[If this kind of Baptist reemerged, I could actually contemplate - TopicsExpress

[If this kind of Baptist reemerged, I could actually contemplate returning to the denomination.] “I’m a Baptist! I come from a long line of hell-raisers. I was taught that I wasn’t a robot -- that I was a human being with a mind, capable of reason, entitled to read any book, including the Bible, and interpret it according to the ability of the mind I was given. "What happened to those Baptists? Where are those people who were drowned in the Amstel River, tied on ladders and pushed into burning brush heaps because they believed in and practiced freedom of conscience; because they believed in total, total separation of church and state; because they were so opposed to the death penalty that they wouldn’t serve on juries; because they would not go to war, any war, for church or state, would not baptize their babies, not so much for doctrinal reasons but because they saw it as enrollment by the state, a way of maintaining control of the faithful. For those offenses they were hunted down like rabbits by armed horsemen. Where are they now? What happened? "It’s a long way from that to a civil magistrate standing with a wall-sized American flag in the background – a George Bush, a Dan Quayle, an Oliver North – spewing forth the most un-Baptistic nationalistic rubbish and receiving frenzied, rabid, fanatical cheers and applause from 30,000 alleged Baptists. Great God Almighty! What’s going on here? What happened?"