Callam spoke on the topic “Secularism and Religious Freedom: Conflict or Partnership?”


Multi-Cultural Context


RELIGIOUS LIBERTY in a


A


shared understanding of the common good that includes a concern for the freedom of individuals to pursue not only


their own interests, but also the well being of others, is important in the practice of religious freedom in a multi-cultural context. These claims were made by Baptist World Alliance General Neville Callam in a lecture he delivered in the


Secretary


Dominican Republic in April. Callam, who spoke on the topic, “Secularism and Religious


Freedom: Conflict or Partnership?” addressed the contribution of Baptists to the defense of religious liberty at the 7th


World


Congress of the International Religious Liberty Association in Punta Cana, Dominican Republic, from April 24-26. The resolution of the tension between religious liberty and


secularism is more easily described than achieved, Callam stated. “In the coming decades, the extent to which a comprehensive and satisfactory answer to this dilemma is found will determine both the sustainability of people’s peaceful co-existence and the possibility of religious liberty remaining a human right to be respected by all,” he said. Callam drew on the works of two Baptist thinkers, John


Coffey from the United Kingdom and Burchell Taylor, a BWA vice president, who is from Jamaica. Callam affirmed Coffey’s characterization of Baptist attitudes as “three distinct political visions:” a radical separation of church and state; “a theocratic apocalypticism” that reflects a radical anticipation of the imminence of the parousi; and an adoption of the so-called “Christian nation” option without necessarily accommodating hostility toward people of other faiths or of no faith at all. Callam felt that Taylor’s proposal for a secure religious liberty within a multi-cultural, multi-religious, pluralistic context “is another way of characterizing the convergence of religious liberty and hostile secularism.”


14 BAPTIST WORLD MAGAZINE


Taylor, he said, advocates for a “just and peaceful coexistence of diverse populations within a single nation state,” and for the development of what he refers to as a vision of “the responsible society” that is “free for all.”1


This vision is predicated on the


assumption that “it is in community that our humanity finds its true fulfilment.” This requires the adoption of a shared understanding of the common good, and an agreement on the right of all to participate in the life of the society based on “the fundamental fact of human dignity and self-worth.”


This position allows Christians to hold to their own worldview and to practice their religion while respecting the rights of, and making room for, people of other or of no faith to enjoy the same benefit. The vision of this “free for all” responsible society, Callam emphasized, “does not require the adoption of a Christian nation philosophy, and it allows individual religious autonomy to thrive in the context of a socially negotiated consensus.” It is “characterized by a careful retention of a Christian worldview at the personal level, without affirming the ‘Christian nation’ option.”


Callam asserts that Taylor’s vision is what “characterizes many sections of the worldwide Baptist community.” This, according to Callam, is what undergirded the Baptist response to the letter written by 138 Muslim scholars to the broader Christian community in 2007. The response states, among other things, “[W]e understand ‘common ground’ to mean that [the] double command to love opens up a space or area (‘ground’) in which we can live together, talk with each other, share our experiences, work together to enable the flourishing of human life and explore the eternal truths to which our respective faiths bear witness.”


1 Burchell Taylor, Free for All: A Question of Morality, Kingston, Jamaica: Grace Kennedy Foundation, 1992.


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