Illinois Baptist
College students need our prayer Daniel Good
Table Talk P. 9
Dog Days
Westbrook remembered P. 3
Executive Director search update P. 5
NATE ADAMS
Company’s coming Is your church ready? P. 2
BAPTIST FOUNDATION
Scholarships awarded To Illinois students P. 8
5 key court rulings
BRIGHTER DAY
Getting up
P. 4
Easier said than done P. 11
IllinoisBaptist.org
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IB
News journal of the Illinois Baptist State Association
AUGUST 1, 2025
Nonprofit Organization U.S. POSTAGE PAID Peoria, Illinois Permit No. 964
Vol. 119 No. 1
Summer: growing & going Photo essay on P. 6-7
Adrian Rogers’ successor is from Illinois P. 5
Illinois drops to third in ‘freedoms’ survey Report shows Midwest paradox of religious safeguards It may not be surprising that Illinois dropped three spots in a new survey of the states and how well they protect religious freedom. What’s probably surprising in Baptist circles is that Illinois was in first place in the first place. A conservative legal organization ranks states’ legal safeguards of religious freedoms based on 47 measures to protect actions of conscience. The annual report by the Center for Religion, Culture, and Democracy at the First Liberty Institute shows Illinois lost 11 percentage points, falling from 81% 2024 and 85% in 2023. Still, the state ranked third overall at 68.8%. First Liberty Institute was so surprised by Illinois’ ranking as “America’s free exercise leader” in its first two surveys that they commissioned a graduate law student to
study the origin of such remarkable safeguards of religious freedoms in an otherwise liberal state. “Although still among the top five states, Illinois fell from its first-place position in [the Religious Liberty in the States survey in] 2023 and 2024. It now protects only 69% of the safeguards we consider, whereas in 2022 it protected 81% of them,” researchers Mark David Hall and Paul D. Mueller wrote. “We add new religious liberty protections to the index as we discover them, as long as they have been implemented in at least one state.” Florida is now in first place (74.6%) and Montana is second (70.6%) in RLS 2025. Ohio, Mississippi, Arkansas, and South Carolina ranked just below third-place Illinois. While they blamed some of Illinois’ drop on the addition Continued on P. 3