76 Sermon Illustrations on Baptists

Talk by Denton Lotz, general secretary of Baptist World Alliance, at charismatic fellowship dinner at American Baptist Convention in Charleston, WV:

In 1990 a revolution of democracy swept eastern Europe. After Czechoslovakia and East Germany succombed, the dictator Ceaucescue in Rumania hardened his line. From a balcony in Bucharest (?) at the Communist party’s hall he proclaimed, “Communism will never die.” In a few short weeks he was dead and democracy instituted. Baptists played a key role in this.

The revolt started when a Reformed pastor’s church was ransacked by authorities. As demonstrations intensified, a 20-year-old Baptist named Peter Ducheskue (?) decided to light a candle in the darkness to proclaim his faith and challenge the authorities. He lit it, placed it on the sidewalk and was shot in the legs by nearby soldiers. Nevertheless, hundreds of others were inspired by his act and the city sideways were illuminated with candles of protest. He did not regret his action even though he was wounded.

In June 1991, Baptists held a convention in the same Communist hall that the dictator used, and from his balcony they gave an invitation for people to come to Jesus Christ.

The state Department of Social Services is investigating Anchor Baptist Church of Woburn, Massachusetts, after complaints that underaged children have been baptized by church leaders without parental consent.

About 200 youths from low-income housing projects went to the church because of promises of free pizza, prizes, and games. Once the children arrived, however, they sometimes sat for up to two hours, time that included a sermon ending with an admonition to be baptized. Some children say they were baptized against their will. For example, 12-year-old Hieu Nguyen -- whose family is Buddhist -- claims he did not know what was happening when he and his 9-year-old brother, Qui, were baptized.

Anchor Baptist senior pastor Chris Pledger told that no one was "forced" to do anything and that the promised entertainment took place after the baptisms. He further maintains that parental authorizations were given via permission slips signed to bus children to the church.

"The form goes into an outline of salvation," Pledger says. "The parental consent is a paragraph at the bottom, giving permission for them to not only get on the bus, but to participate in all aspects of the service."

Despite the investigation, Pledger maintains that such tactics are proper. "We feel like the Lord would have us to do it this way."

A police investigation into the matter concluded that church officials had broken no criminal laws by baptizing the youths.

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Copyright(c) 1996 by Christianity Today, Inc/CHRISTIANITY TODAY.

October 28, 1996, Vol. 40, No. 12, Page 95b

Jerome Engel, the SBC preacher, was strolling along the seawalk at a church convention in Charleston, SC, one day. He spied a fisherman fishing, and set down to watch him. Presently the man made a catch and pulled in a repulsive looking fish; it looked like a cross between a toad and a bullhead. Not knowing about fishing, Engel asked the man, "What kind of fish is that?"

"They call that a Baptist fish, suh," the man replied.

"A Baptist fish?" questioned the preacher.

"Yes, suh," replied the fisherman, throwing his catch back. "They call them that because they spoils so quick after you take 'em out of the water."

Baptist churches are independent and governed by themselves under the authority of the Bible and the Headship of Jesus Christ. The label “Baptist” describes our distinct convictions and heritage as believers in the family of God. While all Baptists do not share every principle, these reflect a historic and contemporary description of what we, and many other Baptist churches believe. A good way to describe our Baptist distinctive is using the acronym B.A.P.T.I.S.T.S.

B.A.P.T.I.S.T.S.

* The “B”ible is our only rule of faith and practice. We believe that the Bible alone is sufficient for living.

* The “A”utonomy (self rule) of the local church. We believe that every local church should govern itself.

* The “P”riesthood of every believer. We believe that each believer can pray to God directly.

God loves it when His children communicate with Him.

* The “T”wo Ordinances (not sacraments). Baptism and the Lord’s supper picture great spiritual truths. Baptism pictures the Believer's identity in Christ and the Lord’s supper pictures His great sacrifice for us on the Cross.

* The “I”ndividual has “Soul Liberty.” Every person has the right to believe what he or she desires according to the principles of one’s conscience.

* The “S”eparation of church and state. We believe in no state church or no church state.

* The “T”wo offices - Pastor and Deacon are the scriptural offices.

* The “S”alvation of all church Members – Every member of a local church must have a testimony of personal faith in Christ as Savior.

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[Original illustration at this number was a duplicate of HolwickId #12643]

A church group in Chattanooga, Tennessee, stood around a muddy pit. The pastor read a passage from the thirty-fifth chapter of Genesis: “Then Jacob said unto his household, and to all that were with him, Put away the strange gods that are among you, and be clean, and change your garment.”

The group began tossing various objects into the pit. Among the “strange gods” was a big alarm clock that went jangling into the hole: this was a sign that the church was done with clock-watching during future services.

In went an old television set; also a rock-and-roll record with the impressive title “Ooba-Ooba-Ooba,” followed by several famous novels by popular modern authors. Women’s shorts and toreador pants landed on top of the stack, along with cigarette packs.

The minister of the church assured the newspaper reporters that these folk weren’t snake-handlers or weird cultists; they were plain Southern Baptists who wished to put away their idols and strip for the race on the gospel road.

—Selected

For Mike Clingenpeel and Ray Vickrey, Easter doesn’t mean much without about 40 days of reflection and repentance before it.

Though the two men pastor churches in different states -- Clingenpeel at River Road Church, Baptist in Richmond, Va., and Vickrey at Royal Lane Baptist in Dallas, Texas -- they will both lead their congregations in Lenten and holy week services this year.

Their decision to recognize Lent speaks to a larger Baptist community that, although not historically tied to the tradition, has taken to observing the holiday. And while it might be a confusing trend for some, for others, it’s more than just a fad.

Both Clingenpeel and Vickrey said that only through Lent can the “full impact” of Easter emerge.

“In my opinion, the full impact of the Easter message takes affect only when you walk through the dark shadows of the cross,” Clingenpeel said. “It’s a penitent season, and the Lenten activities remind us that it’s a time for reflection and repentance.”

Royal Lane Baptist, which started celebrating Lent in the 1970s, will have Lenten services every week leading up to Easter, along with a Good Friday service. Vickrey said the service will focus on the sorrow and suffering of Christ.

“We dare not rush to Easter without pausing to look upon the suffering savior,” Vickrey said.

Another Dallas church, Wilshire Baptist, celebrates Lent with a different emphasis in mind. Led by Pastor George Mason, people at Wilshire study the advent season as part of their adherence to the entire Christian calendar.

The 40-day period between Ash Wednesday and Easter, Lent comes from a Germanic root word meaning “spring.” Formerly called QUADRAGESIMA, a Latin term meaning “40th day,” the observance usually involves confession, fasting, prayer, meditation and giving.

Lent is more commonly celebrated in Catholic and other liturgical churches. Baptists, who trace their origins to protest movements that withdrew from the established Christian traditions, have looked upon such high-church vestiges with suspicion. But in recent years, more progressive and moderate Baptist congregations have turned to Lent and other ancient traditions to recapture some ancient Christian practices.

Andrew Daugherty, a Wilshire pastoral resident, said the church celebrates all holidays on the Christian calendar, including Christmas, Epiphany, Lent, Easter and Pentecost. It also follows a revised common lectionary -- or scheduled scriptural readings -- during worship. This year, church members hung paraments from the columns in the sanctuary to symbolize the “color and beauty of the church year.”

“This ... uses the framework of the human life cycle to take on issues of the life cycle of faith,” Daugherty said. “Our goal is to use Lent as a time to do a refresher course on the basic teachings and practices of the Christian church across time. We will move through dedication and birth stories, confession and conversion, baptism, discipleship, death and resurrection.”

Doyle Sager, pastor of First Baptist Church in Jefferson City, Mo., said his study of the Christian calendar and the cycles therein have convicted him to “let the Christian calendar speak and not be overshadowed by the secular calendar.” He said celebrating Lent and following the Christian calendar can bear witness to the faith.

“It taps into the desire people have for a rhythm in life,” Sager said. As the Baptist tradition of scheduling revivals in the spring and fall has faded, he said, “I think Baptists have really come to appreciate the rhythm that the Christian calendar represents. Lent is an opportunity to get some of that back.”

Terre Johnson, the minister of music at Vestavia Hills Baptist Church in Birmingham, said his church has celebrated Lent for almost 50 years. The Alabama church, which averages 500 people on a Sunday morning, does it to focus on meaningful days besides Christmas and Easter.

“The thinking of our church is that we observe most of the Christian calendar since we are part of a larger Christian body,” he said. “We focus our minds on that.”

Clingenpeel hopes for the same focus. While River Road has been “a Baptist church since its inception,” he wants his church to join the “larger liturgical tradition” as well.

“It allows us, in a mystical sense, to worship with believers around the world,” Clingenpeel said. “We want to be a part of the Christian community that celebrates that tradition.”

Congregants at Royal Lane take that mentality a step further. They display identical crosses and flowers on their front lawns during Holy Week and share breakfast together as a congregation -- all to foster the spirit of community, Vickrey said.

In addition to encouraging Baptist congregants who may not be used to recognizing the Lenten period, Sager said, Jefferson City church finds that many people who grew up in a liturgical tradition long for it. Those who didn’t soon come to appreciate it, he added.

“I have found that if you educate the congregation, they really are willing to do these new old things,” Sager said.

First Baptist of Jefferson City has “eased into” its observance of Advent, the season leading up to Christmas. The congregation started by celebrating the Last Supper and Maundy Thursday more than 10 years ago. Lately, it has distributed a Lenten devotional booklet with daily reflections and artistic expressions submitted by church members. Now Sager also incorporates an Ash Wednesday and Good Friday service to boot.

“In the past, the Good Friday service has been avoided because people scatter to the four corners that Friday,” Sager said. “This year I told my staff I don’t care if 12 people come to the service, I want to have it.”

Like the Good Friday service, Maundy Thursday services play a large role for Baptist churches that observe Lent. Wilshire, for instance, plans to use the service as a means to emphasize grace. Both Johnson and Clingenpeel said it is their favorite event of the entire Lenten season.

“Maundy Thursday is the most meaningful for me, and I think others would say the same,” Clingenpeel said. “It is a service of light and shadows. We read accounts of the Last Supper and Crucifixion. It allows members to enter into introspection and ... to focus on the weight of sin and the cross.”

Despite the somber tone Lent takes, Sager said the “ancient history” brought to light has significance for all believers. He sees his church's participation as part of a growing trend, at least within his circle of ministerial friends.

“I’m in a branch of the Christian church that seems like it’s growing,” he said. “When I call my buddies, we all want to know what we’re doing for worship and that sort of thing.”

Clingenpeel thinks the number of Baptist churches that celebrate Lent will continue to increase. He said moderate Baptist churches have especially responded to the holiday.

“Some more Southern churches have avoided it because they don’t want to be linked with something resembling Catholicism, but that doesn’t necessarily concern us,” Clingenpeel said. “We really like being linked with a larger community.”

*

[Original illustration at this number was added to HolwickID #15896]

The current Baptist "fuss" over Calvinism is just that -- "a fuss, not [yet] a full blown controversy," says historian Walter Shurden, but it is likely to be around for a while.

"Some fundamentalists are Calvinists, but not all Calvinists are fundamentalists," Shurden, professor of Christianity and executive director of the Center for Baptist Studies at Mercer University, said May 17 in an address to the Virginia Baptist Historical Society.

"People read the Bible through different lenses," Shurden said in analyzing a recent resurgence among Southern Baptists of a theology that developed during the Reformation and also goes by names of "Reformed" theology and "the doctrines of grace."

Shurden said the Calvinism fuss has practical concerns, such as what kind of pastors will fill Baptist pulpits and what kind of influences will prevail on campuses of universities and seminaries. "Many Baptist young people raised on John 3:16," which says salvation through Christ is available to everyone, "are turning to strict Calvinism," he said, which emphasizes that only the "elect" can be saved.

Shurden said implications for biblical interpretation include balancing Calvinistic-cited passages (such as Romans 8:28-30; Romans 9; 1 Peter 1:1-2; and Ephesians 1:3-12) and non-Calvinistic passages (such as John 3:16, 1 Timothy 2:4 and 2 Peter 3:9.)

Considered in theological terms, "The core issue is the exercise of divine sovereignty," Shurden said. Did God use divine sovereignty to "elect" some to salvation, while passing others by? Or did God use divine sovereignty to give all people freedom to respond to the gospel?

Historically, Shurden said, a non-Calvinist approach to faith appeared first in Baptist life. Over time, Calvinism became a prominent part of the Baptist tradition, he said, but strict Calvinism has never owned the Baptist field to itself or constituted the major tradition of Baptist life.

"The vast majority of Baptists today are not strict Calvinists," Shurden said. Streams of the history of Baptists in America -- such as the Regular or Particular Baptists, the General Baptists, and the Separate Baptists -- have deposited mixed elements in Baptist theology. That mixture has tempered the extremes of Calvinism, but a stricter Calvinism that proponents tend to equate with "the gospel" is beginning to resurface in Baptist life, he said.

Calvinism finds its roots in John Calvin's Institutes of the Christian Religion and the Reformation. It underlies the doctrine in Presbyterian and Reformed churches. Calvin also influenced the early Puritans. Shurden described John Calvin as a "great man," but said many of his followers have taken his teaching to extremes.

The tenets of strict, five-point Calvinism are often remembered by the acronym TULIP -- Total depravity, Unconditional election, Limited atonement, Irresistible grace and Perseverance of the saints.

In some extremes in Baptist history, Shurden said, Calvinism has generated an anti-missions and anti-evangelism spirit on the grounds that God has already chosen or "elected" those who will have salvation. Citing Baptist historian Leon McBeth's assessment of Calvinism, Shurden said that a stricter Calvinism has resurfaced in recent years for several reasons. Some Baptist Calvinists see themselves rediscovering the main tradition in Baptist history, while rejecting a shallow and pragmatic evangelism. He also noted that the uncertainty of society and the consequent drive for certainty and security play into the hands of a rather dogmatic Calvinism. "There is a heresy of 'exactness' in our society," Shurden said. "It can cause divisions among us."

Articles on a Founders Ministries Web site (www.founders.org) criticize "seeker-sensitive" worship services and a doctrinal weakness in Southern Baptist churches and argue for the "sufficiency" of Scripture. "Since the early 1970s, our denomination has seen an undeniable resurgence of interest in the theological system known as Calvinism and its attendant principles that we call the 'doctrines of grace,'" says an excerpt from a book by Ernest Reisinger and Matthew Allen included on the Web site.

"Calvinism is a much-maligned system by those who are ignorant of its teachings," they write. "In reality, Calvinism is nothing more than biblical Christianity. It lies in a profound apprehension that God is imminently majestic, holy, beautiful, and glorious, and that God's creation is profoundly sinful and needful of redemption. Hence, it promotes an attitude of dependence on God through all the activities of life. It teaches that salvation comes only when the sinful person rests in humble, self-emptying trust in the most wonderful, amazing grace of God. These are the fundamental principles of Calvinism."

This article speaks to something near and dear to the heart of Southern Baptists -- cooperation. A key concept in understanding Southern Baptists is voluntary cooperation.

