Baptists’ first principles

The First Baptist Church in America, scaffolding and Baptist principles

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The fall board meeting of Associated Baptist Press—a key component (along with the Baptist Standard, Virginia's Religious Herald and Missouri's Word & Way newspapers) in the New Voice  Media partnership—is being held in Providence, R.I.

When I walk out the front door of our hotel, I can look to my left and see the steeple of First Baptist Church of Providece , the  first Baptist church in America. Really the first. Numero uno. None prior.

First Baptist Church of Providence was founded by Roger Williams in 1638, not long after he founded the Colony of Rhode Island to protect the religious liberty of all its inhabitants. And to establish a bullwark of true freedom of religion in the New World. 

In disputes with the Puritans of the Massachusetts Bay Colony over religious liberty and justice for the Indians, the powers that be banished Williams from Massachusetts in the dead of winter in 1635.  He might not have survived, except the Indians he had defended befriended him and saved his family from calamity.

So, he migrated to the headwaters of Narragansett Bay and settled Providence, in thanks to God and established Rhode Island as a colony of England in 1634. Two years later, his convictions led him to start First Baptist Church. That was only 25 years after John Smyth and Thomas Helwys established the first-ever Baptist church in Amsterdam.

Well, I couldn't visit Providence without running by First Baptist. Literally. Autumn has fallen upon New England, and a full day of meetings left me itching to get outside. So, I pulled out the gear, stretched a bit and took off toward that shining white steeple.

As I ran up College Hill, I saw what I would not have expected—the aged wooden meeting house is covered in scaffolding. From what I understand, First Baptist must repair and paint the building about every 10 years in order to preserve this architectural and historical treasure. So, visitors in the fall of ’08 see more of the painters' exoskeleton than they do the outside of U.S. Baptists' birthplace.

Thanks  be to God, the folks who have inherited the physical foundation of our Baptist legacy in the New World are willing to pay the price to protect it.

As I ran on, past Brown University and myriad political banners and yard signs that mark the 2008 political season, the scaffolding around First Baptist Church became a metaphor. It reminded me that Christians of the Baptist heritage need to take pains to preserve and protect our heritage. From time to time, we must put up the scaffolding of knowledge and understanding, repair the rot of historical revisionism and spread a fresh coat of commitment to first principles.


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Those principles have been undermined and threatened on one front by so-called Baptists who claim the name of Baptist but do not share Roger Williams' commitment to religious liberty for all people And they're endangered on another front, especially in years divisible by 4, by politicians who use the language of faith as visceral yard signs, manipulating common meaning of words with wonderful, historic resonance in order to win votes.

The threat looms particularly large in America of 2008, where fear of Islamic terrorists breeds disdain for the "others" in our land. It looms large when selfish concern for personal safety and freedom makes good people think twice about denying freedom to others.

But this is not our legacy. Roger Williams taught us better. Read words from America's first Baptist:

• "It is the will and command of God that (since the coming of his Son the Lord Jesus) a permission of the most paganish, Jewish, Turkish, or antichristian consciences and worships, be granted to all men in all nations and countries; and they are only to be fought against with that sword which is only (in soul matters) able to conquer, to wit, the sword of God's Spirit, the Word of God."

• "God requireth not a uniformity of religion to be enacted and enforced in any civil state; which enforced uniformity (sooner or later) is the greatest occasion of civil war, ravishing of conscience, persecution of Christ Jesus in his servants, and of the hypocrisy and destruction of millions of souls."

• "An enforced uniformity of religion throughout a nation or civil state, confounds the civil and religious, denies the principles of Christianity and civility, and that Jesus Christ is come in the flesh."

• "I acknowledge that to molest any person, Jew or Gentile, for either professing doctrine, or practicing worship merely religious or spiritual, it is to persecute him, and such a person (whatever his doctrine or practice be, true or false) suffereth persecution for conscience."

 


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