One of the things that I treasure most about being a Virginia Baptist is that we take the gospel more seriously than we take ourselves. We know that the Holy Spirit is more powerful than we are. This is why we are so good at partnership missions — we recognize that our brothers and sisters in Panama and India and Europe and Appalachia and Nazareth and even New England are every bit as valuable as we are. They have as much to offer us as we have to offer them. This humble realization has been good for our partners and for us. We have achieved great things for the Kingdom together.
Robert Brown
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The realization that the Kingdom of God is greater than our organizations has allowed us to connect with churches that see some things differently. Some Virginia Baptists support the Southern Baptist Convention, some support the Cooperative Baptist Fellowship, some support both. Our collective position has been that we appreciate the dedication our brothers and sisters have to the work that God is doing, and we realize that God is able to work through people who understand things differently.
This is a deeply Baptist principle — no pope or council can tell us exactly how we are supposed to relate to God. We trust the leadership of the Holy Spirit to guide people and churches in reading and responding to scripture.
As Virginia Baptists, our humility, compassion and patience have allowed the grace of God to mold us into a beautiful expression of the Church. This is the sort of unity that Paul was hoping for when he wrote the letter to the Galatians.
Paul wrote that letter as a warning to a group of Christians who allowed different interpretations of the law to divide them. Some Galatian Christians still obeyed Old Testament rules about circumcision and dietary restrictions, and they refused to sit at the same table with Christians who applied those laws differently. Paul was outraged. He described this division as an insult to the gospel.
The Galatians refused to associate with each other because they disagreed over the place of Hebrew laws in their lives. Paul told them that this showed that they believed that those issues were more powerful than the cross.
One of the great strengths of Virginia Baptists has been the refusal to put anything above the gospel. We have refused to define ourselves by creeds, to submit ourselves to any human authority or to force the will of the majority on brothers and sisters who see things differently.
This year, the Baptist General Association of Virginia decided to remove Ginter Park Baptist Church because of their decision to ordain a minister who is homosexual. At the annual meeting, a motion to consider this action further was defeated, effectively endorsing the previous decision of the Virginia Baptist Mission Board’s executive committee.
I left the BGAV meeting saddened and disheartened by this change in the way the BGAV does business. We have given the executive committee a job that we previously entrusted to the Holy Spirit — showing us how to interpret Scripture.
It is dangerous to adopt a “majority rules” view of scriptural interpretation. One hundred and seventy-five years ago, Virginia Baptists believed that the Bible endorsed slavery. One hundred and twenty-five years ago, we believed that it was biblical for women not to be able to vote. Seventy-five years ago, we cited the Bible as evidence that black children were not worthy to go to school with white children. We have learned that compassion, grace and humility are required in interpreting Scripture. If the majority ignores love, we often miss out on the transformation that the gospel seeks to bring about in our lives.
At the BGAV meeting this year, John Upton brought a powerful report from the Baptist World Alliance. He talked about the remarkable ability of the gospel to tear down walls. We heard about the great things that Baptists are able to achieve around the world by working together. We have fought for the rights of neglected people in Russia. We have recognized the transformative power of the gospel for crack addicts in slums that even police refuse to enter. And we have worshiped in places previously used by extremist regimes to torture the people who they viewed as different and therefore dangerous. Upton talked about tearing down walls.
Our decision to remove Ginter Park puts up a wall, showing that we believe that homosexuality can do what communists, crack-cocaine and tyrants cannot do: destroy the unity we have in the gospel.
Traditionally, Virginia Baptists have been a powerful expression of the Kingdom of God because we have truly lived out the belief that the gospel is greater than our own understanding. We have shown that the cross that unites us is greater than the limitations that divide us. Our decision with regards to Ginter Park has raised the position of the BGAV above the position of the Church, and it has damaged the credibility of our claim that we hold the gospel above all else. We have given this issue more importance than the unity of the gospel, and that hinders our ability to work for the Kingdom of God.
Robert Brown ([email protected]) is pastor of Blackstone (Va.) Baptist Church.