Each Southern Baptist church is autonomous and self-governing under the Lordship of Christ. These churches, though, may decide to cooperate with other like-minded churches to provide for mutual encouragement and the advancement of God's kingdom through evangelism and missions.

Since the 1600s, Baptists have formed associations. An association is a group of churches that voluntarily join together for fellowship, encouragement and missions. Churches are the members of the association, but the association does not rule its member churches.

Churches may also choose to form a convention. In the United States, Southern Baptist churches have organized both state conventions and a national body, the Southern Baptist Convention.

Churches comprise the membership of state conventions and the SBC. They join voluntarily and may withdraw voluntarily.

Conventions exercise no control over the churches. Each level is autonomous. Thus, an association cannot dictate to a church or to the state convention. Of course, the reverse is true as well. A church might be a member of one body but not another, though that is unusual. Associations and conventions are governed by votes cast by messengers sent from member churches.

Southern Baptist churches formed state conventions and the SBC in order to conduct work on a wider geographical basis. State conventions operate on a state-wide basis, while the SBC is concerned with national and international ministry.

In 2000, the SBC celebrated the 75th anniversary of the Cooperative Program. This program was adopted in 1925 at the SBC annual meeting with E.Y. Mullins, president of Southern Seminary, moderating as president of the SBC.

Through the Cooperative Program churches are able to pool their resources voluntarily in order to do missions, education and benevolent ministries. Before the Cooperative Program was adopted, Baptist institutions and entities supported themselves by sending out agents to solicit money from the churches. This system did not work well, and many pastors called for a better system.

Under the Cooperative Program, each church decides to send a certain percentage (or amount) of its undesignated income to the Cooperative Program. These funds are remitted to the state convention where an approved percentage is retained for the state convention's use, and the remainder is sent to the treasurer of the Executive Committee of the SBC in Nashville, Tenn.

The Cooperative Program was a major step forward for the SBC. The program provided more funds for Baptist institutions and entities, and it also made systematic budgeting possible. The support Southern Seminary receives from the program makes it possible for students to study at a modest cost compared to independent seminaries.

One might well ask two questions of this system of cooperation. Is it biblical? And does it work?

In 2 Corinthians 8-9, the Apostle Paul discusses the offering he was gathering for the Christians in Jerusalem who were suffering because of a famine. Paul encouraged all the churches of Macedonia and Achaia to join together in giving to meet this need. This is an excellent example of how churches of the New Testament era combined their efforts in order to minister to suffering saints.

Does cooperation work? Our system of cooperation has been a significant factor in the growth of the SBC to become the largest non-Catholic denomination in the United States.

What about cooperation with other churches and denominations? Southern Baptists belong to the Baptist World Alliance, but we have declined to join the National Council of Churches or the World Council of Churches because of doctrinal concerns. We do cooperate with other churches to accomplish projects like evangelistic campaigns and Bible publishing.

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Full text of Article 14: Cooperation

Christ's people should, as occasion requires, organize such associations and conventions as may best secure cooperation for the great objects of the Kingdom of God. Such organizations have no authority over one another or over the churches. They are voluntary and advisory bodies designed to elicit, combine, and direct the energies of our people in the most effective manner. Members of New Testament churches should cooperate with one another in carrying forward the missionary, educational, and benevolent ministries for the extension of Christ's Kingdom. Christian unity in the New Testament sense is spiritual harmony and voluntary cooperation for common ends by various groups of Christ's people.

Cooperation is desirable between the various Christian denominations, when the end to be attained is itself justified, and when such cooperation involves no violation of conscience or compromise of loyalty to Christ and His Word as revealed in the New Testament.

Exodus 17:12; 18:17ff.; Judges 7:21; Ezra 1:3-4; 2:68-69; 5:14-15; Nehemiah 4; 8:1-5; Matthew 10:5-15; 20:1-16; 22:1-10; 28:19-20; Mark 2:3; Luke 10:1ff.; Acts 1:13-14; 2:1ff.; 4:31-37; 13:2-3; 15:1-35; 1 Corinthians 1:10-17; 3:5-15; 12; 2 Corinthians 8-9; Galatians 1:6-10; Ephesians 4:1-16; Philippians 1:15-18.

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Terry is the A.P. and Faye Stone Professor of Christian Missions and Evangelism at Southern Baptist Theological Seminary in Louisville, Ky.

*

The Baptist Faith and Message speaks of baptism and the Lord's Supper as ordinances. As we consider Article 7 on the Lord's Supper, we do well to begin by asking what is an ordinance? Why do Christians celebrate and perform these -- and only these -- two ceremonies?

An ordinance is an act:

1. commanded by the Lord Jesus in the Gospels and given by him for

his followers to practice (Matthew 26:17-30; Mark 14:12-26;

Luke 22:7-23);

2. passed on as a tradition by Jesus' authorized agents, the apostles,

in the letters to the churches (1 Corinthians 10:14-22; 11:17-34);

and

3. practiced by the early church in the history of the church recorded

in Acts (2:42,46; 20:7,11).

Thus only baptism and the Lord's Supper can be considered ordinances of the Christian church.

Ordinances are symbolic acts that set forth primary facts of the Christian faith and are obligatory for all who believe in Jesus Christ. Baptism dramatically pictures our entering into covenant relationship with God through Jesus Christ by faith, and the Lord's Supper portrays our continuing in this relationship.

Various designations have been used for the Lord's Supper by different churches due to the fact that the act is referred to in a variety of ways in the New Testament. These designations include:

1. breaking of bread (Acts 2:42; 20:7; 1 Cor 10:16);

2. communion (1 Cor 10:16);

3. Eucharist (from the Greek word for giving thanks, cf. Matt 26:27;

Mark 14:23; Luke 22:17, 19; 1 Cor 11:24);

4. the Lord's Supper (1 Cor 11:20); and

5. the Lord's table (1 Cor 10:20).

The accounts in the Gospels show that the Christian ceremony of the Lord's Supper has its roots in the Jewish Passover festival. This festival was a ceremony observed by the Jewish people to remind them of the Exodus -- that awesome event when the Lord rescued them from 400 years of degradation and slavery in Egypt.

Through great miracles and displays of power, Yahweh brought them out of Egypt, rescued them from the cruel oppression of Pharaoh and brought them into a beautiful land they could call their own. Although by definition the Exodus was a non-repeatable event, its significance was preserved for future generations of Israelites by the institution of the ceremony of the Feast of Passover (Exodus 12:24-27), celebrated every year at the Spring Equinox.

Just before Jesus was betrayed and handed over to the rulers to be crucified, he celebrated this "freedom meal" with his 12 disciples. As he did so, he turned the symbolism of the meal in a new direction.

He used the Passover festival to act out in symbolic drama the meaning of his coming death at the hands of the Jewish and Roman rulers. The unleavened bread and the wine were no longer symbols of deliverance from slavery in Egypt, but pictured him as the Passover Lamb sacrificed so that his people might be delivered from slavery to sin and death. As the leader of a new exodus, he instituted a new ceremony to commemorate it.

The explanation given by the Apostle Paul in his first letter to the Corinthians (11:17-34) helps us to understand the meaning of the Lord's Supper. His explanation of the Lord's Supper reveals six major themes.

1. SAVING SACRIFICE (This is my body):

On the night Jesus was arrested and betrayed by one of his close followers to the Jewish and Roman authorities, he broke bread. And as he was doing so, he said, "This is my body which is being given for you."

In the Jewish Passover feast, bread was eaten that was made without yeast. It had been made in haste because they were leaving Egypt in a hurry. In addition, a lamb was slaughtered to avert the angel of death.

The symbolism is now turned in a different direction. The bread represents the death of Jesus for his people. The Apostle Peter says, "For Christ died for sins once for all, the righteous for the unrighteous, to bring you to God" (1 Pet 3:18). God was justly outraged by our moral rebellion against him. We were under the sentence of death.

Christ died in our place. He was the Passover Lamb who was sacrificed to avert the messenger of death so that we might have life. This is the tradition handed down by Paul in the words, "This is my body which is for you."

2. COVENANT (This is my blood):

God had made a covenant with his people at Mount Sinai when he brought them out of Egypt. A relationship of love, loyalty and trust had been established. He would be their God, and they would be his people.

This covenant relationship, initiated by sacrifice, had been broken by the people. They had not been faithful to the agreement; they had not followed God's standards for the relationship.

The death of Jesus initiates a new covenant by a better sacrifice -- one that does not need to be repeated. The New Covenant is a better agreement because now not only God, but also his people will be able to keep the agreement.

The cup represents the fact that Jesus died to pay the penalty due unto us for our sins and that through trust in him and in his death for us, we are forgiven and completely pardoned. It speaks of a covenant relationship with God in which he says, "I will be your God, and you shall be my people."

3. COMMEMORATION (Do this in remembrance of me):

Some Christians believe that when the minister or priest pronounces the words, "This is my body" and "This is my blood," the bread actually becomes the literal body of Christ, and the wine actually becomes the literal blood of Christ. This teaching, known as transubstantiation, is a misunderstanding of the text for four reasons:

a. The words "this is my body" and "this is my blood" are to be understood figuratively. When King David says, "The Lord is my Shepherd," he is using a figure of speech, a metaphor. He does not mean that he is literally an animal or a sheep and that the Lord is a sheepherder. He means that his relationship to the Lord is like that between a sheep and the shepherd. If Jesus had meant that the wine becomes his blood, why didn't he use the word "become"? This is exactly what we have in John 2 when Jesus and his mother were at the wedding in Cana, and the text says that the water became wine.

b. Second, the Lord's Supper has its origins in the Jewish Passover. This feast was a memorial -- a reminder of the Exodus by the use of symbols.

c. Third, the festivals in the pagan religions at this time were also symbolic. It would have required a clear explanation if the Lord's Supper was to be taken literally.

d. Fourth, Jesus said, "Do this in remembrance of me." He said this carefully. He said it twice. We eat bread and drink wine as a reminder, not as the literal or real thing.

This clearly disproves erroneous thinking. The Lord's Supper is not a new offering of Christ's sacrifice. It is a remembering of the one sacrifice for sin, done once for all.

Furthermore, there is no idea presented that by a physical participation of the bread and the wine a person receives saving grace from God. We receive saving grace by faith, by putting our trust in Jesus Christ. John wrote his gospel that we might believe, and that by believing we might have life (John 20:31).

4. PARTICIPATION (Community):

Paul says that the Lord's Supper is teaching given by Christ and handed on to you (v. 23 plural). The commands "to eat" and "to drink" are in the plural (v. 26). So, this instruction is given to a community, a community of believers, those who are the followers of Jesus.

The covenant binding us to God through the death of Jesus creates a community. By participating in the communal meal, we are bound not only to the Lord Jesus, but also to one another. We have fellowship with Christ in a deep and mysterious way (1 Cor 10:14-21).

5. EXPECTATION (Future hope):

Paul commands the Corinthians to continue this ceremony until the Lord Jesus comes. The celebration is one of hope -- certain hope. Jesus Christ will return to this earth bodily and physically.

When he returns, he will judge the earth. He will reward the righteous and punish the wicked. Wrongs will be set right. We will no longer need this reminder then.

6. PROCLAMATION (Evangelism):

Finally, Paul says that by performing this ceremony, we proclaim the death of the Lord Jesus. The Lord's Supper dramatizes in symbolic fashion the central facts of the Christian faith and announces these facts to all who observe. In a very simple way, those who do not belong to Jesus can see and understand through these simple actions that the Lord Jesus gave his life for us.

Since the Lord's Supper is an expression of continuing in the faith, it follows logically that only baptized believers should participate. By eating the bread and drinking the cup, we are identifying with Jesus Christ as Lord. We are saying that when he died, he died for my sins. When he poured out his blood, it was the sacrificial death that initiated a new covenant -- a new relationship between us and the Creator God.

We must recognize or distinguish the body of the Lord. By participating in this celebration, we enjoy deep fellowship with the Lord Jesus. Paul says that just as those who participate in pagan religious festivals are actually participating with demonic spirits, so those who belong to Jesus and who participate are actually involved in deep spiritual participation with Jesus Christ.

We must examine and judge ourselves. The ceremony is a way of saying, "I am continuing in my relationship with Jesus Christ." If our behavior is contrary to our confession, we are lying.

If we don't examine our lives, acknowledge our sins and turn from them, we will be disciplined by the Lord. But, we should not abstain from the Supper. We must examine ourselves and then participate (v. 28).

_____________________________

Full text of Article 7b: Lord's Supper

Christian baptism is the immersion of a believer in water in the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. It is an act of obedience symbolizing the believer's faith in a crucified, buried, and risen Saviour, the believer's death to sin, the burial of the old life, and the resurrection to walk in newness of life in Christ Jesus. It is a testimony to his faith in the final resurrection of the dead. Being a church ordinance, it is prerequisite to the privileges of church membership and to the Lord's Supper.

The Lord's Supper is a symbolic act of obedience whereby members of the church, through partaking of the bread and the fruit of the vine, memorialize the death of the Redeemer and anticipate His second coming.

_________________

Gentry is an associate professor of Old Testament interpretation at Southern Baptist Theological Seminary in Louisville, Ky.

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There has been much recent discussion of Baptists and their relation to creedal statements. We usually prefer the expression "confessions of faith" because in some denominations coercion has often been associated with the creeds of the past. But properly understood a creed with Baptists means simply what we believe. Creed and confession of faith mean the same thing. I invite attention first to some fallacies about creeds.

SOME FALLACIES ABOUT CREEDS

The first is the widely circulated statement that Baptists have no creeds. As a matter of fact, Baptists have published a large number of articles of faith. Professor McGlothin's volume Baptist Confessions of Faith (Publication Society, 1919) has 368 pages. On these pages are printed a long list of Baptist creedal statements. These confessions were published under a great variety of circumstances. In each instance there was a good ground for the publication.

A second fallacy is that Baptist liberty prohibits creedal statements. Our traditional championship of religious liberty and individualism is constantly cited against new declarations of faith. How exactly the opposite is true. The publication of confessions of faith has been a constant expression of our ideal of liberty. Repression at this point is exactly what Baptists do not want. Repression covers up, hides beliefs, and under the cover all kinds of errors breed and flourish.

Baptists have always revolted against coercion by state or church in the matter of beliefs. This is the background of our traditional doctrine of liberty. But Baptists would sell their birthright very cheaply if, within the Baptist family itself, one group should muzzle another group to prevent a free expression of beliefs whenever the situation called for such expression. Openness and freedom of utterance are our true Baptist tradition. The coercion of a public opinion among us forbidding such free utterance would be a dire calamity -- the New Testament, of course, is our final standard and authority. Our confessions are simply our effort to state what the New Testament teaches. They are all to be tested and estimated according to the New Testament.

A third fallacy is that creedal statements are government by the "dead hand." Here again the fact has been turned right about and made to face in the wrong direction. New creedal statements are put forth to prevent government by the "dead hand." That is why there are so many Baptist confessions of faith. No group of Baptists can bind another group by any such statement of beliefs. Creeds tend to become stereotyped in the course of time. New and vital statements are needed. To keep our faith alive we restate it from time to time.

