By Cody Sanders
I grew up Baptist through and through — but when I got to seminary, I had a denominational identity crisis. As my theology grew and expanded, I questioned whether I might find a more suitable home in another denomination. But studying my own Baptist heritage convinced me to stay in the tradition — and that is why I’m confused about the way some Baptist groups are currently behaving.
Finding the rare gems of Baptist identity called soul competency and local-church autonomy — what Walter Shurden names as “fragile freedoms” of our Baptist style of faith. These — along with belief in the common people’s ability to discover Christ through Scripture and a firm commitment to the separation of church and state — are what convinced me to remain Baptist.
But sometimes I can’t help but feel duped. Not maliciously or intentionally, but duped nonetheless. Looking around, I wonder: Do Baptists still believe in these “fragile freedoms” and hold them as essential elements of our Baptist identity?
Examples of what trouble me are not difficult to find: the Georgia Baptist Convention’s expulsion last year of the First Baptist Church of Decatur for having a female pastor — and now news that it is similarly targeting the historic Druid Hills Baptist Church in Atlanta; the Southern Baptist Convention’s dismissal of Broadway Baptist Church in Fort Worth, Texas, for its welcome of gay members (and lingering questions surrounding its relationship to the Baptist General Convention of Texas); and now the limbo in which Royal Lane Baptist Church in Dallas finds its affiliation with the BGCT. All of these churches were put in precarious positions with their Baptist siblings due to decisions arrived upon by each local congregation seeking to carry forth its mission in its particular locale. These are merely recent examples of a disturbing contraction of the wide circumference that once encompassed a diversity of Baptist expressions.
There is certainly historical precedent for Baptist churches dividing over theological issues and congregations leaving or being expelled from associational bodies. Nonetheless, it causes me to question what we lose when we put extreme limits on how far we are willing to take our commitments to soul competency and local-church autonomy.
Moreover, when we hastily decide that a certain person or a certain church has stepped too far beyond the boundaries of friendly cooperation, do we risk expelling the prophets from among us? If so, I suppose this action should come as no surprise. For just as a prophet is without honor in her or his own hometown, so too a prophetic congregation may find no welcome within its historic denominational home.
But this isn’t what I hoped I was getting when I avowed my commitment to a distinctly Baptist identity. What I expected — perhaps naïvely — was a style of faith that allowed for extraordinary ranges of diversity to exist within the unity of voluntary associations. I had hoped to join my life to a body committed to making a witness to the beauty and even necessity of diversity. I found meaning in a way of being Baptist in which progressive and conservative churches needed one another and found more reasons to remain in conversation and cooperation than to sever ties and go their separate ways. I discovered freedom in each person’s ability to make her or his own religious and spiritual decisions and discoveries, yet remain within community humbled by the knowledge that any of us (or all of us) may just be wrong.
Perhaps these questions display my own naïveté. After all, does it really matter? In our supposed “post-denominational” world, why concern ourselves with being Baptist anymore?
Our ever-narrowing confessions of faith, enforcement of theological homogeneity and proliferation of churches expelled from denominational and associational bodies seem to suggest that the commitments that have historically set us apart as Baptists don’t really matter to us anyway.
Yet I wonder if Baptists might still have an important witness to offer to the world? For those who are still naïve enough to hope for this kind of Baptist family, perhaps there are other lessons to learn from our history. We might learn that many people feel threatened by those who seek to create a community where diversity is not merely tolerated, but celebrated. And when threatened, it is far easier to foreclose on our commitment to life together than it is to engage in the hard work of unity. Let us hope that there are still some Baptists interested in the hard work of unity and a commitment to honoring diversity.