Toleration, Freedom of Religion, and Church-State Relations in the Thought of the First Baptists

This book focuses on the development of Baptist views on religious liberty. It explores the arguments for freedom of conscience and full religious toleration that were formulated in the 17th century by the first Baptists, a particularly persecuted religious current of the English Reformation. The author quotes and comments on fragments of theological treatises and pamphlets by the first London Baptists (Thomas Helwys, John Murton, Leonard Busher, Samuel Richardson, and Christopher Blackwood), as well as those seeking religious freedom in New England (Roger Williams and John Clarke). Whilst the book deals with the history of Baptist doctrine in the field of religious policy, it also offers a commentary on contemporary phenomena in which many groups of this ecclesiastical tradition in the United States play an active and important role (i.e. the so-called New Religious Right). The study is presented at a moment when issues related to the limits of religious freedom, religious tolerance, and relations between church and state are still present in public debate despite ongoing secularization in the Western world. It will be of particular interest to scholars of Baptist and religious history, as well as religion and politics.