A Higher King than James


The Mandate Kicks In John Stonestreet - August 03,

2012
This past Wednesday, the Obama Administration’s Health and Human Services
mandate requiring all employers to provide contraceptives and abortion-inducing
drugs went into effect. Christian business owners, many non-profits, schools, and
hospitals can now face legal consequences for refusing to offer services, even if
doing so violates their consciences.
As we have been saying for months, this isn’t a
Catholic-only issue. It goes to the very heart of our
American experiment, and threatens a doctrine the
West has cherished for generations. But the word is
spreading, and a recent move by one of America’s
foremost Evangelical colleges has made it clear that
many Christians are willing to stand together in defense
of religious liberty.
And as Dr. Timothy George, dean of Beeson Divinity
School, chairman of the Colson Center, and co-author
of the Manhattan Declaration, pointed out at our recent
Wilberforce Weekend, it was a Protestant standing up
for Catholics who gave us the idea of religious freedom
as we now know it when he broke the spiral of silence
four centuries ago.
In 1612, the English-speaking world first heard the
radical idea of Thomas Helwys, a British missionary
who co-founded the Baptist denomination. Helwys
sought to challenge King James I’s tyranny over
religion. This was no easy or safe task. For years, those
who sought to practice Christianity according to their
own consciences faced severe persecution. The year
before, Baptist Edward Wightman was been burned at
the stake for his beliefs. And while Helwys was
working in The Netherlands, his own wife was thrown
into prison back home.
Desperate to stop the persecution, Helwys spoke up.
But rather than beg the king for mercy, he made an
audacious move that ultimately cost him his life.
With his book, “A Short Declaration on the Mystery of
Iniquity,” hot off the press, Helwys attached a polite
cover letter and mailed this historic defense of religious
liberty to King James. Needless to say, the king was
less than pleased, and four years later, Helwys died in
Newgate Prison, a victim of the persecution he sought
to end.
But the radical idea of his book (and the church he
helped start) lived on, and was adopted not only in
England, but throughout the Western World — most
famously in the First Amendment of our own
Constitution.
His words renouncing the persecution against Roman
Catholics are worth repeating here:
“For we do freely profess that our lord the king [of
England] has no more power over their consciences
than over ours, and that is none at all. For our lord the
king is but an earthly king, and he has no authority as a
king but in earthly causes…For men’s religion to God
is between God and themselves.”
Earlier this month, the Evangelical Wheaton College
joined its voice with the growing ranks of Catholic
institutions suing the Obama Administration over the
HHS mandate. Wheaton filed the suit jointly with The
Catholic University of America, making this “the first
ever partnership between Evangelicals and Catholics
opposing the same regulation in the same court.”
This historic decision “shows the broad consensus” that
the HHS mandate threatens everyone’s religious
liberty, says Kyle Duncan, General Counsel for the
Becket Fund, which is representing both schools.
Thomas Helwys would be proud. As another
overreaching government tries to forbid us from living
out our faith in all areas of life, we need to join with
Wheaton and Catholic University and stand together,
across our faith traditions, for the freedom Helwys
helped give us, and remind this government that our
consciences answer to a higher King than James.