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E. Y. Mullins on religious liberty: at the meeting of the Baptist World Alliance's Third World Congress in 1923, E. Y. Mullins ascended the dais in Stockholm, Sweden, to preach a sermon titled, "The Baptist Conception of Religious Liberty.".

Article Excerpt
Mullins began with this terse declaration: "With Baptists, religious liberty is born of the direct vision of God." Whether taking the form of a dream or eloquent discourse or solace for the sake of conscience or even a battle cry, religious liberty for Baptists "always ... has been a passion deep as life welling up from the depths of being in eternal faith and hope." (1)

Along with George W. Truett's 1920 sermon on the steps of the United States Capitol, "Baptists and Religious Liberty," Mullins's sermon was a most significant exposition of the Baptist view of religious liberty of the twentieth century. Church historians will continue to debate the relative importance of Mullins's and Truett's addresses, but "The Baptist Conception for Religious Liberty" undoubtedly provides the most comprehensive statement of Mullins's understanding of religious liberty both for Baptists and for himself.

This signal sermon will form the backbone of this article. Other writings by Mullins concerning religious liberty will be integrated into this basic structure along with observations and critiques. Mullins divided his sermon into four major sections: the bases for religious liberty, what religious liberty excludes, what religious liberty implies, and the duties that religious liberty imposes.

The Bases of Religious Liberty

Mullins's understanding of religious liberty grew out of and was inextricably linked to the larger context of Baptist principles and Reformation distinctives, particularly the notions of soul freedom and soul competency. (2) According to Mullins, one's relationship to God was precedent to one's relationship to corporate structures and even one's own self awareness. Religious liberty sprang from the imago dei--God's decision to create human beings in God's image. Mullins noted:

Man as a person created in God's image, free and spiritual, competent to deal directly with God, with an upward look, an endless discontent with the finite and temporal, a passionate yearning for the infinite and eternal; man, endowed with a conscience ringing in the soul like an alarm bell against wrong doing; man, with a will of his own which he can misuse and bring on moral ruin, but which he can surrender to God; man, with an intellect hungering for infinite truth and eternally discontented; man with a heart which no earthly object can satisfy; man, self-willed and sinful and then penitent and believing, redeemed by the power of Jesus Christ, Redeemer and Lord; man recreated in the Divine image, with the witness of the Spirit in his soul, telling him of his eternal destiny; man, as a child of God seeking to walk worthily of his calling, and heir of...

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