Isaac Backus on Church, State, and Calvinism — Isaac Backus, William G. McLoughlin

Isaac Backus on Church, State, and Calvinism — Isaac Backus, 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 has 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.