A fourth fallacy is that creedal statements imply that we have ceased to think. This is a palpably incorrect view. We are bound to think, discriminate, construct, when we give forth new statements of belief. I make bold to say that the greater part of the thinking in theology today is being done by those who are interested in restatement of beliefs. There are two groups who are thinking hard. First, the radicals who are trying to overthrow the evangelical faith. They are framing a new scheme of doctrine. Another group who are thinking are defending the evangelical faith. There is a third group who are not thinking much -- the neutrals who have no definite message and depreciate all efforts to restate the faith.

WHAT IS A CREED?

A creed is simply the statement of meaning of the facts of religion. ... Confessions of faith are our efforts to state what the great facts of our religion mean.

REASONS FOR OPPOSING RESTATEMENT OF BELIEFS

I mention the following reasons implied or expressed, consciously or unconsciously held, for opposing new statements of belief.

I name, first, the desire for license instead of liberty. There are limits to religion of Christ beyond which men may not go and claim to be Christian, and there are corresponding Baptist limits. The refusal to define limits may and often does indicate a desire to abolish all limits.

Another reason is the absence of opinions. Real thinking is hard work. The indolent mind is impatient with strenuous doctrinal thought. It does not enjoy the attendant headache. The "open mind" is the ideal of the indolent mind. I believe in the open mind, with a screen in it, like an open window. The screen lets in the air and keeps out the mosquitoes and gnats. The screen in the mind means discrimination, and discrimination means hard thinking and definite views.

Another reason for opposing creedal statements is unwillingness to declare one's views. Some, indeed many, who are really thinking hold views they are unwilling to declare. They have arrived at conclusions but they are held as a sort of private possession to be exposed to view only in a select inner circle. It is inevitable that these should oppose creedal statements.

A fourth reason for such opposition is an incorrect conception of liberty. This is perhaps the most widespread reason among Baptists. It is due to an exaggerated individualism. Liberty is interpreted as an individualistic affair entirely. This is erroneous. Liberty is also a social principle. It involves relations to others, obligations and duties. If you have in yourself all resources of material support, mental equipment and the inclination, you may be a free lance. But the moment you join any group other than a free lance club, you accept limitations. The Baptist denomination is not a free lance club as some would like to make it.

The group has liberties as a group. Two men or two million men have the right to unite for common ends on a common doctrinal platform, whether that platform be economic, political or religious. This is an inalienable right of the group. Free and voluntary association on a common platform for common ends is what made America an independent nation. A political party without a platform is unthinkable. A denomination controlled by a group who have no declared platform is heading for the rocks. The Baptist denomination has never allowed creeds to be imposed upon it by others. It has never compelled anyone in the denomination to accept the Baptist confessions of faith. But Baptists have always insisted upon their own right to declare their beliefs in a definite, formal way, and to protect themselves by refusing to support men in important places as teachers and preachers who do not agree with them. This group right of self-protection is a sacred as any individual right. If a group of men known as Baptists consider themselves trustees of certain great truths, they have an inalienable right to conserve and propagate those truths unmolested by others in the denomination who oppose those truths. The latter have an equal right to unite with another group agreeing with them. But they have no right to attempt to make of the Baptist denomination a free lance club.

WHEN ARE NEW STATEMENTS OF BELIEF NEEDED?

They are needed under various circumstances. Sometimes they are needed to differentiate Baptists from other denominations, as in the Puritan era in England. Sometimes to defend themselves against false charges, as in Romania and other European countries today. Sometimes they are needed to help unify groups of Baptists scattered over the world, as was designed in the Fraternal Address of Southern Baptists two years ago. They are needed in times of doctrinal vagueness, confusion and unrest as at present.

These confessions of faith do not in any way interfere with Baptist liberty. They are never given final form. They are never free from defects. They are never imposed by legal sanctions. Their influence is moral and spiritual. No two of them are ever identical in form, although most of them agree in substance. They are never doctrinal strait-jackets like Catholic creeds. But while they do not destroy liberty they do enable Baptist life to function effectively. They educate the young believer. They enable the average church member to get his bearings. They define certain great limits within which a man is entitled to call himself a Baptist. They have the immense practical value of indicating who can work together successfully in the enterprises of the kingdom of God.

THE LIMITS OF COOPERATION

The last point is worthy of emphasis. Practical cooperation is, after all, a fine test of the limits of practical fellowship, and doctrinal fellowship is a fine test of the limits of practical cooperation. The exact limits of practical cooperation are, of course, hard to define. But there are certain great guiding principles. If a man holds consistently the Unitarian view of Christ's person, he cannot long cooperate with those who hold the deity of Christ. The two conceptions are antagonistic in themselves and in the great groups of beliefs which go with them. For the one group bad men evolve into good men in response to good influences. For the other group bad men become good men by being saved from their sins in response to the Gospel appeal. For one group education is the chief agency for changing men. For the other regeneration by the power of God's Spirit. It is true, as often asserted, that cooperation is largely a matter of spirit and attitude. Identity of doctrinal beliefs may not be necessary at all points in order to have cooperation among groups of Baptists. But if there are radical and fundamental differences, the "spirit" and "attitude" are certain to correspond. No man can with enthusiasm give his money or his assistance in propagating what he regards as fundamental error.

Before closing I wish to add that I admit that there are dangers connected with new statements of belief. They may be misused. They may be abused in various ways. They may be put forth too frequently and absorb too much attention. But this does not affect that main point. They are a part of the vital process by which the life of a great people is expressed and promoted. As Baptists we must not permit ourselves to become silent on our fundamental beliefs in an age which calls for outspokenness in clear terms. We must not permit the formation of a public opinion among us which tends to repress and stifle.

I have written the above because there are deadly tendencies at work -- deadly. I mean to our New Testament Christianity. The neutrals do not see these tendencies and make no protest. They are for peace and silence. The radicals see clearly. The defenders of the gospel also see clearly on their side. It is well that we clear the atmosphere and learn where we are drifting.

_________________

This essay, likely written between 1920 and 1925, was reprinted in 1997 as part of a compilation of Mullins' works titled, "The Axioms of Religion" (also the title of his most famous work which is included in the volume) and published by Broadman & Holman of LifeWay Christian Resources of the Southern Baptist Convention.

*

The Bible is replete with family imagery as evidenced in the many wonderful verses cited for the Baptist Faith and Message Article 18. We are indeed "brothers and sisters" in Christ, adopted as children by our heavenly Father. The importance of the marriage relationship unfolds symbolically in the Old Testament with God as husband and Israel as wife, and in the New Testament with Jesus as the bridegroom and the church as the radiant bride. Clearly, marriage and family are distinctly theological.

A healthy home has deep spiritual dimensions, and thus the Bible instructs us concerning the family. We as believers must look first to Jesus Christ, our bridegroom, to engage and understand the divine design for marriage. God's perspective always places greater emphasis on character and motivation than merely on outward conduct. Thus, as Jesus described himself as gentle and humble in heart, always acting in a manner pleasing to the Father, the family provides the altar of transformation where we learn to love and to live like Jesus.

God reveals himself as a relational being, and we are created in his image for lasting, intimate relationships -- first with God himself, and then with others. Our love and understanding of God find expression in our love for people, with family relationships being the deepest and most precious.

God's ideal for the home -- an intimate relationship that brings deep soul satisfaction to both husband and wife -- models grace and faith for the children and proclaims to a lost and lonely world the type of love that God has for his people. This intimacy extends from a spiritual foundation through a relational sphere and culminates in the physical expression within the bounds of marriage.

Christian homes draw people to Christ, both the children that God may bring into the family and those outside the church who witness a love that is committed, sacrificial and selfless, dependent moment by moment upon Jesus as Lord.

The Scriptures give unique imperatives -- directed to the husband, the wife and the children -- that detail the incarnation of submission. The godly husband will nourish and cherish his wife, loving her "as Christ loved the church and gave Himself for her." The spiritual husband is a submissive servant of Christ, humble, gentle, faithfully putting his wife's welfare and needs above his own. The godly wife will respect and honor her own husband, submitting to him "as unto the Lord." Her character and conduct can draw even an unbelieving husband to faith.

For each the Lord Jesus is the motivation and object of an obedient life. Each recreates the very picture of Christ's love for his people as he willingly gave up his life for his beloved. Both husband and wife, absolute equals before the Lord, fix their eyes first upon him and then upon each other. Obedience for the Christian is neither optional, selective, nor conditional upon the spouse's response or behavior.

Should God bless such a household with children, they will witness daily submission and godly love as they are charged to obey their parents "in the Lord." Jesus, the perfect bridegroom and the central focus of each command, radiates his love to the family and through each member to the world.

The family of God operates in direct opposition to our culture and our natural tendency to self-centeredness, self-absorption and self-gratification, and requires the supernatural enablement of the Holy Spirit. The theology of family is characterized by each member outdoing the other in service, in sacrifice, in submission to the Lord, reflecting gratitude for God's faithful, intimate love toward us.

___________________________________

Full text of Article 18: The Family

God has ordained the family as the foundational institution of human society. It is composed of persons related to one another by marriage, blood, or adoption.

Marriage is the uniting of one man and one woman in covenant commitment for a lifetime. It is God's unique gift to reveal the union between Christ and His church and to provide for the man and the woman in marriage the framework for intimate companionship, the channel of sexual expression according to biblical standards, and the means for procreation of the human race.

The husband and wife are of equal worth before God, since both are created in God's image. The marriage relationship models the way God relates to His people. A husband is to love his wife as Christ loved the church. He has the God-given responsibility to provide for, to protect, and to lead his family. A wife is to submit herself graciously to the servant leadership of her husband even as the church willingly submits to the headship of Christ. She, being in the image of God as is her husband and thus equal to him, has the God-given responsibility to respect her husband and to serve as his helper in managing the household and nurturing the next generation.

Children, from the moment of conception, are a blessing and heritage from the Lord. Parents are to demonstrate to their children God's pattern for marriage. Parents are to teach their children spiritual and moral values and to lead them, through consistent lifestyle example and loving discipline, to make choices based on biblical truth. Children are to honor and obey their parents.

Genesis 1:26-28; 2:15-25; 3:1-20; Exodus 20:12; Deuteronomy 6:4-9; Joshua 24:15; 1 Samuel 1:26-28; Psalms 51:5; 78:1-8; 127; 128; 139:13-16; Proverbs 1:8; 5:15-20; 6:20-22; 12:4; 13:24; 14:1; 17:6; 18:22; 22:6,15; 23:13-14; 24:3; 29:15,17; 31:10-31; Ecclesiastes 4:9-12; 9:9; Malachi 2:14-16; Matthew 5:31-32; 18:2-5; 19:3-9; Mark 10:6-12; Romans 1:18-32; 1 Corinthians 7:1-16; Ephesians 5:21-33; 6:1-4; Colossians 3:18-21; 1 Timothy 5:8,14; 2 Timothy 1:3-5; Titus 2:3-5; Hebrews 13:4; 1 Peter 3:1-7.

_________________

Cutrer is the C. Edwin Gheens Associate Professor of Christian Ministry and the director of the Gheens Center for Christian Family Ministry at Southern Baptist Theological Seminary in Louisville, Kentucky.

*

Sermon in series "After Acts: Early Church series #10" Matthew 7:15-23

WHERE THE EARLY CHURCH WENT WRONG

=================================

I. Veering off track.

II. Jesus anticipated the departure from truth.

A. His warnings on wolves.

B. Fruit is the key.

III. Why the church changed.

A. Power won out over servanthood.

B. Materialism won out over spirituality.

C. Paganism infiltrated the church.

D. Bible was trumped by traditions.

E. Salvation became a system of works.

IV. Getting back to the basics - the Baptist approach.

A. Jesus as Lord.

B. Bible as benchmark.

C. Worship must be sincere.

D. Local leadership.

E. Salvation by grace.

V. "Lord, Lord" doesn't hack it.

*

[Original illustration at this number was a duplicate of HolwickID #18019]

"You don't have to be a Baptist to go to heaven - but why take a chance?"

-- Dr. Tony Campolo

"Presbyterians can baptize their way - Baptists will baptize His way."

-- Dr. Tony Campolo (said in a humorous vein)

"The trouble with our Texas Baptists is that we do not hold them under water long enough."

-- William Brann, Texas newspaperman; Intellivu 4/23/03

Elders and congregationalism. For many Baptists, these terms sound like polar opposites. However, according to some speakers at the “Issues in Baptist Polity” conference, the two may not be mutually exclusive.

Mark Dever, pastor of Capitol Hill Baptist Church in Washington, D.C., argued that a body of elders is the New Testament model of church structure. He made a clear distinction between “elder-led” and “elder-rule,” flatly rejecting the Presbyterian model that makes a distinction between teaching elders and ruling elders. Instead, Dever offered a biblical argument for an elder-led form of congregationalism in which the congregation serves as a “final court of appeal” in the decision-making process.

Pointing to passages in Acts, 1 Timothy, Philippians, James and 1 Peter, Dever made his case that the New Testament church had a plurality of elders within each congregation. In a number of cases, the New Testament writers refer to elders (plural) when addressing a church (singular). He read verse after verse.

“The best I can tell, the New Testament evidence seems to indicate that common, even expected practice was a plurality of elders in each local congregation,” Dever said.

In addition to the biblical argument, Dever attempted to prove that elder-led congregations are not absent in Baptist history. He cited a number of early Baptist documents that mention a plurality of elders. Among these was a letter written by W.B. Johnson, the first president of the Southern Baptist Convention, which refers to a plurality of elders in most Baptist churches of the South. Dever also cited correspondence from Baptist churches in England, Philadelphia and Virginia as evidence.

“The biblical model is elder-directed or elder-led congregationalism,” Dever said. “It is biblical and it is Baptist.”

While there was support for elder-led congregationalism, the majority of speakers at the NOBTS polity conference denounced elder rule in Southern Baptist churches. Under the elder-rule model, the congregation has little or no say in the matters of the church. A select group rules and controls all or most of the decisions of the church.

In contrast, various presenters were at least open to the idea of elder-led model as a form of congregationalism. This is due in part to their general consensus on the biblical teaching about the number of church offices.

“It is commonly agreed by all that there are not three distinct church offices, but two in the New Testament -- that of deacon and that of elder/overseer/pastor,” said David Dockery, president of Union University in Jackson, Tenn. “God intended for there to be at least one leader and perhaps a team of leaders in each congregation.”

Dockery explained that beginning in Acts 14, elders are usually mentioned as plural in the New Testament, with the context implying multiple elders for each church.

The function of the church, Dockery said, is more important than the form as long as the form is consistent with the scriptural teaching. To Dockery, Christ's lordship over the church is best experienced in churches with congregational polity. However, he noted that “being elder-led is quite consistent with congregational polity.”

Paige Patterson, president of Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary in Texas, addressed the issue of elders within Baptist congregations during a panel discussion that featured Dever, Richard Land and James Leo Garrett. He expressed concern about the growing trend toward “elder rule” in Southern Baptist churches.

