PERSECUTION OF BAPTISTS IN THE COLONIES
Throughout their long history as a people of faith, Baptists have consistently opposed any diminution of the rights of the individual to seek and to pursue their own faith, or for each person to decide to be without faith if that is the choice. Though Baptists today enjoy considerable respectability in North American society, they have been on the receiving end of state sponsored religious oppression, not occasionally, but frequently.
The First Baptist Church of Boston, Massachusetts was organised on June 7th, 1665, in defiance of two laws which had been passed by the General Court of the colony. One law stated that all persons wishing to form churches must first obtain consent of the "magistrates and elders of the greater part of the churches within this jurisdiction." A second law declared that "if any person or persons within this jurisdiction shall ... condemn or oppose the baptising of infants ... such person or persons shall be subject to banishment."
Thomas Gould, the first pastor of that congregation, and Henry Dunster, a member of the congregation who was also the first President of Harvard College, had each refused to have their babies baptised. Dunster was forced by the General Court to resign his Harvard position because of his refusal to permit his infant child to be baptised. In the years that followed, many members of that congregation were punished by the government for holding to the Baptist "heresy." They were arrested, jailed, publicly beaten, fined and often proscribed from speaking in their own defence.
It is astounding to witness such action by Massachusetts, particularly since the colony was established by Puritans seeking religious freedom. Because a group seeks freedom from persecution does not mean they will not persecute others. Freedom of the conscience is a rare commodity among religious people. Such was the religious climate in the early days of the migration to the New World.
One Sunday in 1680, worshippers found the doors of their church building nailed up by order of the General Court, with the following notice posted:
"All persons are to take notice that by order of the Court the doors of this house are shut up and that they are inhibited to hold any meeting therein or to open the doors thereof, without license from Authority, til the General Court take further order as they will answer the contrary at their peril, dated in Boston 8th March, 1680, by order of the Council."
Undaunted, the congregation met outdoors in the cold and rain. The following Sunday, inexplicably, the doors were found open never again closed by the authorities.
Baptists understand that authority is limited by God from Whom all authority devolves. The social order, as we know it, is dependent upon authority which God has appointed.
(From a sermon by Michael Stark, Authority, 7/23/2011)