Does this stem from a historical difference in the way white Baptists have viewed church-state separation?
For most Baptists, the separation of church and state has never meant the divorce of religion from politics or the stripping of the public square from religious discourse. The antipathy to political engagement historically has been more the hallmark of our Anabaptist cousins than our Baptist forebears. Baptists, from the very beginning, have been willing to be engaged in public life. This has been reflected over the past half century or more in African-American Baptist life. Fundamentalists’ aversion to engaging in the political arena before the 1970s was more an exception to the historical practice of Baptists than an expression of it. Q: Do you envision increasing immigration — and increasing numbers of foreign-born Baptists in our ranks — to further change the way Baptists in the United States interpret their heritage of church-state separation and the First Amendment? A: Baptists from around the world have varying opinions on church-state separation. Many who emigrate from countrie