A proponent of congregationalism, Patterson said he believes some churches adopt elder rule to fix unbiblical forms of congregationalism. One “abhorrent” form of congregationalism, he said, views the pastor as the slave of the church. Instead of shifting to a biblical model of congregationalism, some churches move toward elder rule. Patterson suggested that this “fix” may be worse than the problem.

“I do not like the 'elder-rule' proposition. I think we are going to lose one of our great distinctives as Baptists if we throw away our congregational church polity,” Patterson said. “I do not have a problem with multiplicity of elders within congregationalism.”

Patterson said “primary elder” congregationalism rather than “single elder” congregationalism is the model found in New Testament.

Garrett, distinguished professor emeritus of theology at Southwestern Seminary, said the practice of elder rule in Baptist churches constitutes a serious erosion in congregational polity. He believes that congregational polity is being rejected in some Southern Baptist churches because it is time-consuming and sometimes difficult.

“The appeal to allow a small group in the congregation to make the decisions for the church parallels the appeal to the citizens to give up voting and participatory democracy and put governing into the hands of the experts,” Garrett said. “Decision-making as to the life, ministry and mission of a church should not be rigidly separated from the living out of the life, ministry and mission. Members who are involved in one should be involved in the other.”

Garrett said that it is acceptable for the congregation to delegate certain matters to a smaller group within the church. He insisted that these things should be of lesser importance, with the essential issues coming before a congregational vote.

This is the case at Capitol Hill Baptist Church, which often delegates issues to the elder body, yet the congregation still plays a key role in decision-making by voting on essential issues. The calling of a pastor or the election of elders, for example, must be approved by the church, Dever said.

“I do think the conference for many expanded what Southern Baptists mean by the term 'congregational polity,'“ said Stan Norman, assistant professor of theology at NOBTS, BCTM director and organizer of the conference. “I am open to further discussion and study on the matter of 'elder-led' as a viable form of congregationalism, but I am not completely convinced at this time.”

Well, it finally happened.

A summer gathering of Baptists is uniting around, of all things, a creed. We should have seen it coming. Baptist “moderates” have been warning for years about the dangers of creeds. Creeds replace Christ as Lord over the Christian, they said. There's no need for a creed when we have the Bible, they said. Creeds violate the “soul competency” of the individual believer exercising his priesthood before God. That's why it is so surprising that the creedalists this summer aren't meeting at the Southern Baptist Convention. They're at the Baptist World Alliance (BWA).

According to the Biblical Recorder newspaper, a group of Baptist professors -- including several scholars related to the Cooperative Baptist Fellowship -- have asked the BWA to recite the Apostle's Creed at next year's 100th anniversary convocation. The BWA agreed to include the recitation in the opening session of the meeting. The move comes after the SBC's June decision to sever ties with the global body.

In one sense, this should come as no surprise. After all, all Christians are, by definition, “creedalists.” After all, the Spirit tells us that the regenerate person must “confess with your mouth that Jesus is Lord and believe in your heart that God has raised him from the dead” (Romans 10:9 ESV). All Baptists are, by definition, “creedalists” since our name signifies that we share a belief about the meaning of baptism in identification with Christ. This is where the shell-game hypocrisy of the “anti-creedal” Baptists is so disingenuous.

During the SBC inerrancy controversy, moderate Russell Dilday, then president of Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary, defended his faculty against charges of liberalism by noting that all of them were in line with the Baptist Faith and Message (1963). Moreover, there is not a Baptist church -- of any theological stripe -- anywhere in the world that does not practice “creedalism” of some kind or other, and rightly so. A Voodoo priest might be a “competent soul”, but just watch what happens when he tries to bite the head off a live chicken at Vacation Bible School. Even in the most liberal Baptist church, an offertory prayer ending with “There is no God but Allah and Mohammed is his prophet” will result in a special-called deacons' meeting.

The Apostles' Creed is an early and beautiful expression of what Jude calls “the faith once for all delivered to the saints” (Jude 3). The Apostles' Creed defined orthodox Christianity against false teachings masquerading as Christian truth. Against the heretics of the day, it affirmed the personality and triune nature of God, the virginal conception, the visible Second Coming, the resurrection from the dead, and so forth. In the same fashion, the Nicene Creed defined what Christians meant by the deity and humanity of Christ over against the dangerous doctrines on either side of that question.

Despite what so many on the Baptist left have said over the past several years, the Baptist Faith and Message functions in precisely the same way. After all, there was “anti-creedalism” in the days of the early church confessions of faith too. They asked: why not just coalesce around “Jesus is Lord”? The church rightly concluded that a common confession required definitions of “Jesus” and “lordship” in order to make that claim. The Gnostics could affirm: “I believe in God.” What they could not say is “I believe in God, the Father Almighty, maker of heaven and earth.”

The same is true now. We live in an age when so many claiming to be “Christians” and “Baptists” believe in “God the Father” while believing He is “Mother” too. They believe in the “Almighty” but they don't believe He knows the future. They believe in the “virgin birth” -- but only as a metaphysical metaphor.

Moreover, many of these same leaders argue that not all human beings are persons in the image of God and that Scripture is simply wrong when it sets the boundaries of human sexuality.

The early church fathers didn't have to worry about paying white supremacists to preach a hate-filled “gospel” on foreign shores -- but Southern Baptists once did. But with a confession of faith that affirms the gospel for all races and nations, that kind of poisonous teaching is beyond the bounds of our cooperative mission.

The Patristic-era churches did not worry that their faculty members might advocate on “biblical” grounds the abortion of pre-born children. But, as we have seen in the past 25 years, Southern Baptists have had to confront such heresy. Now we have confessed together precisely what we believe about human life.

The problem with the “anti-creedalists” is never the idea of a creed. Most of them are perfectly happy with the last confession adopted. Instead, they fear attention being called to the point where they deviate from Scripture -- and it is usually exactly where the culture is raging against the Christian Gospel at the moment.

So two cheers for the BWA. Maybe the recitation of the Apostles' Creed will put away all this nonsense about “no creed but the Bible.” Maybe it will refocus the BWA leadership on what Baptists have always known -- there is no cooperation without a common confessional conviction. And maybe one day the BWA will move away from the ambiguity of a “creedless” bureaucracy toward a defined orthodox Baptist witness in the world. If that happens, I think you will see Southern Baptists ready to join back up -- though not a minute sooner.

And if that happens, by the way, we'll be happy to recite the creed.

*

Do Baptists affirm the priesthood of the BELIEVER or the priesthood of BELIEVERS?

To outsiders, that question -- singular or plural -- may seem as esoteric as “How many angels can dance on the head of a pin?” But to many people in Baptist life, it is a question that stirs deep emotion and debate.

Historians and theologians say Baptists have championed the individualism implied by “believer” -- singular -- but they also have affirmed the sense of responsibility suggested by “believers” -- plural.

“The priesthood of the believer -- singular -- is the idea each individual Christian is capable of reading and interpreting Scripture and no mediator other than Jesus Christ stands between the believer and God,” said Paul Powell, dean of Baylor's Truett Theological Seminary in Waco, Texas. “Some people interpret this as implying each Christian individual may believe whatever he or she wants to.”

“The priesthood of the believers -- plural -- is the idea that our interpretation of Scripture should take into account what the church has taught through the ages, such as through creeds and statements of faith,” Powell said. “Some people interpret this as implying that if there is a conflict between what the church has taught and what we believe, we should give deference to the teachings of the church and not to our individual interpretations.”

Both perspectives reflect truth, but they both can be distorted, Powell acknowledged.

“We should not ignore the distilled wisdom of Christian teachers and statements of faith through the years,” he stressed. “On the other hand, the individual may have insights into the meaning of Scripture contrary to the church.”

Timothy George, dean of Beeson Divinity School at Samford University in Birmingham, Alabama, suggested the emphasis has gone too far toward the singular side of the equation.

“I certainly think that the 'priesthood of the believer,' is a modern distortion of the great Reformation principle,” said George, author of the essay “The Priesthood of All Believers and the Quest for Theological Integrity” in the book “People of God.” “The priesthood of all believers (plural) did not mean either 'I am my own priest' or 'we have no more priests,' but rather 'we are priests to one another' within the covenanted community of faith.

“This is clearly how the early Baptists understood this idea, as can be seen in their strong emphasis on church covenants, church discipline and confessional accountability,” George told ABP. “In other words, freedom was never seen as an absolute value, an end in itself. It was rather a sacred gift matched by corresponding imperative -- responsibility.”

The issue of priesthood -- singular or plural -- is being debated at Baylor University and among the school's alumni factions as a result of a speech by Provost David Lyle Jeffrey last spring. In his address, Jeffrey expressed alarm at biblical illiteracy and substandard orthodoxy, not only in secular culture, but also in conservative Christian churches and at Baylor. Jeffrey blamed the decline on what he called “anarchic, postmodern advocacy -- or radical subjectivism” -- in academia, noting it “drowns all music but its own.”

Jeffrey advocated “communal freedom,” or the right of a university to set group standards, over against the individual freedom of professors. In the postmodern academic realm, “the idea of communal freedom is seen as a threat, perhaps because it suggests the possibility of reciprocal accountability,” he said.

“In their attempt to elevate the individual over community, postmodern educators ... have resisted ever more strongly the privilege of counterbalance -- of communal freedom to speak collectively ....”

Supporters say Jeffrey merely advocated the longstanding Protestant notion that Christians exist in community, not alone. Critics claim he traded away Baptists' birthright by diminishing their distinctive doctrine of freedom.

The issue is especially potent because Baylor is in Texas, where individualism is woven into the cultural and historical fabric of the state.

“Texas Baptists are big on individual autonomy,” noted Leon McBeth, retired professor of church history at Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary in Fort Worth and author of Texas Baptists' 150-year history.

“But in the whole Baptist family, there are certain bedrock principles we have adhered to and should adhere to,” McBeth added. “If a person gets so set on some issue outside the norm of Baptist faith and practice, I don't know how he calls himself a Baptist.”

A root doctrine of the priesthood of the believer/believers is soul freedom, McBeth said. “We're free under the lordship of Jesus Christ, but we're not free outside of that lordship,” he explained.

One of the most influential books about Baptist freedoms is “The Baptist Identity: Four Fragile Freedoms” by historian Walter Shurden, executive director of the Center for Baptist Studies at Mercer University in Georgia. Shurden wrote: “Individualism is far from the total picture for Baptists. For the most part, however, Baptists never crouch in a defensive position when the charge of individualism is hurled at them. With all its inherent weaknesses, individualism is to a great degree a Baptist badge of honor.”

Yet Shurden prefers the plural version -- the priesthood of all believers. “It is the older term of the Protestant Reformation, and I think the plural represents the fullest possible meaning of the idea,” he told ABP.

“I have lots of friends in Baptist life that use the term in its singular form, but I have never had the slightest idea that they are engaged in Lone Ranger spirituality or that they are minimizing the church,” he continued. “I urge them to use the plural, but I don't accuse them of being 'subjectivists' or 'radical individualists.’ Most of the people that I know who use 'the priesthood of the believer' are as devoted church folk as any I know. Look for them on Sunday and they are in Sunday school and church, not at the local gathering of the Libertarians.”

Shurden said Baptists find the plural understanding of priesthood expressed in the New Testament and in early Baptist confessions of faith.

“It is not a Johnny-come-lately concept in Baptist life,” he said. “...Baptists beat [philosopher John] Locke to the idea of the importance of the individual and of individual freedom.”

For Baptists, Shurden said, believers' priesthood means several things -- each individual has direct access to God, the church is not to be clergy-centered, the church IS a priesthood rather than the church HAS a priesthood, individuals count, and access to God means responsibility to a local church.

“By individualism Baptists have never meant New Age navel-gazing or 'expressive individualism' that is indifferent to the lordship of Christ expressed in the local church,” he said. “Christians are not isolated priests practicing the Christian faith as if it were a home correspondence course in self-improvement.”

The communal aspect of the priesthood means individual Christians are accountable to a local church, not “a convention of churches, an association of churches, or any other institution other than the local church,” Shurden added.

“Does an individual Baptist have the right and responsibility to interpret Scripture for oneself? Of course! To deny that is to deny much of Baptist history. Can a Baptist believe anything he or she wants? Of course, they can! Can a Baptist believe anything they want and be a member of a Baptist church? No, of course not! The local Baptist congregation is the Baptist pope in Baptist life. The local church determines the parameters of faith and action in Baptist life.”

“Baptists have always -- ALWAYS -- affirmed both the freedom of the individual and the freedom of the local church to control that individual,” Shurden concluded.

Several Baptist scholars emphasized that exercising the freedom of priesthood carries a price, such as alienation from fellow believers.

Without that freedom, however, Baptists might not exist today, Paul Powell noted. Baptists' forebears had the courage to contradict majority views of Reformed, Anglican and Congregational churches.

“True Baptists will take their stand and face the consequences when they are compelled by the Scriptures,” Powell said.

“The bottom line is this,” added Baptist historian Bill Leonard, dean of the Divinity School of Wake Forest University in North Carolina. “Every Baptist can exercise his/her priestliness, but that does not mean the rest of the Baptist community can't throw them out.”

“Priestly dissenters shouldn't whine when they get rejected by the community,” Leonard said. “Indeed, they should expect it.”

*

Just mention the phrase “elder-led” polity in a business meeting at some Southern Baptist church, and you'll likely get an array of responses -- from support to confusion to outright hostility.

With the recent and highly publicized attempt by the leadership of Germantown Baptist Church, one of Tennessee’s largest SBC churches, to transition to an elder system of church government, the spotlight of discussion has again focused on the issue of church polity in Baptist life.

But Stan Norman, associate professor of theology at New Orleans Baptist Theological Seminary and an expert on the theological distinctives of Baptists, said the debate about the role of elders in Baptist churches isn’t anything new to Southern Baptists. Norman is the co-editor of “Perspectives on Church Government: Five Views of Church Polity.” Chad Brand of Southern Baptist Theological Seminary is the other editor.

“I remember discussing it when I was in college in the early 80s,” said Norman, director of the Baptist Center for Theology and Ministry at New Orleans Seminary. “The debate about this matter seems to have intensified over the last 10 years or so. But discussions about this subject have existed in Baptist life for the last 20 to 25 years.”

On May 7, Germantown Baptist, a 168-year-old church located just east of Memphis, voted by an almost three-fifths margin to defeat a motion to change its bylaws and constitution to move toward an elder system. Instead, the church decided to keep its congregational form of polity. Several weeks later, the senior pastor, Sam Shaw, announced his resignation.

The Germantown vote has brought the debate back to the forefront, but according to Norman, the presence of a “plurality of elders” in Southern Baptist life has existed in “some form as a minority position almost since our inception.”

Brand agreed.

“If you go back to older Baptist traditions among English Particular Baptists and also early Baptists in America, you’ll find diversity,” he said.

REASONS FOR INCREASE IN ELDER TALK

Although Norman doesn’t know how many SBC churches use the “elder-led” form of church polity, based on what he has heard from pastors and his students, Norman said there are several reasons for the rise in the discussion of plural elders in some Southern Baptist churches.

