Voices: Baptists, remember your history in 2016

As Civil Rights hero and Baptist pastor Martin Luther King, Jr. once stated: “We are not makers of history. We are made by history.”

History is important; it shapes our views and opinions in more profound ways than we ever realize. We are products of our context, and our context is a result of historical developments. Our history as a people both warns us of our inherent “blind spots” and destructive tendencies and encourages us with reminders of who we are and where we have found success in our past.

As my dad says, it’s important to remember where you came from.

Baptist beginnings

So, where did Baptists come from? This question is fascinating and requires far more detail than can be provided here. The short version is this: In the latter part of the Protestant Reformation, a small group of ministers and parishioners in England became convinced baptism should be limited to confessing believers, rather than infants, and only baptized and regenerate believers were true members of the church, as opposed to everyone living within a certain region. These early believers faced fierce persecution from the Church of England, who saw these claims as a threat to both church and societal order.

Baptists in America didn’t fare much better. The Puritans who fled persecution by the Church of England sought to create a model “City on a Hill” that would inspire the rest of the world to follow their example. When dissenters began to question the practice of infant baptism, Puritans, like the Church of England, that a basic tenet of their new society was being threatened and responded accordingly. Early American Baptists like Roger Williams, John Clarke, Obadiah Holmes and others faced heavy fines, jailing, banishment and beatings.

In both England and America, religious authorities sought to “stamp out” the small and slow-growing Baptist movement.

Obviously, these attempts failed. Baptists in England faced significantly less persecution following the 1689 Act of Toleration, and American Baptists achieved significant religious liberty nearly a century later following the Revolution.

Avoided political power

To oversimplify a long and complex history, Baptists generally were wary of seeking political power for the next 200 years. In fact, no Baptist became president until Warren Harding in 1921. While they remained involved in individual issues such as slavery, prohibition and Civil Rights, Baptists largely avoided entrenched political power until the Modernist and Anti-Modernist movements of the 20th Century.

Today, through a series of cultural changes and struggles to adapt, Baptist life seems to have become centered around politics. From our early persecution to our struggles against—and unfortunately, for—slavery and segregation, Baptists historically have worked in spite of the government.

Why then, in 2016, are we speaking and acting as if we can only reach the world through elected officials?

Grasping for power

Listening to various “Christian” political radio programs and reading columns by various leaders, it’s been hard to escape a few common refrains. According to a multitude of prominent evangelical figures, Christians are losing political influence and must re-establish it by electing politicians who will further “Christian” causes through legislation. Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump has explicitly played off of this fear, promising that, if elected, “Christianity will have power.”

This is what I have found the most troubling in this particularly contentious election cycle: My Baptist brothers and sisters are seeking after political power.

We’ve been down this road before. Baptists were born out of a reaction against the mingling of religion and political power, which doesn’t work out well for anybody for very long. Christianity is designed in such a way that it does not need “power” of this sort to survive and grow. Jesus didn’t say Congress was the light of the world; he said we are. He did not say the Supreme Court is a city on a hill; he said we are.

Hinders the gospel

Christianity’s witness to the world cannot be furthered by political means; if Baptist history shows us anything, it’s that political power only hinders the gospel.

Should Christians be politically active? Of course. Baptists have a proud tradition activism against societal evils such as slavery and segregation. But there is an important difference between using our political voice as a tool to better the lives of others—as Myles Werntz recently wrote about—and seeking to become an entrenched political power.

Baptists should be the first among Christians to realize this, because our very existence is a testament to what happens when the two are confused. Baptists, remember your roots in 2016. Let’s avoid the mistakes and repeat the successes of the past.

Jake Raabe is a student at Baylor University’s George W. Truett Theological Seminary in Waco, Texas.