The Baptist approach to the Christian faith was forged in the furnace of persecution and ostracism. The foolish might try to trace Baptist roots back to the first church in Jerusalem, but that is mere mythmaking.
However, there certainly are similarities: squabbling, misrepresenting what one gives to the church and various other problems with which pastors have contended throughout the years.
Michael Chancellor
Baptists trace their lineage more through shared beliefs than through a trail of water from the baptistry. I grew up in a local neighborhood Baptist church, which was an overwhelmingly positive experience — except, perhaps, for my baptism at age 9. That experience informed my approach to the ordinance throughout my years of ministry.
My baptism was one of several that day, coming at the end of a revival meeting that offered children the opportunity to hear about Jesus at our own level of understanding. At the time, my commitment to Christ was based on what I understood about Jesus and what I knew about myself. I later would have more profound spiritual experiences that continued through college, seminary and my ministry.
“It was quick, wet and a bit of a shock.”
On the whole, my baptism was rather lackluster. Standing in a line of other robed candidates, I remember the pastor producing a handkerchief from nowhere, covering my mouth and nose, and dipping me while reciting: “I baptize you in the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit.” It was quick, wet and a bit of a shock.
In my own ministry, I took the time to talk to each person about the meaning of the act and practiced how we would do it. Because of that preparation, I was able to baptize many people who were anxious or phobic of water.
What still stands out in my mind and heart are clear convictions regarding Scripture, Jesus, the work of the Holy Spirit, congregational life and the Baptist heritage of liberty. Not enough Baptist congregations have pastors who speak about our heritage of religious freedom. In the absence of that history, dangerous notions have crept in like weeds in an untended garden.
These “weeds” — or, to use another analogy, false memories — have left us with empty churches, empty lives and a growing national crisis involving violations of the Constitution and the Bill of Rights, alongside an abandonment of the rule of law.
We never learn. We have an early warning “sky is falling” system that daily ignores the real dangers to our future. It reminds me of Christmas dinner at my grandmother’s home. She did a few things well, but cornbread dressing never was one of them. Yet, we kept going back and eating the same old stuff because we didn’t want to hurt her feelings.
When the early ships arrived all those years ago, most passengers wanted something different from what they had known in England and Europe. So what did they do? They formed the same oppressive intertwining of state power and religion.
“William Penn and the founders of Rhode Island did something different.”
William Penn and the founders of Rhode Island did something different. They provided freedom of religion instead of the same oppressive recipe they had fled at the risk of death. I know why we kept going back to grandmother’s house to eat her bad dressing: No one died, it was only once a year, and we ate lots of salad.
Why would anyone want to trade religious liberty for oppression? What is the appeal? For me, there is none.
When anyone in power dictates who and how I worship, it is a violation not just of the Constitution and the Bill of Rights, but a profound violation of “soul freedom” — a principal Baptists have historically defended. Rather than being afraid of “others not like us,” we should fear giving away our personal liberty and freedom of conscience.
The state, at any point in history, cannot coerce the soul. If the history of persecution, prison and the rule of kings and popes has taught us anything, it is that every person is free to worship, or not worship, as they choose. For that freedom people have become martyrs.
When the state tries to corrupt the free practice of religion, it corrupts the very religion it attempts to advocate. If our faith is so weak that we must turn to the state to ensure people practice “the right faith in the right way,” we are revealing an inadequate deity who must coerce because followers are not drawn to the shrine.
In the words of J.B. Phillips, “Your God is too small.”
Michael Chancellor served 33 years as pastor of four Baptist churches in Texas, six years as a mental health manager in a maximum-security Texas prison before becoming a therapist in private practice in Round Rock, Texas. He now lives in Taylor, Texas.