“One of the reasons is a lot of people are very frustrated with classic congregationalism and a lot of the abuses associated with it,” said Norman, also the author of “The Baptist Way: Distinctives of a Baptist Church”

“Many of us in SBC life can relate stories of business meetings becoming highly contentious. We’ve all heard of churches using their governance and simply voting a pastor out of his office of service for no biblical reason. These stories have contributed to a high level of frustration in polity practices in Southern Baptist churches.”

Another reason, Norman said, is the increased exposure to non-Southern Baptist writings on church polity.

“Many younger Baptist pastors are influenced by these writings and therefore incorporate other forms of church polity into Southern Baptist churches than the traditional understanding of congregationalism,” he said.

Some churches, he said, also abandon congregationalism to expedite decision making, especially as churches become larger in size and frequent meetings aren’t realistic, as is often the example in megachurches.

“Some perceive congregationalism to be cumbersome, almost too meticulous and tedious, so they adopt other kinds of polity structures,” he said.

The last reason, Norman lists, is the “decline of understanding for the biblical support for congregational polity. Many have simply not carefully investigated the historical, biblical arguments for congregationalism.”

ORGANIZING AND STRUCTURING THE CHURCH

According to Norman, writing in “The Baptist Way,” church polity is “the organization, or governing structure implemented within a local church.”

Southern Baptists historically have held to the autonomy of the local church, allowing each church to set and determine what it believes to be “the most faithful form of governance according to the New Testament,” Norman said.

“The issue is how the church best expresses its congregational autonomy,” he told Baptist Press. “Is a plurality of elders [or an] elder body the most biblical form of governance, or is a congregation biblically required to make all decisions?”

Generally speaking, the issue comes down to who has final decision-making authority -– the congregation as a whole, or a smaller group who has been delegated authority, such as a church council, deacon body or elder board.

“The key here, though, is that the congregation makes this decision and retains theprerogative to make those decisions the New Testament clearlygrants the authority and responsibility to make,” he said.

Although Brand believes the New Testament does not specify one particular model -- plural elder-led or pastor-led -– he said the final decision-making authority rests with the congregation and that their participation is “fundamental.”

“I think one of the big issues is that the congregation has to have a say on all the major issues that a church faces,” he said. “But the idea of delegated responsibilities to elders or pastors is also clearly taught.”

Norman says some of those decision-making responsibilities of a church congregation include: church discipline, receiving and removing members; the ordinances of baptism and the Lord’s Supper; calling and filling the offices of pastor and deacon; financial accountability that includes approving the budget and fiscal oversight; and other matters requiring legal action, such as purchasing or selling property, relocation of church complex and changes to the bylaws and constitution.

TYPES OF CHURCH POLITY

In “The Baptist Way,” Norman lists three major types of church government prevalent today within various denominations: “Episcopal,” which gives primary authority to a bishop, as seen in Roman Catholicism with the Pope; “Presbyterianism,” often called “elder rule,” which grants authority to a group of elders; and “Congregationalism,” the predominant Southern Baptist historical expression, in which “individual members share equally together in decision-making.”

Within the “congregational” category of government, Norman gives subcategories of its expression: the elder-led model and the pastor-led model.

“The elder-led [model] is similar but different than elder rule, which is the Presbyterian model,” he said. “In elder-led congregationalism, the congregation still retains certain decisions that it and it alone can make but it may invest some kind of elder body with certain administration responsibilities and oversight authority.”

The term “elder-led congregationalism” alone, he said, “evokes a visceral reaction among many Southern Baptists who are convinced that their expression of congregationalism is the only way it can be done. That’s not necessarily the case.”

Some prominent SBC churches, Norman said, have chosen to delegate authority on certain issues to groups or have some form of plural elder ministry.

“First Baptist Church of Dallas, for example, has invested significant decision-making authority within its deacon body for many years,” he said. “Although not using the language, other SBC churches function with a plurality of elders for pastoral ministry and preaching. First Baptist Church of Jacksonville, Florida, for example, functioned and thrived under the preaching ministry of co-pastors Jerry Vines and Homer Lindsay.”

Additionally, according to Brand, many large churches have large staffs that function like an elder board, “they just don’t call it that.”

“Congregational polity permits diversity of expression and function,” Norman said.

Churches may charge these groups or leaders with certain responsibilities, but the ultimate authority in human terms remains with the congregation as it seeks to discern the will of God under the lordship of Jesus Christ, Brand said.

Norman said he believes the ideal expression of a New Testament church is one that is “congregationally governed, pastor-led and lay-ministry driven.”

The key for leading a congregational church, Norman said, is that the church has the authority of Scripture as its foundation, is composed of a regenerate church membership that practices church discipline, and performs its ministries in submission to the lordship of Jesus Christ.

“Congregational polity assumes all those prior tenets,” he said. “If any one or any of those prior planks are removed, congregational polity is going to suffer.”

ELDER, PASTOR AND OVERSEER

Terry Wilder, associate professor of Greek and New Testament at Midwestern Baptist Theological Seminary in Kansas City,, Mo., said that although the terms translated “elder,” “overseer,” and “pastor” in the New Testament are different Greek words, they point to “different aspects of one office.”

An “overseer,” Wilder said, refers to one who has “spiritual oversight over a congregation,” an “elder” describes the office as a “more mature [person], one advanced in age,” and a “pastor” describes one “who shepherds and nurtures the flock.” All, though, combine to describe one particular office of leadership in the church, Wilder said.

“We should not be afraid to use the term ‘elder.’ The elder is an overseer or a pastor,” Wilder said. “The term we’re most familiar with is pastor. But a pastor is an elder.”

Wilder sees two church offices in the New Testament: elder-overseer-pastor, and deacon.

The deacons, he said, are primarily “a service-oriented office,” whereas elders “exercise spiritual oversight tasks,” such as prayer and the teaching of the Word of God.

The New Testament, Wilder said, does not specifically set an actual number of elders that each church must have.

“One should keep in mind that the early church in any given city was almost certainly composed of house churches. When a church began in a city, the believers would meet in a single home,” he said. “Then, as the church grew larger, more houses were required to accommodate the growth. Consequently, more leaders would be required.”

Wilder cites examples of churches in cities like Ephesus which had more than one elder, but he believes each church within the city had one single elder-overseer leading it.

BIBLICAL QUALIFICATIONS OF AN ELDER

The important distinction, however, is that an “elder” or pastor, be biblically qualified to hold that office, according to those listed in 1 Timothy 3 and Titus 1, Wilder said.

“Number one, the elder must have impeccable moral character. He must manage his own family, or household, well. He must be experienced in the Christian life, that is, ‘not a new convert,’ and must have a good testimony and witness amongst unbelievers,” he said of the passages.

He added that an “elder” must also “be able to teach, which makes it difficult to maintain a distinction between ruling elders and teaching elders.”

Norman said the office of elder, or pastor, is also one of “servant leadership,” and that “the pastor must have the ability to cast a vision as well as the ability to render decisions and structure ministries that fulfill that God-given vision.”

Although Wilder said he favors the single elder-led congregational model of polity, he has also belonged to churches that practice both expressions of single and plural elder-led models of congregationalism.

“I don’t think he’s an autocrat, nor a dictator,” he said of the office of elder and pastor. “But I do think a pastor has a God-given authority as far as spiritual oversight where the congregation’s concerned. But even that authority is one of service in the midst of this community of priests -- believers under the lordship of Christ.”

“A pastor can be wrong and he’s subject to the congregation as well.”

Brand said any discussion over church polity should be done in a Christ-like manner.

“Rather than sniping at each other, we ought to enter into serious conversation about these issues as Southern Baptists,” he said.

Sam Shaw, senior pastor at Germantown Baptist Church, has a problem on his hands. As in a growing number of Baptist churches, Germantown leaders -- including Shaw -- want to elect elders. And while many people welcome the change, a determined contingent in the church is vehemently opposed, saying it violates Baptist and biblical traditions.

As Germantown Baptist -- a 9,000-member cornerstone church in the Memphis, Tennessee area -- heads toward a church-wide showdown vote May 7, other Baptists across the country see it as an example of how the bitter debate over elders can derail a church.

In another example, at First Baptist Church in Colleyville, Texas, a similar rivalry left a senior-adult Sunday school class locked outside its classroom one February morning after class members voiced opposition to a plan to relocate the church. The relocation was a pet project of the church’s newly elected elder board.

On the other side of the debate, Capitol Hill Baptist Church in Washington, D.C., has experienced continued improvement and growth as a congregation, the pastor says, thanks in large part to the strong elder tradition it has developed.

Traditionally, Baptists adhere to strict democratic governance, with every member eligible to vote on important church decisions.

More recently, however, some churches are appointing or electing “a small group of men” to become “the rulers of the church,” explained Robert Wring, an opponent of the trend who has studied its history. “They may allow the congregation to vote on certain important issues, but mainly the church just affirms what these ‘elders’ have already decided for the church to do.”

While scholars agree elders of some sort took part in first-century church leadership, division remains as to what that role was -- and how that should translate to present-day churches. No matter which side of the issue those scholars espouse, they agree the issue is here to stay.

According to Wring, pastor of Mountain Highway Baptist Church in Spanaway, Wash., the practice in Baptist churches is a hybrid church-governance structure that combines Presbyterian and Baptist traditions.

“This board of elders is a Presbyterian-style church governance, but only on the local-church level,” he told Associated Baptist Press. “Those favoring ruling elders [in a Baptist church] try to do this along with a congregational church-polity style. At best, it is a hybrid Presbyterian style of church governance.”

A graduate of Mid-America Baptist Theological Seminary in Memphis, Wring wrote his doctoral dissertation on elders in Southern Baptist churches. He feels strongly about the issue, even holding an informational seminar for Germantown Baptist members April 18 at Mid-America.

Since New Testament times, Wring said, the role of “pastor-elders” -- as some call the traditional office of pastor -- has proved an asset to the church, along with deacons. But the more recent movement toward laymen as ruling elders creates a “third office” beyond the traditional offices of pastor and deacon, he said.

Wring foresees a lack of accountability developing with the addition of an elder group. Elders often begin acting as a board of directors, he said, unchecked by biblical qualifications or a specific job description.

According to critics, elders are being used in some cases to circumvent the more cumbersome majority-led governance that historically has characterized Baptist churches.

Shaw, Germantown's pastor, disagrees. He has used open letters to the church to assure members that elders would not control everything. Instead, he sees the change as a way for the 170-year-old church to be “better shepherded.”

“Godly laymen will be more intimately involved in discussing and determining the spiritual direction of our church,” Shaw wrote, explaining the benefits of elder leadership. “The senior pastor will have a godly group of church-elected peers (elders) to serve with him and provide leadership in spiritual and administrative matters.”

In his statement, Shaw said congregants would still nominate and approve changes relating to the pastor and elders, the church budget and church discipline. Members would also have regularly scheduled meetings with the pastor and elders.

Many congregants view the proposal with alarm, warning it is ambiguous enough to leave room for complete elder rule. More than 1,200 people met the same week church leaders released the proposal to discuss how to lobby against it -- even setting up a website to fight it.

Clark Finch, one of the founders of the website, said the trend toward elder rule is still small within the Southern Baptist Convention. “Out of 42,000 churches in the SBC, there are less than 1 percent that have some form of elder,” Finch said. “All the churches I’ve been able to find that have elders are smaller churches or dying churches. [Germantown] does not fit this description.”

In Germantown’s elder process, church members will nominate candidates, put them through a screening process by an elder interview team and then approve the interviewer’s decision. Part of that interview team will consist of the church’s present deacons and pastors.

Finch and other opponents are using their anti-elder website -- www.savegbc.org -- to rally opposition -- enlisting historians, professors, lay people and others to save their church not from elders, they say, but from their improper use. The proposed elders are not “leading elders” but “ruling elders,” said Finch, something he sees as a dangerous departure from biblical descriptions of elders.

According to Finch, elders should be helpers, not rulers. In his opinion, a church should consist of pastors, deacons, committees and the congregation. He has no problem with calling pastoral staffers “elders,” but he categorically opposes elders as a ruling body. A close reading of Germantown's proposed bylaws reveals that elders will control everything, Finch said.

“First, let me state that elders are not the issue at GBC,” Finch told ABP. “If we are to believe that pastor, bishop and elder are the same person, then we already have 22 elders. The real issue is lay elders and their function.”

The website says no Baptist associations or conventions support elder rule, and if Germantown joins the trend, it likely would be the largest Baptist church to do so.

Mike Dever, pastor at Capitol Hill Baptist Church in Washington, D.C., has done just that. His small but historic 139-year-old church has long had 10 elders who provide the church with “sound guidance from biblically qualified men.”

Capitol Hill emphasizes that all of the elders are pastors of the congregation along with Dever, who serves as “first among equals.” Most of the elders work in secular jobs, while all meet scriptural qualifications for office as laid out in 1 Timothy 3 and Titus 1, according to Dever.

“The elders should be marked by a use of their authority, which shows that they understand that the church belongs not to them but to Christ,” Dever wrote in his book, A DISPLAY OF GOD’S GLORY, which defends the use of elders. “The elders will give an account to Christ for their stewardship.”

Plus, Dever wrote, the elders are a “gift from God” for the good of the church. He warned Capitol Hill members to avoid “Satan’s lie that authority is never to be trusted because it is always tyrannical and oppressive.”

“As in a home, or in our own relationship with God, a humble recognition of rightful authority brings benefits,” he wrote. “In a church, when authority is used with the consent of the congregation for the good of the congregation, the congregation will benefit as God builds his church....”

In many cases, the consent comes from Baptist congregations voting on elders. But some churches leave the choice of elders to the senior pastor. For some churches, deacons make decisions in place of elders, although many Baptist churches view deacons primarily as helpers, not rulers.

Bill Leonard, dean and professor of church history at Wake Forest Divinity School in Winstom-Salem, N.C., has studied extensively the place of elders in Baptist history.

Some early Baptists, he said, may have used the titles of elder and pastor interchangeably before the 17th century, but the confessions of faith written by Baptists of that era point to only two specific church offices -- pastor and deacon.

The confusion over the role of elders has surfaced even overseas, Leonard said. “I was recently in Romania and there met some persons who took the title as elder and used it interchangeably with the term deacon, a lay office in the church,” Leonard told ABP. “So you see, there is some variety of usage in Baptist life.”

Leonard, like others, said he thinks the new controversy indicates Baptists are becoming more Presbyterian -- or they are at least developing a hybrid model, as Wring detects.

Some scholars complain the trend indicates Baptists are becoming more ecumenical and less distinctly Baptist. Wring blames “younger Baptist leaders who do not know what being a Baptist is truly all about.”

That sentiment -- the fear that time-honored Baptist principles are disappearing -- fuels the emotional side of the debate. Baptists are notoriously stubborn, according to author James White, and each group will determinedly defend the viewpoint they first learned.

White, adjunct professor of theology at Golden Gate Baptist Theological Seminary in Mill Valley, Calif., said personal emotion plays a large role in most Baptist politics, not just the issue of elders, and emotional ties stem directly from tradition.

