Isaac Backus on Church, State, and Calvinism

Isaac Backus'' Pamphlets, 1754-1789. Edited by William G. McLoughlin. -- Isaac Backus, whose career spanned the sixty years from the First to the Second Great Awakening, was the most forceful and effective spokesman for the evangelical theory of the separation of church and state that America produced. In this respect, as William McLoughlin points out in his detailed and perceptive Introduction, Backus deserves to rank with Roger Williams and Thomas Jefferson. His ambition, not finally achieved until a generation after his death, was to obtain religious liberty and equality for all sects through the disestablishment of the Congregational churches in New England. - This collection of his writings emphasizes his contribution to the movement for the separation of church and state. He himself, however, valued most highly his contribution to the founding and advancement of the Separate-Baptist persuasion and to the defense of Calvinism, to him the only true interpretation of Scripture.