Although they were both prominent revivalists and supporters of evangelical religion, Baptist Isaac Backus and Congregationalist Lyman Beecher differed on the question of religious freedom. Backus was tireless in his efforts to limit strictly the state's role in religion, as in this excerpt from a 1779 letter proposing a bill of rights for Massachusetts: As God is the only worthy object of all religious worship, and nothing can be true religion but a voluntary obedience unto his revealed will, of which each rational soul has an equal right to judge for itself; every person has an unalienable right to act in all religious affairs according to the full persuasion of his own mind, where others arc not injured thereby. And civil rulers are so far from having any right to empower any person or persons to judge for others in such affairs, and...