the degree that detractors claimed they were sympathetic to abolition, Baptists in the border south favored colonization, while those in the deep south increasingly opposed even this proposal. Interestingly, two of the nineteenth century’s most renowned Baptist leaders, Richard Furman and John Leland, cited Scripture and John Locke to defend, respectively, enslavement and abolition (pp. 110–14). Locke’s writings were cited as supporting native Americans’ retention of rights to their land and, conversely, forfeiture via their failure to cultivate land in the “state of nature” (pp. 120–28). Evan Jones, an influential Baptist missionary to the Cherokee, who personally walked the Trail of Tears, was a denominational outlier.

Chapter 6 considers the interplay between westward expansion, education, and missions. “Missions and education,” Todd notes, “were inextricable in early Baptist politics because both were grounded in a particular vision of the United States that sought to establish civil religion alongside freedom of religion” (p. 142). Bitter debates among other voluntary societies that promoted temperance or printed Bibles stemmed from differing views on religious liberty. A simmering populism was arguably as much a catalyst as theology for such acrimony.

The last two chapters illustrate how Baptists were integrated into American life—no longer maligned as the “madmen of Munster.” For example, William B. Johnson, one of the founders of the Triennial Convention, preached in St. Louis Cathedral in 1817 at the behest of a Catholic priest (p. 166). Todd deftly narrates between Baptists who valued education and moved into the upper echelons of society and the rural and working-class Baptists, suspicious of opulence and ecumenicism—a divide that arguably remains to the present.

Debate over politics and religion is perennial, yet books on politics and religion do not always age well. Obbie Todd’s Let Men Be Free, however, is germane to contemporary political discourse, for the author persuasively argues that the principal issues in our historical epoch have an old pedigree.

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