Obbie Tyler Todd, Let Men Be Free: Baptist Politics in the Early United States 1776-1835 (Eugene, OR: Pickwick Publications, 2022). Introduction In his foreword to the book, Thomas Kidd writes, “Baptists in the English-speaking world have tended to engage rather than withdraw from the political sphere,” and “there has always seemed to be a natural affinity among Baptists for politics, especially in the United States.”