Baptist leadership in freedom of thought

Southern Baptist Convention intolerance not withstanding, Baptists were early leaders in the movement which gave us enlightened, Western religious liberty. Mainstream Baptist reminds us of revolutionary era Baptist evangelist John Leland, who wrote:

Let every man speak freely without fear, maintain the principles that he believes, worship according to his own faith, either one God, three gods, no god, or twenty gods, and let government protect him in so doing.

Of course it is important that the matter being discussed isn't a principal concern of the Southern Baptist Convention but rather of the Cooperative Baptist Fellowship [CBF]. Still quite Baptist, the CBF composed in considerable part of folks fleeing the shrinking SBC. The SBC isn't just failing to recruit new members, as its Great Commission Resurgence suggests in part. It is still losing longtime members and churches which find the increasingly conservative "takeover" harder and harder to bear.