Baptist Leader Endorses Catholic Campaign

Just back from a Washington gathering of like-minded Christians from various denominations concerned about potential losses of religious liberty, the Southern Baptist Convention's Richard Land termed an emerging coalition of conservative Catholics and evangelicals "the liberal's nightmare."

Southern Baptists’ top spokesman for religious-liberty concerns voiced support May 26 for Catholics across the country gearing up for a “Fortnight for Freedom,” a two-week national campaign of special liturgies, prayer services and other events leading up to the Fourth of July.

During his weekly “Richard Land Live” radio broadcast, the head of the Southern Baptist Convention’s Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission said opposition to things like the Obama administration’s contraception mandate and support for same-sex marriage is uniting Catholics and conservative evangelicals across their theological divide.

Land was part of a May 24 gathering in Washington of conservative Catholics, Baptists, Orthodox Jews, Orthodox Christians, Mormons and others concerned about what they view as erosions of religious liberty.

“We must all be willing to stand up and tell the government no," Land said, according to a Religion News Service report of the day-long summit sponsored by the Ethics and Public Policy Center's American Religious Freedom Program. "Secularists don't like people of faith because the ultimate authority for us is not the state. The ultimate authority is God."

After the meeting, Land said he visited in Baltimore with Archbishop William Lori, another conference participant and chairman of an Ad Hoc Committee for Religious Liberty appointed recently by the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops.

SOME writers have so confounded society with government, as to leave little or no distinction between them; whereas they are not only different, but have different origins. Society is produced by our wants, and government by our wickedness; the former promotes our happiness positively by uniting our affections, the latter negatively by restraining our vices. The one encourages intercourse, the other creates distinctions. The first is a patron, the last a punisher.
Society in every state is a blessing, but government even in its best state is but a necessary evil in its worst state an intolerable one

"He that sups with the Devil shall have need of a long spoon” - English proverb
The problem Baptists have with Catholics with respect to church-state relations is that Catholics, historically, have been the establishment in Europe - and the church therefore has been overoptimistic about the use of government power to do good. Even now, as the bishops are responding to an existential threat in the way ObamaCare is being administered, they are at pains in some cases to dissociate themselves with the idea that the government should concentrate on the economical and effective accomplishment of its core function - security - and leave the mission of charity to society at large. Charity - which is just another word for love - is not charity when it is done for money or done at the point of a gun, which is the only way the government can function.
Baptists in particular have a history of being persecuted by governments and not of being the establishment. The famous wall of separation letter by Thomas Jefferson

To messers. Nehemiah Dodge, Ephraim Robbins, & Stephen S. Nelson, a committee of the Danbury Baptist association in the state of Connecticut. Gentlemen The affectionate sentiments of esteem and approbation which you are so good as to express towards me, on behalf of the Danbury Baptist association, give me the highest satisfaction. my duties dictate a faithful and zealous pursuit of the interests of my constituents, & in proportion as they are persuaded of my fidelity to those duties, the discharge of them becomes more and more pleasing. Believing with you that religion is a matter which lies solely between Man & his God, that he owes account to none other for his faith or his worship, that the legitimate powers of government reach actions only, & not opinions, I contemplate with sovereign reverence that act of the whole American people which declared that their legislature should "make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof," thus building a wall of separation between Church & State. Adhering to this expression of the supreme will of the nation in behalf of the rights of conscience, I shall see with sincere satisfaction the progress of those sentiments which tend to restore to man all his natural rights, convinced he has no natural right in opposition to his social duties. I reciprocate your kind prayers for the protection & blessing of the common father and creator of man, and tender you for yourselves & your religious association, assurances of my high respect & esteem.
Th Jefferson Jan. 1. 1802.
is clearly written to a friendly audience, but he is not promising to actively promote Baptist religion nor to commit the government to works of charity. All he is promising them is that they will be left alone by the government - and that is the fondest desire of Baptists WRT the government.

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