I think most readers of this blog are not in Arkansas or nearby states. But on the off chance that there are readers of Bilgrimage in my local area about whom I don't know, or readers of this blog who have friends in Arkansas or nearby areas who might be interested in this event, I wanted to share news about it:
On 9 June at noon, there will be a gathering on the steps of the Arkansas state capitol in Little Rock, to show support for the concept of religious liberty and to support Judge Wendell Griffen in his exercise of religious liberty. As I noted in a previous posting here, a move is afoot to censor Wendell, who is both a judge and a pastor of a Baptist church in Little Rock, because of statements he has made opposing capital punishment. Those statements reflect his religious belief.
As the graphic at the head of the posting states, this rally is being organized by Cooperative Baptist Fellowship Global and CBF of Arkansas. As a statement I have prepared for the gathering states, the concept of religious liberty Judge Wendell Griffen is defending is foundational to American democracy. It is the concept of religious liberty cemented into the foundations of our republic by its founders. Without robust religious liberty protecting the rights of minority groups to hold their religious ideas freely, to speak freely what they believe, American democracy is diminished in the most radical way possible.
I stand with my friend Wendell Griffen in his defense of American democracy, against the perverted notion of religious liberty that stands religious liberty on its head by asserting a pseudo-right of dominant religious groups to silence dissenters and to use state power as a tool to impose their peculiar religious ideas on all citizens by coercion. This is not what democracy is about. Nor is it what the founders of the American democratic experiment envisaged for the republic they founded.
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