Baltimore, in the racially charged and challenging days of the early ‘60s, is the setting for the musical Hairspray. In the 2007 movie version, Nikki Blonsky plays the main character, Tracy Turnblad— a chubby young white girl with good dance moves and a strong social conscience.

She is expressing her idealism about racial equality and interaction when African-American actress Queen Latifah’s character, Motormouth Maybelle, responds: “Have you been dozing off during history?”

It is a question that has frequent application. We often encounter words or actions that suggest a need to look backward before moving ahead.

As Baptists, we have reached a significant historical milestone as various groups within our denomination celebrate four centuries of a spiritual movement that began in obscurity and resistance before growing into prominence and influence.

Yet, too often, Baptists — including many in significant leadership roles — seem to have dozed off during history.

Various celebrations are being held this year in recognition of the 400^th anniversary of the worldwide movement that most church historians trace back to a small band of believers who dissented against control by church authorities. The group, led by formative Baptist leaders John Smyth and Thomas Helwys, organized in Amsterdam in 1609 what many consider to be the first Baptist congregation.

All Baptists would do well to attend one of the many events throughout the nation and world that spotlight this occasion. Or, at the least, to read one of the many excellent books about those who shaped the Baptist movement.

While at high risk of offending many friends who have also written excellent and relevant books on Baptist history, let me suggest just a few: Portraits of Courage, by Julie Whidden Long, The Story of Baptists in the United States by Pamela and Keith Durso, and Roger Williams by Edwin Gaustad.

Many good biographies of early Baptists like Smyth, Helwys, William Carey, Andrew Fuller, Luther Rice, Adoniram and Ann Hasseltine Judson, and John Leland are enlightening. And the broader Baptist history picture is well painted by the good works of Baptist historians Walter Shurden, Bill Leonard, Leon McBeth, William Brackney, Charles Deweese, Robert Gardner, Jesse Fletcher and Doug Weaver — among many.

The Internet is full of resources as well with good starting places being:  baptisthistory.org, centerforbaptiststudies.org, baptistheritage.org, abhsarchives.org and whitsittbaptist.org.

This anniversary year is a good time to pay closer attention to the people, places, causes and conditions in which our deep convictions and unique approach to faith and practice developed. Even a casual familiarity with our Baptist past will reinforce an understanding about those principles for which Baptists have long stood and even died.

Our history reveals to us a profound commitment to freely-chosen/non-coercive faith, non-hierarchal denominational structures with voluntary cooperation, equal and individual access to God and Scripture, unfettered congregational autonomy, and full religious liberty for all persons while seeking no special governmental favors.

It is the thread of freedom — for individual conscience and congregational direction — that is woven throughout the 400-year quilt of the Baptist movement. It is a unique tradition that values dissent.

Speaking to the First Baptist Church of Bennington, Vt., recently, American Baptist leader Roy Medley shared the story of Joanna P. Moore, a white Baptist in the 1800s who was denied appointment by the American Baptist Home Mission Society to work with newly freed slaves. But she would not be stopped, and formed the Women’s Home Mission Society to carry out her calling.

“Like any good Baptist, she ignored the church authorities of her day, and she plowed ahead,” Medley shared with the congregation, according to the Bennington Banner newspaper.

Can you imagine any other faith tradition in which a denominational leader publicly celebrates dissent against church authority and identifies such action as the defining norm? No. Baptists, only Baptists, would do that.

Being marked by such freedom is risky. But the historic Baptist understanding of this prized principle does not suggest reckless freedom — but rather responsible freedom where the individual person is responsible for relating to God and the individual congregation is responsible for charting its course of ministry.

This is no time to be dozing off.