Resource Page for Virginia Baptists
We’re so glad you’re here! BJC (Baptist Joint Committee for Religious Liberty) is proud to be part of the Baptist General Association of Virginia’s annual meeting, and we created this special resource page just for you!
Whether you’re new to BJC or have known us for a while, we want to share some updates on our work and offer new ways to connect with us. And, don’t forget to visit our booth to share your Baptist heritage hero and play BGAV bingo with us.
What is BJC?
Rooted in a Baptist commitment to soul liberty, we are building a movement toward a just society that cultivates and expands religious freedom for all.
BJC brings our uniquely Baptist perspective — that every person stands free before God, without compulsion from church or state — to our work protecting religious freedom for everyone.
Through our local groups we stand with the people where they are, in their communities. Through our policy and legal work, we advance religious freedom in legislatures and courts nationwide. Through our education work, we meet people where they are, providing resources and training to equip every generation to advance religious freedom for all.
Resources For Churches and Ministers
Looking for something specific? Here are three resources for you and your congregation.
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Clergy Touchpoint: Nov. 12
Pastoral ministry is especially demanding right now, as clergy lead their congregations to respond faithfully to threats to religious freedom. Let’s talk more — join our growing community of pastors and ministry leaders who gather online through our Clergy Quarterly Touchpoints. Our next one is Thursday, Nov. 12, from noon to 1:30 p.m. ET.
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Join Our Local Group in Virginia
Christians in Central Virginia are working to form a local group to help educate citizens about the issues which threaten our religious freedom. The work is just beginning, but we invite you to sign up to be on the email list and be informed as events and campaigns are planned.
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New Course for Congregations
“Faith, Power, and Politics: Cultivating Religious Liberty as a Christian” is a new six-session course for small groups, inviting Christians to consider the intersections of faith, power, and politics in U.S. society. We believe that, in contrast to Christian nationalism, cultivating religious liberty offers a foundation to foster a just society that ensures dignity, pluralism, and democracy for all.
By J. Brent Walker
A Tribute to Virginia Baptists
Many of you are well aware of the importance of the Virginia experience — Thomas Jefferson’s famous Statute and James Madison’s magnificent Memorial — in disestablishing the Anglican Church and in providing religious liberty for all; indeed, Virginia’s successes provided the foundation for the American experiment in religious liberty that finds full flower in the First Amendment. Some may not appreciate, however, the important contribution made by Baptists along with Jefferson and Madison and other Founders.
In Colonial Virginia, Baptist preachers (along with other dissenters) were required to obtain a license in order to preach. And if they refused (as most did), they could be horse whipped, fined or forced to cool their heels in one of Virginia’s dank and dingy jails.
John “Swearing Jack” Waller (a pre-conversion nickname no doubt) was mercilessly whipped by authorities in Caroline County and spent 113 days in four separate jails.
James Ireland was jailed in Culpeper, Va., where he continued to preach through the bars while his hands were blooded by knife-wielding detractors seeking to resist his gesticulations.
Elijah Craig was charged with disturbing the peace and jailed in Orange County. (Later he moved to Kentucky where he adopted a more peaceful work of distilling bourbon whiskey.)
I could name many more. Why tell the stories of these courageous preachers? Because their suffering inspired James Madison to do something about what he called “that diabolical hell-conceived principle of persecution….” It was the witness of Baptist preachers in the face of horrendous persecution that gave Madison the necessary genes to become the father of our Constitution and oppose religious establishments and the persecution they wrought.
But it wasn’t just their example. Baptists also lobbied Madison to go beyond disestablishing the Anglican church to spell-out protection for religious liberty in a Bill of Rights to the Constitution he was siring. John Leland, an itinerant Baptist evangelist preaching in Virginia during that heady decade of the 1780s, played an integral role in convincing Madison of the need for a provision in the Bill of Rights protecting religious freedom. In fact, it is said that Leland and Madison met just outside of Orange, Va., on the Fredericksburg Road and made a bargain that bore fruit in the First Amendment. Leland agreed not to oppose Madison’s bid to be a delegate to the Constitutional convention if Madison would promise to seek specific guarantees for religious liberty. (You can go to that very spot today and visit LelandMadison park.)
Madison came through on his promise and two years later wrote the first 16 words of the First Amendment: “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof.” It is in that tradition of promoting religious liberty and pressuring the powers that be for a robust understanding of those two clauses that Baptist Joint Committee labors for today.
-From “Baptist Contributions to Religious Liberty” by J. Brent Walker, published in the January 2011 edition of BJC’s Report from the Capital
