By Beth Newman
Not too long ago, someone shared with me an instance of attempted church discipline. A pastor, on his own initiative, had approached a church member who had left her family to pursue a relationship with her “soulmate.” The pastor was informed in no uncertain terms that this private matter was no business of his or of the church.
I must admit to admiring the pastor’s sense of his duty, but the story left me wondering whether church discipline has any place within the lives of the people called Baptists. It seems to fly in the face of much that we hold dear, such as the freedom of the individual conscience, not to mention the “priesthood of all believers.”
More generally, most of us are instinctively hesitant to stand in judgment over one another. At least one Bible verse that is quoted by Christian and non-believer alike is “Judge not, that you be not judged,” (Matt. 7:1). Furthermore, if “church discipline” conjures any sort of picture for a lot of us, it would be that of Hawthorne’s Hester Prynne, the scarlet letter “A” emblazoned across her bosom, shunned by all around her.
From this perspective, church discipline seems to go hand-in-hand with self-righteousness. “Why do you see the speck that is in your brother’s eye, but do not notice the log that is in your own eye?” (Matt. 7:2)
Many of our Baptist ancestors, however, appeared to have no such qualms. Rather, they saw church discipline as ultimately redemptive. A Summary of Church Discipline, adopted in 1773 by the Charleston (S.C.) Baptist Association (later published in Wilmington, N.C. and Richmond, Va.), provides a particularly vivid example.
A pertinent section of the summary is titled, “Of Church Censures,” and discusses three levels of church discipline: rebuke, suspension and excommunication. The rebuke is for a lesser offense: for example, when someone “exposes to others the infirmities of a brother.” An example of an action calling for suspension would be when a congregant is a busy “tattler and backbiter,” or “when he broaches unsound, heretical principles.” And excommunication (done in phases) is reserved for “notorious and atrocious crimes.”
The point of excommunication is restoration. All censures “must be administered in love and tenderness.” If an offender, “even of the highest rank,” gives clear evidence of evangelical repentance, then he or she should “by no means be excommunicated.”
Such discipline no doubt sounds harsh to us, but this is due to the contemporary tendency to see discipline primarily as negative. Such a perspective blinds us to the fact that we are being disciplined every day of our lives. My children, for example — especially when they watch TV — are being trained to want the latest video games or to desire to look like the actresses on their favorite shows. This is not only true of children. Adults are trained to avoid “wasting time,” or to see politics as essentially what the government does.
The question is not whether we are being disciplined, but how.
For this reason, I find it fascinating that A Summary of Church Discipline begins with the discipline of worship. The authors make the obvious (but, today, often-forgotten) claim that we do not gather ourselves. Rather, “Christ gathers to himself a people from among all nations.” The church is not a voluntary organization, but a called people.
Further, the authors state a gospel church is “not national, but congregational.” What separates church discipline from state discipline is, first of all, the determination to worship Christ in all things. The failure to separate church from state stems from idolatry. This is why A Summary can claim that the church is wider than the state, since worship joins the congregation with “the catholic or universal church, [which] considered collectively, forms one complete and glorious body….”
According to A Summary, the discipline of worship begins before members gather, with fasting (we are not told for how long). Worship proper opens with prayer, followed by a sermon, a time of testimony and inquiry (into the work of grace in the congregants’ lives, their “soundness of doctrine,” the “goodness of their lives”). The worshipers then subscribe to a written covenant “consistent to the Word of God.” The service culminates with participation in the Lord’s Supper.
James Leo Garrett, Jr., in his introduction to a modern reprint of this treatise, relates the desire for a committed, disciplined Baptist church to other renewal movements within the church universal: Roman Catholic monastic communities, and (more recently) the Iona Community in the United Kingdom, the Taizé Community in France and the Church of the Savior in Washington, D.C.
Discipline presupposes a community that is both caring and committed. One might, for example, consider a so-called “intervention” where it is an act of love to confront someone with the consequences of his behavior. This is done not merely to “save” the individual from himself, but to ensure the well-being of the family. The absence of discipline does not speak of a broad-mindedness or generosity of the spirit. It is about an abandonment of responsibility and the failure of love.