Bill Moyers: Soul Freedom

[paineinthearse]

http://alternet.org/story/25274/

Soul Freedom
By Bill Moyers, AlterNet
Posted on September 10, 2005, Printed on September 10, 2005

http://www.alternet.org/story/25274/

Ed. Note: This article is adapted from Bill Moyer's address this week at Union Theological Seminary in New York, where Judith and Bill Moyers received the seminary's highest award, the Union Medal, for their contributions to faith and reason in America.

At the Central Baptist Church in Marshall, Texas, where I was baptized in the faith, we believed in a free church in a free state. I still do. My spiritual forbears did not take kindly to living under theocrats who embraced religious liberty for themselves but denied it to others.

"Forced worship stinks in God's nostrils," thundered the dissenter Roger Williams as he was banished from Massachusetts for denying Puritan authority over his conscience.

Baptists there were a "pitiful negligible minority" but they were agitators for freedom and therefore denounced as "incendiaries of the commonwealth" for holding to their belief in that great democracy of faith-the priesthood of all believers. For refusing to pay tribute to the state religion they were fined, flogged, and exiled.

In 1651 the Baptist Obadiah Holmes was given 30 stripes with a three-corded whip after he violated the law and took forbidden communion with another Baptist in Lynn, Massachusetts. His friends offered to pay his fine for his release but he refused. They offered him strong drink to anesthetize the pain of the flogging. Again he refused. It is the love of liberty, he said, "that must free the soul."

more......

Bill Moyers is a broadcast journalist and former host of the PBS program "NOW With Bill Moyers."

[grasswire]

1. he's also an ordained pastor

....and it shows so beautifully. Well done, good and faithful servant.

[AndreaCG]

2. Great speech, thanks for posting it

[Nothing Without Hope]

3. Bill Moyers is extraordinary. He has such insight and compassion, and

his career has been a learning experience for him, which he passes to us.

I will bookmark this and read it all later - EVERYTHING that man says is pure gold and merits careful reading and thought.

Even if there are few comments, you've done us a service by posting this and I'm grateful for it. I'm sure I'll be sharing it and reading it more than once - his pieces always seem to be that way.

[paineinthearse]

4. "Editorials and Other Articles" contains many gems

Just wish it were not a backwater and people would be willing to give it just 5 minutes out of their day.

[Nothing Without Hope]

5. You've convinced me to look at it more often. I'm one of the many who

generally don't even think of that Forum. As soon as articles posted on it have flashed past the Latest page listing, they've been effectively gone unless they reached the Greatest or Home pages. I'm going to be paying more attention to the Editorial forum.

[I Have A Dream]

6. Do these show up on the Latest page? I added a comment to one of...

these, and it didn't take it to the top of the Latest page. Does this make sense? I never thought that I had to look specifically here. I'm going to start to now.