Written by Don Byrd
Baptist writer, minister, activist and icon Will D. Campbell died yesterday at the age of 88. He was a staunch advocate for the Baptist heritage of church-state separation. In an interview with the Wittenburg Door to discuss the re-release of his novel The Glad River, Campbell said this:
I think that Baptist heritage and history have been so badly waylaid and hijacked in recent years, and so scandalously politicized, that most who call themselves Baptist—I speak here of my own Southern Baptists—have no idea where they came from.
…
I know who Issac Backus and John Leland were. I know that they were Baptists of the Colonies, and the First Amendment to the Constitution was their idea and that without them the notion of separation of Church and State, that notion that is being so dangerously threatened by the revisionists, would not have been. And I know who Roger Williams was. The Baptist hijackers want Church and State to be one, and they are wrong. But, regrettably, they are prevailing.
Rest in peace, Reverend Campbell.