A contributor to the book PERSPECTIVES ON CHURCH GOVERNMENT: FIVE VIEWS OF CHURCH POLITY, White said when Baptists are raised with one viewpoint, it becomes their tradition.

“Baptists tend to think we have no traditions when, of course, we do,” White told ABP. “Since we do not talk a lot about testing our traditions by Scripture, when someone comes along and says, ‘The way we do this does not line up with Scripture,’ we tend to take that personally, and it is truly upsetting.”

No matter on which side of the issue they fall, however, most observers agree the division is not going away, nor will the emotion and even anger it engenders.

“This issue may be with Southern Baptists for a long time,” Wring said. “It very well may be the next issue to be dealt with in SBC life for at least the next 10 to 15 years.”

In three services over the weekend of July 29-30, members of Henderson Hills Baptist Church in Edmond, Oklahoma, will vote on a proposal to eliminate baptism as a requirement for church membership. Announcement of the vote has sparked a flurry of debate -– a discussion reflected on the pages of The Baptist Messenger, newsjournal of the Baptist General Convention of Oklahoma.

In a column published on the newsjournal’s website, www.baptistmessenger.com, Henderson Hills pastor Dennis Newkirk explains that, while the congregation’s elder council believes “the New Testament commands every believer to be baptized by immersion, subsequent to salvation,” they are questioning whether baptism should be required “as an initiatory rite of church membership.”

The proposal, Newkirk writes, “is not intended to excuse people from the sin of refusing baptism. Instead, our concern is for Christians in two categories, those who physically cannot experience immersion due to a disability, and for those who are under the mistaken conviction that sprinkling is baptism.”

Like many Southern Baptist churches, Henderson Hills deals with people who would like to join but are members of churches where baptism is practiced by sprinkling infants, rather than immersing individuals who have consciously chosen to follow Christ. The vast majority of Southern Baptist churches would require such inquirers to offer evidence of salvation and submit to rebaptism by immersion.

Although Newkirk’s column says that “in 31 years of ministry, I have never met a believer who adamantly refused baptism,” he argues that the requirement of rebaptism is an obstacle to ministering to such people.

“We often sacrifice our opportunity to teach and influence those mistaken Christians by rejecting them or we unintentionally promote an unbiblical motive for baptism, making it little more than a rite of initiation into church membership,” Newkirk writes. “Why not allow them the blessings, responsibilities and protection of church membership, and then teach, pray, and influence them towards biblical baptism?”

The proposal coming before the congregation would strike the phrase, “has been scripturally baptized,” from a church bylaw that currently reads, in part: “Membership will be granted to anyone who offers a biblical testimony of salvation, has been scripturally baptized and agrees to accept the responsibilities of membership.”

REACTION

Response to the Henderson Hills announcement has been passionate, such as a counterpoint from Rick Thompson, pastor of Council Road Baptist Church in Bethany, Okla., published by the Messenger.

“Southern Baptist churches often encounter people who desire to gain membership in the church but do not want to be baptized by immersion because they were ‘baptized’ as infants,” Thompson writes in his column. “Some may view this requirement [of being rebaptized by immersion] as a stumbling block for Christians who want to be members of the (SBC) church. However, Southern Baptists have determined that this is a basic issue that we must get right. It is an issue of discipleship.”

In Christian traditions that practice infant baptism by sprinkling, “baptism is not seen as being a necessary requirement for obedience but rather a sign of the covenant promise [their] believing parents are under ... a kind of new circumcision –- a sign of the covenant,” Thompson writes.

Scripture, however, offers no evidence of infant baptism or baptism by sprinkling, he notes. “Baptists believe the only baptism practiced in Scripture is believer's baptism by immersion.”

Saying that the Bible does not explicitly teach that one must be baptized to be a member of the church “is like saying that the Bible never says you must be a Christian to be a member of the church,” Thompson adds. “Why link the two together? In fact, there is no single passage in Scripture that specifically gives us the requirements of membership into the church. But membership is certainly implied.”

MEMBERSHIP & BAPTISM

Church membership cannot be separated from baptism in the New Testament, argues R. Stanton Norman, an associate professor of theology at New Orleans Baptist Theological Seminary, in another column on the Messenger site.

“The New Testament clearly teaches that a local church is only to be comprised of those persons whose allegiance belongs exclusively to Jesus Christ,” Norman writes. “Baptism was the divinely, publicly instituted ‘point of entry’ into the membership of a local congregation of believers.

“The baptismal act publicly signified the transition of the individual from the old life to the new life in Christ; old allegiances were forsaken in order that new allegiances with Christ and His people could be formed. The believer gave testimony to this spiritual transition in the rite of baptism. By submitting to the public act of baptism, a person publicly joined with the church in its confession that ‘Jesus is Lord’ and expressed the intention to be considered a member of the congregation.”

BIBLICAL BASIS

The distinctively Baptist understanding of the church as a body of believers baptized by immersion has a solid foundation in Scripture, William B. Tolar, retired dean of the School of Theology at Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary, writes in another column.

“Our Baptist forefathers defined the church as being a body of baptized believers because of their interpretations and high concept of the divine inspiration of Scripture and their serious regard for the Lordship of Jesus Christ,” Tolar writes. “They understood Jesus' command in Matthew 28:19-20 should be followed in the sequence in which it is recorded: ‘make disciples ... baptizing them ... and ... teaching them to observe all that I commanded you.’

“The Greek word for ‘disciples’ (believers, students, learners) preceded the act of baptism, and being baptized (the Greek word means to dip, plunge or immerse) was also clearly a part of Christ's command,” Tolar observes. “Because the risen Lord had commanded them to immerse believers (and not to sprinkle or simply pour water on them), Baptist scholars were convinced that was the proper sequence and immersion was the biblical mode.”

SYMBOL, NOT SACRAMENT

A complicating factor in accepting members from Christian traditions that practice infant baptism is the fact that those churches believe the sprinkling makes the baby a Christian. Another column on the Messenger site explains the contrasting Baptist conviction that baptism is merely a symbol of the change Christ has made in the heart of a person who has deliberately chosen to follow Him.

“The Southern Baptist understanding of baptism stands in conflict with the official doctrine of traditional Roman Catholicism and even some Protestant groups who teach that in the act of baptism, there is the impartation of grace ex opere operato, without preexisting faith,” writes Brad Waggoner, a former dean at Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, now director of research at LifeWay Christian Resources. “Southern Baptists also believe that the proper subjects of baptism are those who have previously entered into a saving relationship with Jesus Christ.”

‘STEP OF OBEDIENCE’

Baptism is a membership requirement in Southern Baptist churches because Jesus made baptism the norm for becoming a Christian in Matthew 28:19 and the apostles continued this practice in the early church, Rick Thompson writes.

“There is no question that baptism is the first step in our obedience to Christ and that obedience is the sign and signature of being a Christian,” Thompson writes. “The church is the bride and body of Christ, where people are challenged into discipleship. Making disciples is the primary role of the church of which baptism is the first step. This is why Baptists believe no one should be a member of the church who has not taken this step of obedience.”

RESOLUTION

The executive board of the Capital Baptist Association, an alliance of churches in metropolitan Oklahoma City of which Henderson Hills is a member, adopted a resolution addressing the baptism proposal. The resolution affirmed the association’s agreement with the Baptist Faith and Message, the Southern Baptist confession of faith, which identifies immersion baptism of believers as a prerequisite to church membership. The resolution also resolved to “encourage the members of Henderson Hills Baptist Church to affirm and maintain their current bylaw requirements for church membership” and called on other Capital Baptist churches “to pray for the leaders and members of Henderson Hills Baptist Church as they seek God’s will in this matter.”

Baptists are a peculiar people. We insist that one make a profession of faith in Jesus Christ as their Lord and Savior. We insist that they be baptized before they can join our church. And, yet, some of us insist upon nothing else once they’re members.

Equally peculiar is the fact that we Baptists claim to be a “people of the book,” putting the Bible before all else when it comes to defining and defending our faith. Yet, we ignore its teaching on church membership.

The writer of Hebrews paints a clear picture of what God expects of His children in His church.

“And let us be concerned one about another in order to promote love and good works, not staying away from our meetings, as some habitually do, but encouraging one another, and all the more as you see the day drawing near” (Hebrews 10:24-25).

Notice the three privileges/benefits that we enjoy as members of the church.

1) We are to promote love among ourselves. When we promote love among ourselves, love flourishes in the church, and we are loved ourselves. Jesus said that it is by our love for one another that the world would know that we are His disciples.

2) We are to promote good works. When we do this, the church’s ministries prosper and we may be blessed by someone else’s good works. Again, Jesus said you will know His people by their fruits, that is, their good works.

3) We are to encourage one another. We are to lift one another up and to be their support system in a hostile, sinful world. Sometimes we lift others up. Sometimes we are lifted up.

So far, so good. No Baptist would question the value of such benefits. However, here’s where it gets interesting. To receive the benefits of church membership, one must not only be on the rolls but also in the pews. We are not to be “staying away from our meetings, as some habitually do” (Hebrews 10:25). Doing so does not just limit our exposure to those benefits mentioned, it is a sin.

Christians who stay away from church for any reason other than health or travel are living in outright rebellion against the revealed will of God. They are out of communion with each other. They are out of communion with Christ. Worse, their absence may in fact suggest that they’re not really children of God after all.

Rather than accepting the fact that several million Baptists will be AWOL next Sunday, we ought to be alarmed. We have on our church rolls so-called members who don’t act like members and, as evidenced by this ongoing pattern of sin, they don’t act like believers, either.

Jesus said, “If you love Me, you will keep my commandments” (John 14:15). Those who rebel against the most basic of commandments concerning church membership reveal a dysfunctional relationship with Christ. It’s time we start treating those people like lost people, not lost children who’ve meandered a little too far into the woods. These people may never come out of the woods. We need to stop waiting for them to return, stop treating them like members, and start treating them like unbelievers. We need to share something more than good memories with them. We need to share the Gospel.

Join your church leadership in reaching out to “members” who are living like the world. Share your love and, more importantly, share your faith.

________

Peter Beck is pastor of Kenwood Baptist Church in Louisville, Ky.,

Prior to the last century, Baptists “practiced church discipline on a large scale” and regarded the practice as a normal part of church life, according to church history professor Greg Wills.

Between 1781 and 1860, for example, “Baptists excluded more than 40,000 members in Georgia alone,” Wills, director of the Center for the Study of the Southern Baptist Convention at Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, noted in a 2001 essay in “Polity: Biblical Arguments on How to Conduct Church Life,” edited by Southern Baptist pastor Mark Dever.

“Across the nation in this period they excluded between one and two percent of their membership every year. But the number of church trials was yet greater. Only about half of the offenders received excommunication. Baptists on average disciplined between three and four percent of their membership,” Wills wrote.

Baptists generally exercised discipline at monthly Saturday conference meetings, Wills noted. At such meetings church members accused offenders of specific sins. The accused usually confessed guilt. But when the accused either denied guilt or was absent, the church appointed a committee to investigate the matter. The committee reported its findings at a subsequent meeting and recommended a verdict and sentence. The members then voted on the verdict and the penalty if the offender was found guilty.

Churches generally imposed either admonition or excommunication on offenders who were found guilty, Wills noted. Many excommunicated members maintained their piety and were eventually restored to church membership, he wrote, noting that Baptists followed the process outlined in Matthew 18 for church discipline.

“Baptists sought to restore offenders to holiness,” Wills wrote. “They believed that church discipline helped believers overcome sin and temptation.”

Several documents from past generations of Baptists confirm that discipline was the norm among Baptists in general and Southern Baptists in particular through the 19th century.

“A Summary of Church Discipline,” written by the Charleston Baptist Association in 1774, argues that the Bible prescribes three “censures” for “rebellious and unworthy members” -- rebuke or admonition, suspension and excommunication. The various censures should be applied depending on the severity of an offense, according to the document.

The goals of church discipline are “the glory of God,” “to purge the church and preserve it from infection,” to clear the church of immorality and false doctrines and “the good of persons excommunicated,” the documents says.

William B. Johnson, the first president of the SBC, argued in an 1846 essay that Scripture demands church discipline.

“In relation to this part of the discipline of a church (the exclusion of disciplined members), it is important to understand, that a proper attention to its exercise is indispensable to the welfare of the body,” Johnson wrote. “And further, that by the faithful, vigilant supervision of the rulers of the church and the duty of the members, the necessity of its exercise may be, as far as possible, prevented.”

Patrick Hughes Mell, a former president of both the SBC and the Georgia Baptist Convention, presented a detailed summary of the discipline procedure for both public and private offenses in his 1860 treatise “Corrective Church Discipline: With a Development of the Scriptural Principles Upon Which it is Based.”

“The views which are presented in the following pages are such as have been held by the Baptist churches from time immemorial,” Mell wrote in the preface. “The Author attempts to do no more than to exhibit the sentiments of our Fathers, and to defend them by showing that they are sustained by the Scriptures.”

A majority of Southern Baptist senior pastors and laity believe Christians should not drink alcohol and that using it could cause other believers “to stumble,” according to a new poll by LifeWay Research.

The survey asked Southern Baptist and non-Southern Baptist pastors and laity a series of seven questions about alcohol, ranging from their views on whether getting drunk is against Scripture to whether drinking alcohol is an example of Christian liberty.

Among Southern Baptists, 77 percent of senior pastors and 59 percent of laity believe “Christians should not use alcohol as a beverage.” Those percentages fall, though, when Southern Baptists are asked whether “Scripture indicates that people should never drink” alcohol. Forty-one percent of SBC pastors agreed with that statement, while 34 percent of Southern Baptist laity did.

Those percentages are higher than they are among non-Southern Baptist Protestants. For example, 45 percent of non-Southern Baptist pastors and 45 percent of non-Southern Baptist laity believe Christians should not use alcohol as a beverage.

Southern Baptists also are likely to believe that when “a Christian partakes of alcohol in a social setting, it is a liberty that could cause other believers to stumble or be confused.” Ninety-eight percent of Southern Baptist pastors and 71 percent of Southern Baptist laity agreed with that statement, compared to 89 percent of non-Southern Baptist pastors and 61 percent of non-SBC laity.

Additionally, Southern Baptists believe that avoiding alcohol can attract unbelievers. Seventy-five percent of Southern Baptist pastors and 58 percent of SBC laity agreed that “when a Christian does not drink alcohol, this makes non-believers who see this more interested in Jesus Christ.”

Among the poll’s other findings:

• 3 percent of Southern Baptist pastors drink alcohol while 29 percent of Southern Baptist laity do so. By comparison, 25 percent of non-Southern Baptist pastors drink, as do 42 percent of non-Southern Baptist laity. The poll simply asked, “Do you personally drink alcohol?”

• 100 percent of Southern Baptist pastors and 85 percent of laity believe “Scripture indicates that people should never get drunk.”

