Let Men Be Free

The assortment of political views held by Baptists was as diverse as any other denomination in the early United States, but they were bound together by a fundamental belief in the inviolability of the individual conscience in matters of faith. In a nation where civil government and religion were inextricable, and in states where citizens were still born into the local parish church, the doctrine of believer's baptism was an inescapably political idea. As a result, historians