God will judge between many peoples
and will settle disputes for strong nations far and wide.
They will beat their swords into plowshares
and their spears into pruning hooks.
Nation will not take up sword against nation,
nor will they train for war anymore.
⁴ Everyone will sit under their own vine
and under their own fig tree,
and no one will make them afraid,
for the Lord Almighty has spoken.
⁵ All the nations may walk
in the name of their gods,
but we will walk in the name of the Lord
our God for ever and ever.

Micah 4:3-5

²⁷ The apostles were brought in and made to appear before the Sanhedrinto be questioned by the high priest. ²⁸ “We gave you strict orders not to teach in this name,” he said. “Yet you have filled Jerusalem with your teaching and are determined to make us guilty of this man’s blood.”

²⁹ Peter and the other apostles replied: “We must obey God rather than human authority!”

Acts 5:27-29

Religious freedom is not a theoretical topic, because many of us are here in America because our ancestors were seeking to worship God according to their own conscience. My family, the Weirs, were Scottish Covenantor Presbyterians who rebelled against Catholic King James II. They were expelled from their land, scattering the clan to Jamaica, Australia, Ireland and eventually to Bedford, Iowa. There they helped found the Presbyterian Church. The Kernens, on my mother’s side, went to the Methodist church on the other side of Bedford. We later discovered they were Jews who fled Switzerland during a pogrom in the 1880s, and they used their religious freedom to completely assimilate into America as Methodists. Resistance against religious intolerance, violence and the freedom of conscience are deep in my DNA.

Religious freedom was not a natural occurrence simply because so many early Americans fled religious persecution. Our Congregational forebearers were not always tolerant, despite experiencing persecution in England, by the Anglican Church. Roger Williams and Anne Hutchinson were forced out of the Massachusetts Bay colony for failing to toe the orthodox line. We were basically a state sponsored church in New England till the 1820s. The Salem Witch Trials were our low point. Early Congregationalists did not start worship saying, “No matter who you are, you are welcome here.”

Surviving religious persecution doesn’t automatically make people tolerant and welcoming of religious diversity. I grew up American Baptist, and Roger Williams was our hero. As founder of the Rhode Island colony, Williams welcomed not only all Christians, but also native Americans and the first synagogue in America was in Newport, RI. When Jeanne and I were at the UN park in Geneva, Switzerland, I was surprised to see a statue of Roger Williams for his contributions to human rights and freedom. Ironically, I left the Baptist church in seminary because of the rising tide of intolerance towards people who disagreed with their view of the Bible. Baptists don’t always tolerate each other, since there are 65 distinct Baptist denominations. We cannot take religious freedom for granted, since even those who fought for it for themselves don’t always respect it for others.

Religious freedom and the separation of church and state are a foundation of democracy. If we degrade this first amendment freedom, we have little hope of surviving our acrimonious cultural war. As historian Randall Balmer says, religious freedom is America’s best idea. It is not only good for democratic society, but also for the church.

When the Revolutionary War ignited in 1775, American colonists were often as hostile to each other over religious differences as they were to King George. Lewis Peyton Little’s 1938 study, “Imprisoned Preachers and Religious Liberty in Virginia,” documented 72 individuals who suffered persecution between 1763 and 1775 — beaten, shot, poisoned, pelted with stones and apples, dunked, harassed, urinated upon, and terrorized by mobs. Virginia’s tolerance laws required preachers to be licensed by the state. Baptists refused on principle — so every beating, every jailing, was technically legal.

James Madison was 23 years-old in 1774 when he wrote to a friend, that the “diabolical Hell conceived principle of persecution” was raging in Virginia. “There are at this time not less than 5 or 6 well-meaning men in jail for publishing their religious sentiments... Pray for liberty of conscience to revive among us.”

Madison’s youthful phrase “liberty of conscience” became the backbone of the First Amendment. It was transformative because Madison viewed religious faith as a natural law that exists independent of the state. A state can’t grant it or take it away because it is between a person and their god. Freedom of conscience is the load baring wall of all the rights we have, because it affirms that states must respect a higher law. From this innate human quality, the First Amendment affirms freedom of speech, religion, the press, right to assembly, and to petition government. Without these five freedoms of conscience, all the rest falls apart.

