(RNS) — The Baptist preacher (and Texas Lieutenant Governor) who stood before the White House Religious Liberty Commission had a message: There is no separation of church and state in the Constitution. That’s a shift…

For two centuries, Baptists didn’t just support the wall of separation between church and state — they built it. They famously asked Thomas Jefferson for it. And then as recently as 1960, Southern Baptist leaders argued that a Catholic president would surely subordinate the Constitution to the Pope. This devotion to a secular state was deep. But that was then, this is now…

Baylor University historian Elesha Coffman suggests Southern Baptists have become the very force they feared Catholics would be — a dominant religion using political power to shape society along theological ideals.…