Why I'm a Baptist

I write this to remind myself... because I'm not happy with the directions the tradition has taken nor with the choices that have been made by my own denomination - The American Baptist Churches, USA.

Walter Shurden in his book The Baptist Identity: Four Fragile Freedoms, says there are four distinctive commitments that define what it means to be a Baptist.

1. Freedom of the Bible - the idea that scripture speaks for itself and the individual believer is obligated to study it using the best possible tools. There is no "official" interpretation of the Bible. Nobody can definitely say, "this is what the Bible means" and therefore there are no creeds or doctrinal checklists.

2. Soul Freedom - Each individual is both able and required to work out his or her own faith and relationship to God with no interference by clergy, church, hierarchies, or state. Nobody can tell you what your relationship to God is supposed to look like. That is between you and God.

3. Freedom of the Church - It is the responsibility of each congregation to work out the shape of its faith and its ministry in its context. No outside body can tell a church what they must believe or how they must do ministry.

4. Freedom of Religion - The state has no power to impose religious tests on anyone or shape religion in any way. The idea of separation of church and state in the US came primarily from the Baptists and the Quakers.

Obviously, Shurden says more about these distinctives than I have shared in 4 short paragraphs but you get the picture and can sense the radicalness inherent in these four commitments. They leave the door open to incredible diversity from TULIP fundamentalists on the right to unitarianism on the left and everything in between. Indeed, the Baptist tradition in the US includes the whole of that diversity. It is that wild and wide tradition that caught my imagination and continues to insire me. It is that crazy mix that seems to me to be the most viable shape for Christianity to take in this post-modern world. It is also a tradition that is frightening to many and seems to me to be being abandoned by almost all Baptist groups.

Let me give one simple example. In the ABCUSA, they are talking about a "common table," i.e. when representatives gather, each of the participating bodies agrees not to send a representative that another body would exclude. Left out are GLBT folk because some of the more conservative folk in ABC will not sit at table with them. How can we claim to be Baptists and then tell a church or group of churches that they cannot send an entire class of people as representatives to our gatherings? What about the first three freedoms? It was in that rough and tumble mix of differing ideas and interpretations that I most clearly heard the voice of the Spirit. And now we move to the lowest common denominator?

I am still a Baptist. I want to remain a Baptist and I dream of a day when some Baptist body stands up and clearly says, "THIS IS WHO WE ARE!" I fear it will never come and the tradition will morph into something it is not, and then disappear completely.

Freedom

I just got home from a 3 week trip back east that included the ABC Biennial meeting (more about that later) but the meetings got me thinking about freedom.

Walter Shurden spoke at the Coalition for Baptist Principles gathering and told a wonderful story... while pastoring, he invited a number of leaders from their faith traditions to share their traditions in an adult Sunday School class. At the end of one of those meetings, Shurden asked the Catholic priest who had been sharing what he understood to be the central characteristics of the Baptist tradition. Without a blink, the priest replied, "freedom."

Shurden went on to talk about freedom as central to not only the Baptist tradition, but also to the ways in which God relates to humanity. God gives us freedom for faith or not, freedom to follow or not, freedom...

I have to say that I bristle whenever folk talk about the US as being a Christian nation or even that it is founded on Christian ideals and then argue and work towards a theocracy. It seems to me that working towards a theocracy is precisely the opposite of what God wants and a nation where freedom, including absolute freedom of religion, is the distinguishing characteristic, is exactly what God does want. It is a wonderful irony isn't it? God has given us the freedom to not believe, the freedom to not follow. From the positive perspective, God has given us the freedom and responsibility to work out our own salvation in fear and trembling and nobody, including God's self, can impose faith upon us. It is only when we have that freedom that we are living in the kind of society God envisions for us all. God wants us all to be in relationship with God but it is more important that we be able to choose than what we choose.

Happy 4th of July! Let Freedom Ring!