By ICC Fellow Greg Cochran, PhD 

Baptists at the Everett Center for Global Religious Freedom (Dallas Baptist University) published a report this summer measuring the global temperature on religious liberty.  

According to their findings, religious freedom appears feverish — not in the good sense of being a hot issue at “fever pitch.” Rather, religious liberty seems sick in bed, not making progress. 

In issuing their report, these advocates represent a Baptist heritage long influential in shaping the concept of religious liberty in the U.S. and throughout the world. From their persecutions in Virginia to the establishment of Rhode Island by Roger Williams, Baptists — through trial and triumph — consistently beat their drum to the rhythm of freedom of conscience before God and government.

This rhythm reflects the Baptist doctrine of “soul liberty” before God: Each person answers to God alone and must be bound by conscience (not government) to be free. 

While doctrine formed the basis for the Baptist belief, the nation in general codified a similar conviction in the Constitution. This constitutional conviction was clarified culturally when a group of Connecticut Baptists wrote to President Thomas Jefferson about the matter in October of 1801. This letter from the Danbury Baptist Association outlined three aspects of religious liberty. 

First, the Danbury Baptists — being true Baptist advocates of soul competency — sought to influence President Jefferson on the importance of freedom. Freedom in this original sense meant inward freedom — free thought, responsibility, conscience, duty, determination.  

While the emphasis nowadays projects freedom as outward expression, this original concept concerned the inward cognitive process: free thought to form convictions in accordance with conscience. Baptists were concerned (and thus wrote to Jefferson) “That the legitimate Power of civil government extends no further than to punish the man who works ill to his neighbor …”  

Free people must be free thinkers. Or, stated differently, the government of a free people concerns itself with punishing evildoers, not “evil thinkers.”  

The second concern addressed by the Danbury Baptists emphasized that freedom itself originated from God, not government. As they wrote, 

“At the time of our revolution, and such had been our laws and usages, and such still are; that religion is considered as the first object of legislation; and therefore what religious privileges we enjoy (as a minor part of the state) we enjoy as favors granted, and not as inalienable rights: and these favors we receive at the expense of such degrading acknowledgments as are inconsistent with the rights of freemen. It is not to be wondered at therefore; if those who seek after power and gain under the pretense of government and religion should reproach their fellow men — should reproach their chief Magistrate, as an enemy of religion, law, and good order because he will not, dares not assume the prerogative of Jehovah and make Laws to govern the Kingdom of Christ.” 

The quote strongly suggests that some politicians misunderstood freedom. The Baptists countered such fallacious concepts with the clear conviction that freedom must mean that first freedoms (thought, convictions) come from God, not government.  

They are inalienable rights. If President Jefferson likewise affirmed this notion, he would prove not to be a benevolent president, but rather a true leader who recognized a core aspect of reality: that God created human beings with certain “inalienable rights.” 

Third, the Baptists articulated the consequent governing philosophy of freedom against tyranny because of the first two points. As they said to Jefferson, those who oppose religious liberty prove that they are on the side of tyranny.  

Put positively, those who uphold religious liberty stand righteously as the “predetermined opposition of those who wish to rise to wealth & importance on the poverty and subjection of the people.” 

What did Jefferson think of these three points? How did he respond?  

Jefferson famously responded on Jan. 1, 1802, to these Danbury Baptists, making his now-famous metaphor for a wall of separation between church and state.  

On the issue of free thought and conscience, Jefferson heartily agreed, saying, “that the legitimate powers of government reach actions only, and 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 and state. 

His background as the author of the Virginia Statute for Religious Freedom laid the groundwork for this response to the Danbury Baptists. Jefferson possessed immense credibility on the issue. While his “wall of separation between church and state” would later be twisted in the twentieth century into a defensive wall to protect the state from entertaining the free thoughts and actions of the church, Jefferson’s intent meshed well with the Danbury Baptists’ concern. Evidence of this congruence permeates the Virginia Statute, which Jefferson had written 25 years before his letter to the Baptists. In that statute, he wrote, 

Well aware that the opinions and belief of men depend not on their own will, but follow involuntarily the evidence proposed to their minds; that [Whereas] Almighty God hath created the mind free, and manifested his supreme will that free it shall remain by making it altogether insusceptible of restraint; that all attempts to influence it by temporal punishments, or burthens, or by civil incapacitations, tend only to beget habits of hypocrisy and meanness, and are a departure from the plan of the holy author of our religion, who being lord both of body and mind, yet chose not to propagate it by coercions on either, as was in his Almighty power to do, but to extend it by its influence on reason alone; that the impious presumption of legislators and rulers, civil as well as ecclesiastical, who, being themselves but fallible and uninspired men, have assumed dominion over the faith of others, setting up their own opinions and modes of thinking as the only true and infallible, and as such endeavoring to impose them on others, hath established and maintained false religions over the greatest part of the world and through all time: That to compel a man to furnish contributions of money for the propagation of opinions which he disbelieves and abhors, is sinful and tyrannical…[1] 

Jefferson clearly saw religious liberty as the sworn enemy of government tyranny. Jefferson is better known for his Enlightenment convictions regarding natural law and the supremacy of reason, but he had enough of a deist bent to affirm the Baptist conviction that free people must be free to follow their consciences regarding God and duty. In his response to the Baptists, he said, “I shall see with sincere satisfaction the progress of those sentiments which tend to restore to man all his natural rights ….”  To restrict such freedom meant introducing tyranny. 

