By Amy Butler
I work right around the corner from The Gallup Organization’s headquarters here in Washington, so I’ll just say up front that the informal poll I recently took on Facebook should not be considered strictly scientific.
That being said, I humbly believe that, scientific or not, the results obtained from said survey were totally accurate.
The impetus for my new public-opinion endeavor was that I was recently tasked with writing copy for a section of our new church website that would answer the question: “What is a Baptist?”
Talk about a loaded question.
I know, of course, what everyone thinks we’re like, but just to prove that I’m not erroneously dependent upon outdated stereotypes, I decided a Facebook poll was in order to confirm those preconceptions. I understand that it’s generally not polite to say that I was right — but, frankly, I was.
Here’s what I’ve gotten so far in response to the fill-in-the-blank query, “The first words that come to mind when I hear the word ‘Baptist’ are….” They include words and phrases like: Holy Roller, South, ahistorical, baptism by immersion, no stained glass, white, water, river, baptism, gospel, country, congregational, hardshell, teetotaler, old church ladies in big hats, conservative, robust music, vehemently faithful, long worship services, traditional and set in their ways, anti-intellectual and (my favorite) RUN (suggested, strangely enough, by a Calvary deacon).
I venture to say that since the folks who answered this poll were readily identifiable on Facebook, they were probably a little more polite than they would be under anonymous circumstances. But these are a good start to finding out what everybody thinks — and, as I try to answer that question for our new website, I am aware that everybody reading it will likely be thinking along the same lines.
But here’s the thing: that’s not what I would say a Baptist is. Even on my worst days as the pastor of a Baptist church, these are not adjectives that come to my mind first (well, except maybe “set in their ways”).
So, what is a Baptist? And, even more pressing: why should anybody even care?
(Would now be a good time for me to ask for a raise?)
Here’s what I’d say:
This is a good question, and one that I have asked myself (and been asked) over and over, especially in the years that I have worked in professional ministry. There are many other denominations in which I would have had an easier time finding a church where I, as a woman, could serve as senior pastor. But I stayed in Baptist life, and I will stay, and there are some precious Baptist qualities, distinctives and beliefs that I just can’t imagine practicing Christian faith without. Among them:
- Being Baptist means practicing a faith that affirms and encourages the priesthood of all believers. That is, we’re tenacious about the fact that God speaks freely to us all, and that each one of us has an individual and direct relationship with God that is not brokered by an institution or a member of the clergy.
- A great gift of being a Baptist is the autonomy of the local church. Much like our individual belief in the responsibility of each person to cultivate his or her relationship with God, our church community has that responsibility, too. As Baptists we are constantly asking where it is God is leading us as a community of faith and how we will respond to that leading. No larger entity or denominational body dictates whom we hire, who is accepted into membership, where our money goes or what polity and policy statements we adopt. Nobody.
- As Baptists in the nation’s capital, we are particularly conscious of yet another critical Baptist distinctive: the separation of church and state. Our faith informs our individual politics, of course. But the church is never a forum for promoting the state. We answer to a higher calling — we are people engaged in living the radical gospel of Jesus Christ, and thus we work to keep allegiances to God and to country separate.
These three distinctive principles are not the only important parts of our practice as Baptists. But they, more than old ladies in big hats, are foundational to who we are as a community of faith. I don’t know what it’s going to take to change perceptions, other than to keep saying over and over, “We’re different than what you think of when you think of ‘Baptists.’”
Really, we are.
Different than you might think in many critical ways.
That being said: We will never, as long as I live and breathe, give up one more critical Baptist distinctive. Ever. And that distinctive is having potlucks.
Amen.