• 52 percent of Southern Baptist pastors (20 percent strongly agreeing and 32 percent somewhat agreeing) believe “Scripture indicates that all beverages, including alcohol, can be consumed without sin.” Among SBC laity, 58 percent agree (35 percent strongly and 23 percent somewhat agreeing).

• 47 percent of Southern Baptist pastors and 53 percent of SBC laity agree that “when a Christian partakes of alcohol in reasonable amounts, they are simply exercising a biblical liberty.” Among those same pastors, 15 percent strongly agreed and 32 percent somewhat agreed. Among SBC laity, 28 percent strongly agreed and 25 percent somewhat agreed.

Released in late September 2007, the study polled 1,005 Protestant senior pastors and 1,004 Protestant laity by phone in April and May. To be included among the laity, a person had to attend church at least five times a year and have a religious preference of “Protestant.” Included in those samples were 405 Southern Baptist senior pastors and 205 Southern Baptist laity.

In a separate study, recent master’s-level graduates of Southern Baptist seminaries and the Canadian Baptist Seminary were asked whether they believed that “Christians should not use alcohol as a beverage.” Among all graduates who participated, 69 percent agreed (41 percent agreeing strongly and 28 percent agreeing somewhat). Among graduates employed within the SBC, 75 percent agreed (46 percent agreeing strongly and 29 percent agreeing somewhat). As mentioned before, 77 percent of SBC senior pastors agreed (60 percent agreeing strongly and 17 percent somewhat).

The study of seminary graduates invited all 1998-2004 master’s-level graduates from Golden Gate, New Orleans, Midwestern, Southeastern and Southwestern Baptist Theological seminaries, as well as the Canadian Southern Baptist Seminary. A “limited subset” of Southern Seminary graduates were available for the study, according to data on the LifeWay Research website.

Where did Baptists come from and what are their distinctive beliefs?

Paige Patterson, president of Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary, and Tom Nettles, professor of historical theology at Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, presented papers at the Evangelical Theological Society’s annual meeting arguing in favor of competing Baptist descent theories.

Baptist historians have proposed numerous theories regarding the question of Baptist origins, including:

• Various “successionist theories,” which assert that Baptist churches have continued in an unbroken line since the time of the apostles.

• The “Anabaptist kinship” theory, which asserts that Baptists rose from Dutch and Swiss Anabaptists in the 16th century, groups that were born in reaction against such prominent reformers such as Martin Luther and John Calvin.

• The “English Separatist Descent” theory, which argues that Baptists rose from English dissent (Puritanism) in the early 17th century. This theory, held today by a majority of historians, places the Baptist birth year at around 1609, prompting numerous conferences and papers this year marking the 400th anniversary of Baptist beginnings.

Patterson, in his paper, “Genetics Versus Historiography: A Case for the Connection of Continental Anabaptism and Contemporary Baptists,” argued in favor of Anabaptist kinship, asserting that Baptist churches in England and America share a heritage from Swiss Anabaptists who lived in England in the 17th century.

While acknowledging that the primary sources lean decidedly toward Baptist origins from English dissent, Patterson argued in favor of contemporary Baptists’ spiritual kinship with Anabaptists on four doctrinal grounds.

“On the most critically important doctrines, Baptists [in 17th-century England] were virtually indistinguishable from their Anabaptist cousins,” Patterson said.

“These [four] doctrines were: the absolute authority of the Bible and the necessity that the Scriptures be the sole authority for the development of authority and practice; the necessity of ‘adult faith’ for regeneration; the baptism of only the regenerate as a confession of faith; and a regenerate and disciplined church free from all other ecclesiastical authority in terms of belief and practice.”

While all evangelicals in the Reformation claimed the principle of “sola Scriptura” -- Scripture as the sole authority of the church and the believer -- only the Baptists and Anabaptists followed the principle consistently by rejecting infant baptism, Patterson pointed out.

In viewing infant baptism as an unbiblical innovation, Baptists and Anabaptists also embraced “adult faith,” Patterson said, or the belief that an individual must consciously and willfully trust in Christ for salvation, something babies lack the ability to do. This, in turn, led to defining the church as a community of baptized believers who gather voluntarily, free from governmental coercion. Anabaptists, he said, bequeathed these ideas to later Baptists, thus delivering to them their “Anabaptist DNA.”

Nettles, in his paper, “The Particular Baptist Defense of Beginning Anew,” argued that the modern-day Baptist pilgrimage may be properly traced to 1638 in England through the records of the “Jacob-Lathrop-Jessey (JLJ) Church,” which tells of a Particular (or Calvinistic) minister named John Spilsbury, who recovered the practice of believer’s baptism by immersion. Spilsbury argued that believer’s baptism by immersion was a biblical practice and was one of the elements that constituted a true church even though the practice had not been in place in unbroken succession since the time of the apostles. The Bible gave Christians all the warrant they needed for recovery of the practice, Spilsbury asserted.

Spilsbury, Nettles said, defined a true church according to four elements: Faithful preaching of the Word; a clear confession of faith; voluntary participation together by covenant built upon the truths of Scripture as crystallized in the confession of faith; and a body composed of those who have been converted by the Spirit and properly baptized. These elements have formed a fundamental part of Baptist identity since, he said.

Nettles showed that John Smyth and fellow General (Arminian) Baptist Thomas Helwys helped to begin a movement toward the establishment of Baptist doctrine in the early 1600s, but that Baptist identity as it is known today came closer to full flower in Spilsbury. Thus, Baptist beginnings find their clearest expression in the Particular Baptists of England in the early-mid 17th century.

“Spilsbury’s cogent arguments for a gathered, disciplined congregation of believers baptized by immersion as constituting the New Testament church gave expression to and built on insights that had emerged within separatism, advanced in the life of John Smyth and the suffering congregation of Thomas Helwys, and matured in Particular Baptists,” Nettles said.

“The historical connections of both Helwys and Spilsbury defy any attempt to create an organic historic succession of Baptist churches.... Spilsbury’s clear combination of authority, soteriology, confession and ecclesiology contributed immensely to the stability and confidence with which modern-day Baptists began their pilgrimage.”

While they made a case for differing theories of Baptist origins, Patterson and Nettles agreed that the conclusions of successionist theories are largely unsupportable.

The purpose of this article is to determine the historical roots of the Baptists, to answer the question concerning any historical association or connection with the Protestant Reformation or the Roman Catholic Church, and to only briefly identify and examine the supposed succession from the Anabaptists and other ancient religious groups. A thorough discussion of all the questions involved with this subject will not be given. A brief outline of the people and events involved is all that is intended.

INTRODUCTION

The study of the history of Baptists is plagued by many difficult questions on the one hand and very bold assertions on the other. This paper, although written from the standpoint of an independent Baptist, is an attempt to challenge the assertion that Baptists have absolutely no historical ties to either the Roman Catholic Church or the Protestant Reformation. The great differences which divide Baptists from Romanism and from Protestantism is no doubt the cause for this type of claim, but, as will be shown, the claim is not founded on a knowledge of the facts of history. This in no way is a weakness in Baptist beliefs, for history, tradition, and ancestry are not the standard of truth nor the basis of faith; Scripture alone is the norm. The question of historical origins, however, is one of value, for it does give explanation to many of the beliefs and practices of the group in question. This brief study, then, will seek to trace the background of Baptists, beginning with those in America and working backwards from there.

THE DESCENT OF MODERN BAPTISTS

Baptists In America

Skipping over the great names of Baptists such as Luther Rice, Adoniram Judson, John Leland, Isaac Backus, etc., and looking back to their fathers in Colonial America, the familiar names of men such as Roger Williams, John Clarke, and Henry Dunster shine brightly. Their struggle for freedom to practice according to the dictates of conscience and the Word of God was long and difficult. They bore the persecutions of whipping, imprisonment, excommunication, banishment, ridicule, and starvation -- all for believing and practicing principles which Baptists hold dear. The story of Roger Williams (1600-1685), founder of the first Baptist Church organized on American soil, and his banishment from Massachusetts into the wilderness because of his opposition to the Church of England and championing of the principles of individual soul liberty and religious freedom, is well known. From his church in Providence, Rhode Island, came one John Clarke, close associate of Williams and probably the most prestigious Baptist leader of his time. The church he established in Newport, 1641 (Quaker?), became the second Baptist church in America, Clarke being its teaching elder from the beginning. Henry Dunster (1612-1659), first president of Harvard, began to preach against infant baptism and in 1653 refused the rite to his fourth child. For this he was forced to resign and that after twelve years of impressive service to the college. Even after earnest pleading he was refused the use of his home any longer, was cast out into the winter, and died within five weeks.

These are just a couple examples of the struggles for the rise of Baptist convictions in America. The purpose here, however, is to investigate the historical background of these early Baptists.

Roger Williams, a Welshman, began an Anglican, educated at Cambridge and was ordained into the ministry of the Church of England. He became, in turn, a Puritan (Congregationalist, still within the Church of England), a Separatist, a Baptist, and finally a Seeker [Holwick: an article in Wikipedia argues he was never a Seeker but believed all churches were invalid; he held Baptistic views throughout his life]. There is some evidence that he had also been a follower of George Fox’s Quakerism. By the time he reached America, he was convinced of Separatist views and refused the offer to assume the pastorate of the Boston church because it was unwilling to officially sever all ties with the Church of England. Having been banished from Massechusetts, he founded the settlement of Providence in June of 1636. In 1638 a church was organized, and by 1639 it was practicing believer’s baptism, Williams having been baptized by a church member.

John Clarke fled England’s persecution of Puritans under Archbishop Laud. After arriving in Boston, he saw problems with Congregationalism, and moving south to Newport established a church (1641?) which became Particular Baptist, Clarke being the teaching elder.

John Miles (1621-1683), another Welshman, came to America in 1662, having been ejected from the Established Church. He settled at Swansea, near Providence, and in the following years was responsible for the establishing of two churches.

Through the study of such men and events of Colonial America, it is clear that Baptists did not migrate to America: English Puritans migrated to America, who, in turn, became Baptists. To be sure, from these men came hosts of American-born Baptists, but the evidence seems very clear that American Baptists trace back to Colonial Puritanism. Continental (Dutch and Swiss) Anabaptism did have some migration to the New World (such as Hanserd Knollys who arrived in Boston in 1638), but these “Anabaptists” would not fit the description or theology of what is recognized to be “Baptist.” They did have Baptist-type beliefs but were Anabaptists of another type (Mennonite, etc.). America’s earliest Baptists were originally Puritans within the Church of England: Williams, Clarke, Dunster, Thomas Gould, etc. Much of the same could be said about later American-born Baptists who also were previously Congregationalists (Isaac Backus, Shubael Stearns, etc.). Baptists were by far the greatest beneficiaries of the Great Awakening of staunchly Protestant Edwards and Whitefield. Entire Congretationalist bodies, having been “awakened” under Whitefield’s ministry saw complete separation from the Church of England the necessary next step; hence, the rise of more Baptist churches.

In summary, Baptists in America, although having certain theological similarities to Continental Anabaptism, have no historical connection with them. Their descent from Colonial Puritanism is obvious and also explains the dominance of Calvinistic theology, not only in those first Baptists in New England but in their children. John Myles, who had previously taken orders from the Anglican Church, may have been the first Baptist to immigrate to the colonies, having embraced Baptist beliefs while in Wales. With Myles, then, Baptists have come out of Puritanism without ties to Anabaptism on the Continent.

Baptists In Britain

Although the honor for the establishing of the first Baptist Church in Wales belongs to John Myles, the real championing of the Baptist cause belongs to one Vavasor Powell (1617-1670), because Myles and most of his congregation moved to New England. Powell was definitely of Puritan persuasion within the Established Church, but by 1655 his church in Wales was baptistic at least, for records reveal that he had been recently rebaptized. Many Baptists came from his efforts, and the succeeding Welsh Baptists (Christmas Evans, 1766-1838, etc.) continued his ardent Calvinistic beliefs, although for a time Arminianism was threatening.

Baptists had no beginning in Scotland until the eighteenth century and that, again, under the leadership of men from Independent and Puritan (within the Church of Scotland) backgrounds. These earliest churches were begun under the leadership of Sir William Sinclair (1750) and Robert Carmichael (1765). The most familiar names of early Baptists in Scotland are the Haldane brothers, Robert (1764-1842) and James (1768-1851), both of whom had been Independents. In 1808 they both became convinced that their practice of infant baptism was unscriptural, and in the fifty years of ministry which followed, nearly forty Baptist churches were founded in Scotland.

Baptists in Ireland have never been many, Irish resistance being too great. The first Baptist church established was under the direction of Thomas Patience in Dublin, probably in the year 1653. The Baptist who perhaps most helped the cause of Baptists in Ireland was the esteemed Alexander Carson (1776-1844). A very learned Scottish Presbyterian, he vigorously opposed some of his church members who began to embrace Baptist convictions. Later, having been persuaded of their truthfulness, he was removed from his church by the synod. His Baptism: Its Mode & Subjects, testifies to his ability to defend believer’s baptism.

The first Baptist Church in England (General Baptist) finds its origin with John Smyth. Although Smyth had definite Puritan beliefs, persecution drove him from England to Holland because of his Separatist convictions. With his church moved to Amsterdam, he came into fellowship with the strong Mennonite (Anabaptist) groups there. Smyth there established a Baptist Church, having baptized himself and his entire congregation (with one pail of water!). He soon applied for membership in the Mennonite church, only to the great disruption of the congregation. Thomas Helwys (c. 1550 - C. 1616), a member of the church, led the congregation to excommunicate Smyth for his Anabaptist heresy. In 1611 they published a declaration of their faith rejecting the teachings of the Anabaptists. Shortly thereafter they moved back to England, thus becoming the first Baptist Church on English soil.

General Baptists who followed (and who eventually gave way almost entirely to Unitarianism) made great efforts to disavow any connection with Anabaptism. Similarities there were, but identity or association with them was consistently denied. Their Declarations of Faith made this abundantly clear; not only did they reject Anabaptism, they often referred to themselves as “Protestants.” In 1678 they published “An Orthodox Creed or Protestant Confession of Faith, Being an Essay to Unite and Confirm all True Protestants.”

The other strain of Baptists in England (Particular Baptists) began in 1638 under the leadership of John Spilsbury, their first pastor. The church began as a break from the Independent Church which was begun by Henry Jacob (the so-called “Jacob-Lathrop-Jessey Church,” named after its successive pastors) over the matter of infant Baptism. These Particular Baptists were by far the strongest voice of English Baptists for generations (Gill, Fuller, Spurgeon, Bunyan, etc.). Like the General Baptists these Particulars repeatedly disavowed any association with Anabaptism and continually affirmed their loyalty to the Protestant Reformation, even calling themselves Protestants. Their Second London Confession of faith is an obvious and admitted adaptation of the Presbyterian Westminster Confession of 1646 (as is also the Philadelphia Confession, which became the standard statement of faith for Baptists in America). The Second London Confession (1677) states the Particular Baptist agreement “with Protestants in diverse nations and cities ... in that wholesome Protestant doctrine, which with so clear evidence of Scriptures that they have asserted,” and claims kinship with the great reformers of England who gave their lives in opposition to Rome.