While Madison spoke in the language of Locke and Enlightenment philosophers, Baptists preached on Acts 5. Peter was thrown in jail for preaching about the resurrection of Jesus. Temple leaders were not thrilled that he was condemning the crucifixion just a few weeks afterwards, and the listening crowds were growing. In the middle of the night an angel lets Peter out and he is arrested again the next morning. Before the Court, Peter’s answer is five words: we must obey God rather than human authority. The Baptists of Virginia knew exactly what he meant. Remember last week’s sermon where Shadrach, Meshach and Abednego refused to bow to a gold statue. Freedom of conscience isn’t something we dreamed up in America, it is a golden thread running through scripture.

When Peter speaks, many in the court wanted to have him beaten and stoned. But a Pharisee named Gamaliel reminds people that religious dissenters come and go, so he gives this advice,

I tell you, keep away from these men and let them alone, because if this plan or this undertaking is of human origin, it will fail; ³⁹ but if it is of God, you will not be able to overthrow them—in that case you may even be found fighting against God!”

Gamaliel sounds like a forerunner to James Madison. He understood that violent repression of religious differences only created an unending cycle of violence. And what kind of religion do you have if you need to resort to violence to get your way? What kind of God asks to be imposed by violence?

Religious freedom is a great idea because it protects all of society from the hatred, factionalism, and violence over religious differences. Thomas Jefferson saw this value firsthand. Just months before the First Amendment was ratified, he was visiting France. Americans had great sympathy for the French Revolution as kindred spirits.

Jefferson saw the storming of the Bastille on July 14, 1789, and wrote letters home about the rise in violence. The French Revolution turned anti-religious because the Church was aligned with Louis XVI, and hundreds of priests and nuns were murdered and the church was abolished.

American leaders did not want to repeat the violent wars of Europe from the brutal post-Reformation wars, and the French Revolution. Not favoring any religion over another was pragmatic.

Many religious historians argue this wasn’t only good for the state and for society, it was good for the church. Religious authorities spend as much time repressing people within their own tradition as people from other religions. In a free society, if you disagree with a bishop or doctrine, you can start your own church. This freedom has created a rich and diverse religious architecture in America, that has been innovative and responsive to people. New theology and liturgical practices have spread more quickly, and despite recent declines, America is still a very religious society compared to Europe. Allowing Baptists, Buddhists, Fundamentalists, Unitarians and none of the above to flourish as they might is obeying Gamaliel’s wise council.

Religious diversity was also Micah’s vision. In these remarkable verses in chapter 4, he has a vision of ending warfare and turning swords and shields into plowshares and pruning hooks. He writes:

But they shall all sit under their own vines and under their own fig trees,
and no one shall make them afraid,
for the mouth of the Lord of hosts has spoken.

⁵ For all the peoples walk,
each in the name of its god,
but we will walk in the name of the Lord our God
forever and ever.

History shows us is when nations and communities become anxious, they reach for control. Religion, because it touches what matters most—meaning, death, belonging, identity—is often the first tool frightened people pick up to control the future.

Gamaliel saw it. Madison saw it. Baptist preachers in Virginia suffered for it. The French Revolution proved you can replace a religious tyranny with a secular one and produce the same violence.

We live in a moment when some of the loudest voices claiming the name of God are seeking to impose their vision through legislation, courts, and the quiet erosion of the principle that conscience answers to God and not to any human authority. This spring, the Pentagon cut its list of recognized military faiths from 211 to 31 — dropping Unitarians, Deists, Humanists, and the United Church of Christ. The faiths of John Adams, Thomas Jefferson, and Benjamin Franklin no longer have a place on a soldier’s dog tag. Madison would have recognized that move. So would the jailed Baptist preachers. This is how it starts.

The antidote is not less conviction. It is more courage—the courage to hold your faith deeply without imposing it, and the courage to defend a conscience you do not share.

Micah had seen the worst that power could do. He looked straight at it—and still saw the vine and the fig tree. Still saw every family in the shade of their own branches, and no one making them afraid. Not because he was naïve, but because he trusted that God’s future was larger than any empire’s fear.

That is the vision we are called to protect—not only for ourselves, but for every neighbor who walks a different path. Every family beneath its own vine and fig tree, and no one making them afraid.