BIRMINGHAM, England — “Divisions in the river of faith that divide us into swirling eddies and tributaries” constitute the most serious plight currently facing the church, Jimmy Carter told delegates attending the Baptist World Alliance Centenary Congress.
Carter, who led a joint Bible study on Sunday morning, July 31, said division is like a cancer that is metastasizing within the body of Christ, presenting a negative image of Christians to the world that is “directly opposite the gentle aspect of the one we have chosen to worship.”
The New Testament churches of Galatia had become divided, as leaders took the clear and adequate gospel of Christ and began adding other requirements for acceptance or fellowship, Carter said. That caused disagreements and acrimony that threatened survival of the early church, he said.
That division in the New Testament is “almost an exact description of what is happening today,” as fundamentalism uses certain elements of belief to divide Christians, he said.
Paul used surprisingly strong language in Galatians 1:6-8, Carter said, indicating that Paul was “astonished” or “disgusted” that the Galatian believers were “so quickly deserting the one who called you by the grace of Christ, and [were] turning to a different gospel.” Anyone who dared to proclaim a different gospel should “be accursed,” Paul said.
The problem, Carter said, is that church leaders were adding additional requirements for fellowship and salvation, such as adopting Jewish law and being circumcised. Others were imposing a creed concerning the eating of meat sacrificed to idols, requiring people to agree if they were to be accepted.
To redefine the gospel always has been a temptation, Carter said, “either to liberalize and dilute the gospel so it becomes meaningless,” or to add to the gospel, constructing creeds, and imposing them on others. Baptists have traditionally been averse to creeds, he said.
Fundamentalist movements in any religion have common characteristics, Carter said. Almost all are led by authoritative males, he said, they draw distinctions between themselves as “true believers” and others whose beliefs are considered inferior, and they are militant in fighting any challenge to their beliefs. Fundamentalists also tend to make their self-definition increasingly narrow and restrictive, to “demagogue” certain social issues, and to see negotiation as weakness, Carter said.
“Rigidity, domination and exclusion” are key words to describe fundamentalist movements, he said.
Carter said “I have been grieved in the last few years because some differences which I don't totally comprehend have separated us from the Southern Baptist Convention.”
“None of these differences are enough to prevent reconciliation,” Carter said. “I hope and pray we will be reunited with them and with other Baptists,” he said, to applause.
Carter said he does not minimize the importance of controversial questions such as abortion, homosexuality, the dominance or servanthood of pastors, the separation of church and state, the priesthood of believers, or whether scripture should be interpreted by the words and actions of Jesus Christ or by a group of elected leaders.
But, “Paul made it vividly clear that applying any of these issues, no matter how important, to salvation, would dam up progress” and hinder the church, Carter said.
The gospel is not of human origin but divine, Carter said, and “its message should not be distorted by controversial human opinion.”
Carter cited 1 Corinthians 2:1-2, John 3:16 and Ephesians 2:8-9 as encapsulations of the gospel — salvation by faith in Christ. “That's adequate,” he said.
“There's nothing wrong with believing in fundamentals. All of us have fundamental beliefs.” The most important belief, Carter said, is that “we are saved by the grace of God through faith in Jesus Christ.”
Carter asked those present to repeat that statement with him, adding “this is adequate as a foundation on which every Christian denomination on earth can unite in harmony and peace and mutual cooperation to spread the gospel of Christ to all people.”
“But that's not what happened to the Galatians or to us,” Carter said. “We start dividing ourselves over tiny definitions.”
Carter cited as an example the “continued practice of discriminating against women, depriving them of their ability to serve God.”
Jesus treated women as equal to men, a view that was dramatically different from prevailing practices, Carter said, but some Baptists “want to keep women in their place.”
Carter acknowledged that some passages from Paul's writings have been used to promote the idea that women should be submissive to their husbands and silent in church. But Paul affirmed women in other texts such as Romans 16, where he described some women as deacons, apostles, ministers and saints, Carter said.
“Paul was not separating himself from the lesson Jesus taught,” Carter said. “His clear message is that women should be treated as equals in their right to serve God.” Carter cited Paul's statement in Galatians 3:28: “There is no longer Jew or Greek, there is no longer slave or free, there is no longer male and female; for all of you are one in Christ Jesus.”
If being Jew or Greek, slave or free does not impact one's equal opportunity to serve Christ, then being male or female shouldn't either, Carter said.
“Should we Baptists, Christians, exclude more than half the devout Christians on earth from fulfilling the call of God to service of Christ?,” Carter asked.
Different Baptist groups within the BWA may disagree over the role of women in ministry, but that should not prevent the groups from working together, he said.
Baptists must resist rigidity, domination, and exclusion, Carter said. He cited Galatians 5:26 and Ephesians 4:32, saying believers should not provoke one another but be kind and forgiving.
“The vast and diverse Christian world needs to rise above divisive controversies, adhere to the basic Christian message, to emphasize healing of differences,” Carter said. In drawing close to Christ individually, believers will also draw close to each other, to “follow our Savior, the Prince of Peace, in reaching out to the lost and alleviating the suffering of others.”