Soul Freedom

By Bill Moyers, AlterNet. Posted September 10, 2005.

The notion of spiritual freedom is at risk, and the fourth observance of the terrorist attacks of 9/11 is an appropriate time to think about it.

Ed. Note: This article is adapted from Bill Moyer's address this week at Union Theological Seminary in New York, where Judith and Bill Moyers received the seminary's highest award, the Union Medal, for their contributions to faith and reason in America.

At the Central Baptist Church in Marshall, Texas, where I was baptized in the faith, we believed in a free church in a free state. I still do. My spiritual forbears did not take kindly to living under theocrats who embraced religious liberty for themselves but denied it to others.

"Forced worship stinks in God's nostrils," thundered the dissenter Roger Williams as he was banished from Massachusetts for denying Puritan authority over his conscience.

Baptists there were a "pitiful negligible minority" but they were agitators for freedom and therefore denounced as "incendiaries of the commonwealth" for holding to their belief in that great democracy of faith-the priesthood of all believers. For refusing to pay tribute to the state religion they were fined, flogged, and exiled.