BUIES CREEK, N.C. (ABP) — A group of 28 theologians and educators is asking the Baptist World Alliance to recite the Apostles' Creed at the group's 100th anniversary meeting next year, which would replicate the first act of the BWA World Congress from 1905 and counter recent charges of liberalism.
John Sundquist of Valley Forge, Pa., chair of the program committee for the BWA congress, said in a July 1 e-mail that the creed will be recited in the opening session.
The June 23 request was signed by 28 Baptist theologians and educators from 10 countries and sent to Keith Jones, chair of the BWA resolutions committee. Jones, rector of the International Baptist Theological Seminary in Praque, the Czech Republic, said the creed was under consideration. He added his committee, at the request of BWA officers, is also working on “a significant statement on Baptist identity for presentation to the Congress.”
Baptist World Alliance has been under attack recently from the Southern Baptist Convention, which withdrew June 15 from the worldwide group, accusing BWA of tolerating liberalism among member bodies. Reciting the Apostles' Creed — though not binding on the group's 211 member bodies — would place BWA clearly within the mainstream of Christian orthodoxy.
Baptists have long been averse to creeds, famously claiming they need “no creed but the Bible.” Recitation of the Apostles' Creed at the BWA meeting would not be capitulation, according to a statement from four of the 28 signers, but only affirmation of Baptists' commonality with other Christians.
The BWA's first recitation of the Apostles' Creed in 1905 was a surprising act, according to the statement, called “Confessing the Faith,” which was sent with the request to Jones by four American professors — Steve Harmon, of Campbell University Divinity School in Buies Creek, N.C.; Curtis Freeman from Duke University's Baptist House of Studies in Durham, N.C.; Elizabeth Newman from the Baptist Theological Seminary at Richmond (Va.); and Philip Thompson of the North American Baptist Theological Seminary in Sioux Falls, S.D.
“Many Baptists acquired an allergy to creeds because of the illegitimate ways they have been used to bind the individual conscience, to substitute for a personal confession of faith, or to underwrite an established church-state order,” the statement said. “Creeds are misused whenever they become instruments of coercion, just as religious liberty is abused when it is invoked to legitimate deviation from the living witness of apostolic faith.”
In 1905, BWA president Alexander Maclaren called for members of the BWA's first congress to rise and confess the Apostles' Creed “not as a piece of coercion or discipline, but as a simple acknowledgement of where we stand and what we believe,” the statement said. The explanation said that staunch anti-creedalism has often led to “the faulty assumption that modern Christians can leapfrog from the primitive Christianity of the Bible to the contemporary situation with relative ease.”
“Ironically, in the wake of the Baptist encounter with modernity those from both ends of the theological spectrum employed the slogan 'No creed but the Bible' in their theological arguments,” it said. “Serious Bible readers will find much-needed hermeneutical guidance by returning to the ancient creeds of the church.”
The intention was to draw on the Southern Baptist Convention's recent withdrawal from BWA over charges of liberalism as a “teachable moment,” Harmon said. The educators hope to move the Baptist theological discourse “away from the worn-out labels of 'conservative' vs. 'liberal' that belong to a dying modernity,” he said.
“In other words, we believe that one of the most pressing issues on the Baptist agenda at the beginning of the second century of the Baptist World Alliance and its witness to the world is recovery of the connection of Baptists to the ancient tradition that they share in common with all other Christians,” he said.
“At the same time, we believe that one obstacle to such a recovery is a misunderstanding, widespread among non-fundamentalist Baptists, of the nature and function of such ancient ecumenical creeds as the Apostles' Creed and the 'Nicene' Creed, which summarize and communicate this ancient tradition that Baptists share in common with all other Christians.”
Harmon said the issue grew out of conversations during a regional meeting of the National Association of Baptist Professors of Religion in Washington, D.C., June 3-6.
Other signers of the document and their schools are Mikael Broadway, Shaw University Divinity School, Raleigh, N.C.; Biju Chacko, India Baptist Theological Seminary, Kottayam, India; Christopher Ellis, Bristol Baptist College, Bristol, England; Rosalee Velloso Ewell, South American Theological Seminary, Londrina, Brazil; Paul Fiddes, Regent's Park College, University of Oxford, Oxford, England; James Gordon, Scottish Baptist College, Paisley, Scotland; Doug Harink, King's University College, Alberta, Canada; Barry Harvey, Baylor University, Waco, Texas;
Stephen Holmes, King's College, London, England; Willie Jennings; Duke Divinity School; Barry Jones, Campbell University Divinity School; Roy Kearsley, South Wales Baptist College, Cardiff, Wales; Ken Manley, Whitley College, University of Melbourne, Melbourne, Australia; Nathan Nettleton, Whitley College; Parush Parushev, International Baptist Theological Seminary, Prague, Czech Republic; Frank Rees, Whitley College; Luis Rivera, Princeton Theological Seminary, Princeton, N.J.; Deotis Roberts, Eastern Baptist Theological Seminary (retired), Philadelphia, Pa.; Karen Smith, South Wales Baptist College; John Weaver, South Wales Baptist College; Daniel Williams, Baylor University, Waco, Texas; Jonathan Wilson, Acadia Divinity College, Wolfville, Nova Scotia; Ralph Wood, Baylor University; and Nigel Wright, Spurgeon's College, London, England.
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