It is abundantly clear that the Baptists of Britain, while consistently rejecting the teachings of the Anabaptists, sought to remain loyal to the Protestant Reformation, their few (but major) differences notwithstanding.

One other point is worthy of note here, and that regards the mode of baptism practiced by these early Baptists. Originally it was almost uniformly by affusion. This is true of the Anabaptists (even down to today’s Anabaptists and their children the Mennonites) as well as the Baptists of Britain. Vedder ( A Short History of the Baptists) a Baptist Historian, says this was the same of the first Baptists of America as well (e.g., Roger Williams). Well into the third quarter of the seventeenth century Baptists were not entirely an immersionist group. The issue with them, which they so diligently fought, was that of the subjects of baptism. In their struggle for complete conformity to the New Testament, immersion did follow.

Anabaptism

Although this paper is rejecting any historical identification or association of modern Baptists with Anabaptism, the assertion of some Baptists today claiming succession from them, their similarities to present-day Baptists, and their differences, make them worthy of note here.

The similarities are several and well known: separation of church and state, believer’s baptism, sole authority of Scripture, the Lord’s Table as a memorial only, and individual soul liberty. These seem to have been held by most of the Anabaptists although by no means all. A very distressing problem in discussing the theology of the Anabaptists is that there is no one theological system held by all of them: the movement was extremely diverse, so when someone asserts that his church finds roots in the Anabaptists, the only thing one can wonder is, “which one?”

This claim of modern Baptists is made in effort to remain apart from any historical connection with the Roman Catholic Church, even if that connection is via the Protestant Reformers. But even that effort is futile, for virtually all of the early Anabaptist leaders themselves came either from Protestantism or from Romanism itself. A brief list of names will suffice to establish this point: Balthasar Hubmaier, a converted Roman Catholic Priest; Hans Denck, Lutheran headmaster of the renowned St. Sebald School in Nuremberg; Menno Simons, a Roman Catholic Priest in Friesland; Thomas Munster, a Roman Catholic? Lutheran? Communist? -- scholars debate; Melchior Hoffman, a Lutheran missionary; Wilhelm Reublin, a Roman Catholic Priest; Johannes Brottli, Roman Catholic Priest; George Blaurock, a Roman Catholic Monk; Simon Stumf, Roman Catholic Priest; Conrad Grebel, Zwingli’s protege in Zurich; Felix Manz, Roman Catholic (illegitimate son of a Roman Catholic Priest) and later associate of Zwingli; etc. The list could go on, but the point is clear: Anabaptists do not represent a pure line of believers outside the Roman Church.

Conclusion

It has been shown that Baptists in America find their origins in Colonial and some English Puritanism. English Baptists continually avowed allegiance to the Protestant Reformation, their early leaders all being Puritans. The Anabaptism of the Continent, although holding some clear Baptistic principles, were not the fathers of modern Baptists (neither in America directly nor via Britain); nor were they without roots in Roman Catholicism themselves.

ANCIENT “BAPTISTS”?

Since many religious groups found within the pages of church history are being purported to be Baptists or Baptist types (cf. J. M. Carroll, The Trail of Blood), this section will seek to briefly identify these groups and their beliefs.

Montanists

The Montanists were a fanatical religious sect of Phrygia (western Asia Minor), the followers of Montanus and his two prophetesses (Prisca and Maximilla). A former priest of Cybele worship, after converting to Christianity, he attempted a reform of the formalism which had set into the Church, the rise in authority of the one bishop in the local church, and the lack of dependence upon the supernatural workings of the Holy Spirit in this age. His prophetesses spoke for him; he spoke for God and this often in the first person. He established Spirit-led communities at Pepuza and Tymion in Phrygia (naming them “Jerusalem”) and predicted that Christ would return to establish His earthly kingdom at Pepuza; then inspiration and prophecy would cease. The Montanists’ most illustrious adherent was the great church father, Tertullian. They practiced a rigid church discipline, banned remarriage even after the mate had died, approved of desertion of one’s mate for the sake of chastity -- all in an effort to holiness. Serious sins after baptism could not be forgiven. Montanism (begun in the mid-second century) survived only into the fifth century in northern Africa and into the sixth century in Phrygia.

Novatianists

Novatian (mid third century) was a priest of the church of Rome who broke away from the church because of its laxity in discipline especially in regard to those who had given way under persecution. Basically orthodox in theology his followers set up a rival church with a bishop at Carthage. During the 250’s they grew rapidly, requiring a rebaptism (pouring) of all who joined, not for a belief in believer’s baptism but only because, in their view, they were the only true church. No major sins after baptism could be forgiven. Novatianism was reabsorbed into the Roman Catholic Church by the seventh century.

Donatists

Donatus was the Roman Catholic Bishop of Carthage from 313 to about 355. Like Novatian, he was concerned over the lack of strictness in discipline of these who had given way under the persecution of Diocletian. In 312 the bishop to be elected (Caecilian) was rejected by Donatus and his followers because he (Caecilian) had been ordained by Felix of Apthungi who had betrayed a copy of the Scriptures to his persecutors. This, Donatus argued, rendered his performing of the sacrament of ordination invalid, because he had committed the unpardonable sin. Donatism survived, becoming continually closer to the mother church of Rome, until the fifth century.

Paulicians

The Paulicians emerged in the mid seventh century in the eastern parts of the Byzantine Empire, rejecting the formalism of the church. Their founder, Constantine (who changed his name to Silvanus, or Silas) based his teachings on the written Word of God alone, but that written Word of God was to be found only in the gospels and the epistles of Paul. (They were great lovers of the apostle Paul, the successive leaders of the sect taking to themselves the names of the people closely associated with Paul -- Titus, Timothy, Tychicus, etc.; hence, the designation Paulicians.) The other portions of Scripture (New and Old Testaments) were written by an evil deity, the same evil deity who created the world. Obviously, they were dualistic, matter being evil and spirit alone being good. In order to save human spirits from this evil physical world, God (the good deity) sent an angel who appeared as the man Jesus. Some groups of Paulicians existed in Armenia into the nineteenth century.

Waldensians

Having read the Scriptures for himself, Peter Waldo, or Valdes, was so impressed by the claims of Christ that he sold all he owned in order to live a life of poverty. He translated the New Testament from the Latin and began to preach the gospel in the common tongue. He and his followers were very orthodox in theology and began as a reform movement within the Roman Catholic Church. Gathering men of like thinking around him, the movement spread rapidly during the twelfth century. In 1184 they were excommunicated by Pope Lucius III, and as a result, they began to spread even more rapidly. They rejected the authority of high-ranking ecclesiastics, re-interpreted or rejected the sacraments of the church except confession, absolution, the eucharist, and baptism. The Waldensians made a noble attempt at reform and remain today in northern Italy, about thirty-five thousand strong.

Albigenses

The Albigenses (so-called because they were most numerous near Albi, in Southern France), or Cathari (from the Greek word, katharoi, meaning pure ones), although claiming New Testament authority for their beliefs, were a heretical sect formed in the Roman Catholic Church during the twelfth century and resembling the Gnostics and Paulicians. Dualism was at the heart of their teachings -- two gods, one evil and one good, matter being the essence of evil, etc. The evil god was the Jehovah of the Old Testament. With matter being evil, they, of course, rejected the incarnation of Christ; Christ, they taught, had no real body; it only appeared so. Since matter is evil, they rejected all the sacraments of the church; the one sacrament which they held to was the consolamentum -- the giving of the Spirit by the laying of hands and the Gospel of John on the head. They were extremely ascetic, avoiding marriage with its fleshly and therefore evil pleasures, oaths, war, milk, meat, cheese, and eggs.(!) The use of anything material in worship was forbidden.

Anabaptists

The Anabaptists arose in the sixteenth century in Holland and in Zurich, Switzerland. As stated earlier they (generally) held to many beliefs in common with today’s Baptists, but the differences are at least as obvious. Their beliefs and practices ranged from extreme pacifism to extreme revolutionism; they sometimes rejected the taking of oaths, association with the world in any way, and some would require communal living with no allowance for ownership of private property; while they practiced believer’s baptism, very few, if any, immersed; some practiced the strictest church discipline, while others were more tolerant; some believed in the strict separation of church from state, while others sought to rule the state; some were even Unitarian, such as Servetus who was burned in Calvin’s Geneva. One great difference of Anabaptism from modern-day Baptists is that regarding their beliefs in soteriology, and on this point they were all agreed. Far from the Calvinism of the early Baptists, the Anabaptists were semi-pelagian, declaring that not only was man’s will free, but it remained unfallen, his spirit remaining “utterly upright and intact before, during, and after the fall” (Hubmaier). He went on to say that “God created you without your aid, but he will not save you without your aid” (his treatise entitled Von der Freiheit des Willens, “Concerning the Freedom of the Will”). Sadly, many Baptists today have gone this direction in their soteriology, but none who would even resemble anything evangelical would agree with these extremes!

For all their differences, the Anabaptists were, as a whole, very morally upstanding people; even their persecutors admitted this. But to claim identification with them as modern Baptists is neither in keeping with the facts of history nor the great differences of belief and practice.

SUMMARY & CONCLUSION

It has been shown that Baptists in America and Britain find their origins in Protestant Puritanism, and their connection with the Anabaptists is only imaginary. Similarities there are, but the vast differences must be honestly admitted as well. Historical ties to the Anabaptists were continually disavowed by early Baptists, while at the same time they all claimed the closest of ties with the Protestant Reformation. Anabaptist, on the other hand, for the most part, came from Roman Catholic stock. It has also been shown that while few similarities exist between today’s Baptists and some ancient religious sects, none of them were actually what today’s Baptists are. They too came from out the established church of Rome, and were generally sacramentalists and sometimes even pagan.

Let it be reemphasized, as was stated at the outset, that this is no threat to Baptists. While Baptists have no clear, uncluttered genealogy of historical identity, it is no insult but rather a testimony to their strict belief that the Scripture alone is our basis of faith. While Baptists have historical roots which grow back to the Reformation, their only concern need be whether their theological roots grow out of the pages of the New Testament. Baptists do not need (nor does anyone else) a continual, unbroken line back to the apostles, only agreement with them. This is the question of ultimate importance, and if Baptists really believe that, a constructing of history in their favor is not at all necessary. Let them look to their history honestly, gleaning what they can from their predecessors with some differing views and fearing only any deviation from their sole authoritative Statement of Faith, Holy Scripture.

Theologians of all ideological stripes agree Walter Rauschenbusch was a key figure in 20th-century Baptist history and that his 1917 book “A Theology for the Social Gospel” marked an important juncture in the social gospel tradition.

But students of theology are divided 100 years later on whether Rauschenbusch (1861-1918) should be remembered as a friend or foe of evangelism and sound doctrine.

“Walter Rauschenbusch was born into a long line of pastors,” said Lloyd Harsch, professor of church history and Baptist studies at New Orleans Baptist Theological Seminary. “His father was the first to become a Baptist. While in his late 20s and early 30s, Walter served for more than a decade as pastor of Second German Baptist Church which was located in the destitute, crime-ridden area of Hell’s Kitchen in New York City.

“It was in this context that Walter came to the conclusion that his evangelistic efforts needed to include concern for the social issues affecting the neighborhood,” Harsch told Baptist Press in written comments. “Eventually, the social concern came to dominate his ministry. Rauschenbusch reminds us that even worthy issues pursued with the best of intentions can eventually distract us, drawing us away from the important task of sharing the Gospel with those around us.”

Published amid the early 20th century’s social gospel movement -- which sought to apply Christian principles to social problems like poverty, alcoholism and racial tensions -- “A Theology for the Social Gospel” argued the “old message of salvation” must be “enlarged and intensified” to address social ills.

“The individualistic gospel,” Rauschenbusch wrote, “has taught us to see the sinfulness of every human heart and has inspired us with faith in the willingness and power of God to save every soul that comes to him. But it has not given us an adequate understanding of the sinfulness of the social order and its share in the sins of all individuals within it.

“...The social gospel seeks to bring men under repentance for their collective sins and to create a more sensible and more modern conscience,” wrote Rauschenbusch, who left the pastorate in 1897 to teach at Rochester Theological Seminary in upstate New York.

In developing a theology to support the social gospel movement, Rauschenbusch critiqued historic formulations of some Christian doctrines.

He argued, for example, that the doctrine of biblical inspiration should acknowledge “the human frailty and liability to error” of the biblical authors. The idea Jesus’ death was a “substitution” and that He bore God’s wrath toward sinful humans, Rauschenbusch wrote, was among a collection of “post-biblical ideas” that were “alien to the spirit of the Gospel.”

Still, his emphasis on the need for Christianity to address social problems led Rauschenbusch to “a national acclaim rarely accorded seminary professors,” wrote Rauschenbusch biographer Paul Minus.

Neoorthodox theologian H. Richard Niebuhr wrote in “The Kingdom of God in America” that Rauschenbusch “continued to speak the language of the prophets and St. Paul.” Civil rights leader Martin Luther King Jr. wrote in 1960 that Rauschenbusch “left an indelible imprint on my thinking.”

Among Southern Baptists, former Southern Baptist Theological Seminary ethics professor Henlee Barnette classified Rauschenbusch in a 1968 sermon as among the “three great prophets” America had produced. The other two, Barnette said, were King and Abraham Lincoln.

Yet Rauschenbusch also drew criticism. In the mid-20th century, neoorthodox theologians like Niebuhr “declared his optimism excessive and certain doctrines deficient,” Minus wrote. King was among those who agreed with that critique.

Southern Baptists who admired Rauschenbusch knew mentioning him in some settings could alienate theologically conservative believers. Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary ethics professor T.B. Maston, a noted civil rights advocate who was influenced by Rauschenbusch, said in his 1973 oral memoirs that he counseled seminary students to avoid referencing the social gospel in Southern Baptist churches.

Using the word “social,” Maston said, “arouses some opposition on the part of some people to what you’re trying to do.”

Barnette similarly wrote in his 2004 memoir “My Story” that “Southern Baptists had a phobia about the term” social gospel and about Rauschenbusch -- “the father of the social gospel.”

That reticence about the social gospel tradition manifested itself when the Baptist General Convention of Texas established a commission in 1950 to address social issues.

Convention leaders called the new commission the Christian Life Commission rather than follow the Southern Baptist Convention’s lead, which had named its commission charged with cultural engagement the Social Service Commission. Texas Baptists felt a reference to the “social” gospel tradition of Rauschenbusch could undermine support for the new commission, former Texas CLC executive secretary A.C. Miller said in his 1972 oral memoir.

In 1953, the SBC’s Social Service Commission followed Texas Baptists’ lead and changed its name to the Christian Life Commission. Four decades later, the CLC became the Ethics & Religious Liberty Commission.

Despite the varying assessments of Rauschenbusch, church historians at SBC seminaries agree a century later that he rightly urged Christians to apply Scripture to social issues and that his work should be remembered.

Keith Harper, senior professor of Baptist studies at Southeastern Baptist Theological Seminary, told Baptist Press Rauschenbusch “engaged the social, cultural and economic issues of his day.”