Historian urges Cooperative Baptists to reclaim ‘audacious identity’

CHARLOTTE, N.C. (ABP) –Historian Bill Leonard encouraged fellow Baptists to “get over” being embarrassed by their denomination’s often-negative image and instead celebrate their lineage in an “audacious identity” established by their forebears.

Leonard, founding dean of Wake Forest University Divinity School, reminded listeners at the Cooperative Baptist Fellowship General Assembly in Charlotte, N.C., June 24 that both early Christians and early Baptists were viewed with disdain.

Bill Leonard urges CBF to celebrate, rather than apologize for, its Baptist identity.

The third-century Roman philosopher Celsus observed that the Christians of his day appealed to “only the silly, the mean and the stupid.” Leonard noted that “faith-tinged identities” continue to embarrass adherents in the 21st century.

“For many persons inside and outside the church, Christians in general and Baptists in particular often look less like children of God than childishly ‘silly, mean and stupid,’” Leonard said. “And sometimes we act the part.”

Leonard said the early Baptists are “not models to which we should return” but rather “spiritual guides” to understanding a Baptist witness today.

In 1611, two years after what historians consider the first Baptist church was established in Amsterdam, a Baptist statement of faith defined the church as “a company of faithful people separated from the world by the Word and Spirit of God, being knit together unto the Lord and one another by baptism upon their own confession of faith and sins.”

Leonard said it is hard for modern people to grasp how radical it was in 17th century Europe — when citizenship and church membership were linked inseparably – for a group to proclaim a believer’s church un-coerced by state or religious establishments.

“This understanding of faith set Baptists at odds with both the church and the culture of their day,” Leonard said. “In many places it still does.”

Leonard said that “audacious identity” marks Baptists today in that they welcome everyone, regardless of their faith or lack of faith, but require members to profess their faith in Jesus Christ.

Like their forebears, Leonard said, Baptists today also “cannot take it for granted that people in postmodern America, even those who show up in church, have the slightest idea of what we are talking about.”

Leonard said history also teaches Baptists to “be less concerned for a single plan of salvation that completes a required transaction than for a lifelong process of conversion that transforms human beings day by day.”

He cited two churches that he said illustrate such an “audacious witness” in moderate Baptist life today.

One, Highland Baptist Church, a predominantly white church, responded five years ago to drive-by shootings in Louisville, Ky., through an alliance with African-American churches to hold public vigils at killing sites and plant crosses in their church yards bearing the names of shooting victims.

“Will those acts help stop the shootings?” he asked. “They hope so, but even if the murders continue, a witness has been given by churches black and white, compelled by conscience to confront the madness.”

Another, Wilshire Baptist Church in Dallas, decided four years ago to ordain Andrew Daugherty to lead a new congregation for people who have been marginalized by traditional churches. After touching a variety of lives, Christ Church Baptist in Rockwall, Texas, next Sunday will end its ministry with a consensus that it has run its course.

“Was that fledgling church a failure?” Leonard asked. “No, it was a witness, reminding us what the early Baptists surely knew: not every calling has to last forever.”

“Don’t start with the question of whether your church is thriving or declining, growing or dying,” Leonard said. “Begin by asking whether you have a witness in the world, a call to conscience that is worth pursuing whether the initial endeavor lives or dies.”

Leonard said he thinks often of Ann Hasseltine Judson, a Congregationalist missionary who along with her newlywed husband, Adoniram, converted to the Baptist faith while reading the Greek New Testament after setting sail for India in 1812. She wrote a friend apologetically describing the couple as “confirmed Baptists, not because we wished to be, but because truth compelled us to be.”

Leonard said many non-fundamentalist Baptists today find themselves in a similar predicament.

“If conscience dictates, I suppose we can rip the word Baptist out of our literature, paint over it on our church signs or delete it from our Web page, Facebook, Twitter and podcast Internet connections,” Leonard said. “But before we do, let’s admit that there is no generic Christianity divorced from community or without an identity that centers us in the world or the Kingdom of God.”

“Tonight, let’s stop worrying about our name and start reclaiming our witness,” Leonard advised. “Let’s quit fretting over the loss of cultural dominance and turn loose our consciences. Let’s go out as children of God, born again, and again, and again, and again in one of the church’s dysfunctional but gladly grace-filled families; children of God in the water and at the table, in the Word and in the world, children of God knit together by grace.”

—Bob Allen is senior writer for Associated Baptist Press.