TOGETHER:
The peril of a man-made document
___The current difficulties among Baptists threaten to tear us apart. Southern Baptist Convention leaders insist that anyone who wants to serve in Southern Baptist life must toe the party line and sign on to the new Baptist Faith & Message. This now includes the missionaries, as well as seminary professors. As I have talked with SBC leaders, it has become clear to me that they have a mistaken view of accountability. In place of accountability to God and Scripture, they have substituted accountability to men and to a confession of faith inserted between the Christian conscience and the Bible.
___That is acceptable to many Christian denominations, but it has never before been acceptable to Baptists. One might ask, "How can Baptists as
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CHARLES WADE
Executive Director
BGCT Executive Board
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sure themselves that those who work for us in the classrooms and on the mission fields are true to God and to the faith delivered to us?" The way to do it is the old-fashioned, Baptist way--stand up and give testimony to your salvation in Christ, your call to ministry, your walk with the Lord, your convictions regarding biblical doctrines that describe your readiness to serve with and for Baptist people. Or write out your convictions regarding key doctrines that are important to Baptists and let the administrators and the trustees examine your faith.
___But don't put a man-made document down in front of a Baptist and ask him or her to sign it as though it is the ultimate expression of one's faith. Don't make it into a little Bible. Creedal statements and confessions of faith can be used--even as we have seen them used with seminary professors and now with the missionaries--as appeals to loyalty and as threats to take away one's opportunity to serve the Lord as he has called you to serve.
___No Baptist would say: "It doesn't matter what you believe or preach or teach. We are obligated to support you." What we are saying is that after testimony has been given, and as teaching and preaching are observed, leave people alone to do their work. Don't drag them forward and say, "There are questions about your beliefs and your loyalty, but if you will just sign this, everything will be all right."
___E-mails I am receiving from the mission field are filled with fear and anguish. It is not because missionaries are afraid of being asked about anything they preach or do. Rather, it is because now they are being asked--after having been thoroughly examined when they became missionaries--to allow others to insert themselves as high priests over their consciences. They are being asked to sign a confession of faith as though it were a creed. It is a matter of conscience for many of them. Baptist people and the administrators and trustees of the IMB should honor their convictions.
___How could this have been avoided? The 2000 Baptist Faith & Message could have been developed and presented to Southern Baptists in a way similar to the 1963 confession. In that day, Herschel Hobbs, noted Baptist pastor, theologian and denominational leader, gathered the presidents of all the state conventions together, and they wrote a draft. They shared it with seminary professors, the theological editorial writers for the Sunday School Board and other leaders. They took note of their input and wrote another draft. They released it to the Baptist state papers in time for them to share it with their readers and write editorials about it. Then, finally, it was brought to the convention for a vote.
___Contrast that process to the current situation. No one outside the writing committee saw the document until three weeks before the convention meeting in June 2000. By the time it was made available, it was too late for much meaningful discussion of it in the state papers, by reputable Baptist theologians, by pastors and churches. I found as I raised some concerns wi
| "It is sometimes said that hereticks are always averse to confessions of faith; I wish I could say as much of tyrants." -- John Leland |
th the language of the confession that it had become a test of loyalty to the people in charge more than an invitation to serious biblical and theological dialogue.
___Now, that document is being used as the latest word among Baptists as to what we are expected to believe. When I was a pastor teaching new Baptists about the Baptist Faith & Message, I would always point out the importance of the preamble. It protected individual Baptists from any attempt to exercise "mandatory authority" over their conscience or their biblical convictions. (One of the key changes made in the new confession was that these words were left out.) I would always invite them to come to me to discuss any matter in the statement that they found not in accord with the Bible. I told them: "We will discuss it. If you have a clear word from Scripture that we have not considered, then we will discuss it with the congregation to see if God gives us the same light he has given you. Then we will discuss it with the leaders of our sister congregations and see if God shed the same light upon them." I told them the confession was a guide to help them understand the way Baptists have generally understood the Scripture, not a substitute for the Bible.
___John Leland, Virginia Baptist pastor and leader in the colonial and revolutionary period, had a deep love for religious liberty and a deep aversion to any kind of creed and even confessions of faith that he feared would be used as creeds to coerce the conscience of others. I don't know how to improve on his words:
___"What need of a confession of faith? Why this Virgin Mary between the souls of men and the Scriptures? Had a system of religion been essential to salvation, or even to the happiness of the saints, would not Jesus, who was faithful in all his house, have left us one? If he has, it is accessible to all. If he has not, why should a man be called a heretick because he cannot believe what he cannot believe, though he believes the Bible with all his heart? But after all, if a confession of faith, upon the whole, may be advantageous, the greatest care should be taken not to sacralize, or make a petty Bible out of it.
___"Confessions of faith often check any further pursuit after truth, confine the mind into a particular way of reasoning, and give rise to frequent separations. To plead for their utility, because they have been common, is as good sense as to plead for a state establishment of religion, for the same reason; and both are as bad reasoning as to plead for sin, because it is everywhere. It is sometimes said that hereticks are always averse to confessions of faith; I wish I could say as much of tyrants."
___We are loved.
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