Last week, The Advocate published a helpful survey of LGBTQ inclusion across Christian denominations. I was grateful for the article’s intent. Resources like these matter for LGBTQ people and their families as they search for communities of faith where they can worship honestly, safely and fully.
Yet I found myself lingering over the section describing American Baptist Churches USA — not because it was unfair, but because it reflected a misunderstanding that even many Baptists sometimes share: The assumption that our witness can be summarized by denominational statements.
It cannot.
Brian Henderson
One of the enduring gifts — and challenges — of Baptist life is that we never have been a people governed primarily by centralized authority. Congregational autonomy is not merely an organizational preference; it is a theological conviction. Baptists have long believed each local congregation, under the guidance of the Holy Spirit and in covenant with one another, bears responsibility for discerning Christ’s call within its own community.
That conviction never has produced uniformity. It has produced diversity.
The result is that there is no single “Baptist position” on many of the questions confronting the church today, including LGBTQ inclusion. While some Baptist denominations and regions have adopted statements opposing same-sex marriage or the ordination of LGBTQ clergy, there also are hundreds of Baptist congregations that have prayerfully discerned another path. They celebrate same-sex marriages, ordain openly LGBTQ ministers, welcome LGBTQ people into every level of congregational leadership and actively advocate for justice within their communities.
“There is no single ‘Baptist position’ on many of the questions confronting the church today,”
This diversity is not an accident. It is one of the defining characteristics of Baptist life.
For those of us committed to welcoming and affirming ministry, Baptist polity has often been both frustrating and liberating. Denominational structures have not always affirmed LGBTQ people. Yet those same structures never have been able to prevent local congregations from faithfully responding to God’s call to radical hospitality, justice and inclusion.
For more than 50 years, LGBTQ Baptists and their allies have faithfully organized within this tradition. The Association of Welcoming and Affirming Baptists, whose roots trace back to 1973, exists because countless congregations believed the gospel compelled them to embrace LGBTQ people not as exceptions to be tolerated but as beloved children of God, called to every aspect of the church’s life and ministry. Today, AWAB connects churches, educational institutions and ministry partners throughout the United States, Canada, the Caribbean and parts of Africa and Europe, remaining connected with tens of thousands of Baptists who continue that witness.
One line in The Advocate‘s article especially caught my attention. Readers were told they would not find an American Baptist Churches USA float at New York City’s Pride March. While technically true, the statement unintentionally misses something essential about Baptist life. Many American Baptist congregations do participate in New York City Pride and in Pride celebrations across the country. Their witness simply is not organized through denominational offices. It is expressed through local churches discerning how best to embody the gospel in their own communities.
Perhaps that is precisely the point.
The Baptist witness never has depended on what happens in denominational offices. It always has depended on congregations courageously living out the gospel where they are planted. Sometimes those congregations lead their denominations. Sometimes they challenge them. Sometimes they patiently wait for institutions to catch up with the Spirit’s work already unfolding among God’s people.
“To know Baptists, one must know Baptist churches.”
This is why it is impossible to understand Baptist life merely by reading denominational resolutions. To know Baptists, one must know Baptist churches. One must worship with them, listen to them, witness their ministries and hear the stories of ordinary people whose faith has transformed their communities.
If there is a lesson to be learned from The Advocate‘s article, it is not simply that one publication misunderstood Baptist polity. It is that we Baptists have an ongoing responsibility to tell our own story more faithfully. We cannot expect the wider world to understand the richness and complexity of our tradition if we have not taken the time to explain it ourselves.
For those of us in welcoming and affirming Baptist communities, that story is one of remarkable hope. LGBTQ Baptists are not newcomers to Baptist life. We are pastors and professors, deacons and missionaries, students and seminarians, musicians and teachers, longtime members and newly baptized believers. We have helped shape Baptist witness for generations, and by God’s grace we will continue to do so for generations to come.
Perhaps the most Baptist answer to the question, “What do Baptists believe about LGBTQ inclusion?” is also the most honest one: Come and meet our churches. There you will discover not a denomination speaking with one voice, but a people striving, congregation by congregation, to discern what faithfulness to the way of Jesus requires.
That witness may not always fit neatly into a denominational chart, but it is authentically, deeply and unapologetically Baptist.
Brian Henderson serves as executive director of the Association of Welcoming and Affirming Baptists. He is a pastor ordained within the American Baptist Churches USA.