Thus, on the third point — that religious liberty separates freedom from tyranny — Jefferson obviously agrees. His response letter to the Danbury Baptists does not explicitly address tyranny. He does, however, close his letter with “I reciprocate your kind prayers for the protection and blessing of the common father and creator of man ….” While one might understandably dismiss the final line as a courtesy or mere formality, its significance cannot be overstated. If government or an earthly governor grants rights, then tyranny will follow. If the creator guarantees rights— thus making them inalienable —then the governed must be free. 

Why belabor the development of this Baptist (and American) heritage on religious liberty? It’s certainly not a merely denominational concern. It’s not even primarily a political concern.  

The issue, as advocates of freedom have noted all along, is profoundly human. The foundational concept of the creator endowing human beings with an inalienable right to free thought provides a wall of protection against the ever-encroaching threat of tyranny.  

Baptists pointed out the threat in Rhode Island in 1638, in a letter to Jefferson in 1801, and, through the work of Everett Center at DBU, they are again reminding America and the West in 2026 of what we should already know: Religious liberty and tyranny dance in an inversely proportional way. The waning of one leads to the waxing of the other. 

The report mentioned above — titled International Religious Freedom Advocacy in a Time of Disruption: A Road Map for Civil Society & Faith Actors — establishes two key points germane to this review of the development of religious liberty convictions in the U.S. The first point demonstrates that religious liberty appears to be in poor health.  

At best, the notion appears to be sleeping after having peaked within the past 10 years. The report notes that the second Trump Administration has not been as active in promoting religious freedom this time around.  

The administration has not filled the ambassador role for USCIRF, and that organization has not completed its annual report on International Religious Freedom since 2024. Perhaps even more consequential, the Road Map Report notes that the current administration narrowed its attention to national interests after taking office in 2025: 

The 2025 National Security Strategy described religious freedom as a core right of Americans, not a universal right prioritized in U.S. foreign policy, and expressed skepticism toward promoting human rights and democracy abroad. Although some senior officials highlighted IRF’s importance, including at the 2025 and 2026 IRF Summits, the administration’s religious freedom activity was largely focused domestically, including through a new White House Religious Liberty Commission and a task force on anti-Christian bias.[2] 

The narrowing focus on nationalist interests signals a deemphasis on the importance of religious freedom, according to witnesses interviewed for the report.  

As one witness noted, “If IRF is not a priority for the U.S., why would it be for Europe?” The report continues, “Another pointed out that religious freedom is ‘not a dispensable freedom or a luxury,’ but governments are acting as if it is.“  

By pointing out the current administration’s deemphasis of religious liberty abroad (or universally), the Road Map Report makes plain that the concept’s value is waning in the eyes of many. 

So the second key point the Road Map Report highlights is entirely predictable from the historical review noted above. With religious liberty waning, tyranny will be waxing. And so it seems that authoritarianism increases year by year. The Road Map Report makes the case in the first few words of the report: 

Conflict, mass migration, the weakening of global standards, the retreat of Western nations from human rights, and the rise of authoritarianism have led to unprecedented disruption. These global circumstances have contributed to widespread religious persecution affecting Christians and other faith communities worldwide. Disruption of international relations is the new normal in our young 21st century. 

Disruption has become the 21st century’s new normal. And disruption provides opportunity for those “who wish to rise to wealth and importance on the poverty and subjection of the people.” When disruption occurs, people clamor for order and immediate stability. Those who promise such stability often have little interest in human freedom and an oversized interest in order and control.  

Coincidentally, another group recently published a report on religious liberty, decrying the rise of authoritarianism worldwide. In its 2025 Religious Liberty Report, the Roman Catholic Foundation known as Aid to the Church in Need (ACN) noted this startling fact:  

Authoritarianism is the greatest threat to religious freedom. Authoritarian regimes have systematically enforced legal and bureaucratic mechanisms to suppress religious life. In countries such as China, Eritrea, Iran, and Nicaragua, the government represses religion through pervasive surveillance, restrictive legislation, and the repression of dissenting beliefs. Authoritarian rule is among the main drivers of persecution in 19 countries and underpins patterns of discrimination in 33 others.  

ACN, in tune with the Road Map Report, begins its report decrying the instability created by a deemphasis of religious liberty worldwide: “In a world marked by growing instability — from the war in Ukraine to conflict in the Holy Land, and the global rise of authoritarianism — religious freedom is under mounting threat.”  

In an era marked by technological progress, economic growth, and information overload, people need reminders of old truths with real power. Organizations such as International Christian Concern (ICC) continue to be cobelligerents with advocates for religious freedom because this one idea has the power to keep people free from tyranny.  

Sources 

[1] This quote from the Virginia Statute derives from Monticello.org. It combines Jefferson’s original draft with the final adopted version after legislative revisions. Italicized words belong to Jefferson, but not the final statute, while brackets indicate additions made by the legislature that were adopted.  

[2] From the International Religious Freedom Advocacy in a Time of Disruption: A Road Map for Civil Society & Faith Actors [online] p. 10, accessed https://www.dbu.edu/center-for-global-religious-freedom/_documents/report-irf-advocacy-in-a-time-of-disruption-july-2026.pdf 

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