The gift of the Baptist tradition

I was born to Baptist parents. I was raised in a Baptist church. I was taught that the Baptist tradition was a great tradition. I have loved it and have never left it. My membership has never been in any congregation other than a Baptist congregation. I have spent a life-time trying to understand just what it means to be a Baptist.

Baptists have a great variety of roots. Most of them are found in the seventeenth century CE. Baptists cannot trace themselves to a single founder. They do not have a distinctive set of theological beliefs. Yes, that is correct. There is not a set of Baptists beliefs that define them. Their histories intermingle them with Anabaptists, Congregationalists, Amish, and Mennonites. Some are Calvinists. Others are Arminians. Leaders in the Baptist movement moved to and through all of these traditions. There are no recognized GREAT Baptist theologians. But happily, we have been blessed with many fine historians.

About thirty years ago, a very good Baptist historian, Walter Shurden, set out to define what Baptists are about. His book, “The Baptist Identity: Four Fragile Freedoms,” is considered a classic statement, even though some find it insufficient.

To understand how radical the Baptist movement was in the 17th century CE, the context needs to be noted. Europe was a place that had yet to shake hierarchies. It was a world of Kings, Emperors, Popes and Bishops. With the birth of universities, the European continent was aggressively questioning traditional hierarchies, but were attempting to replace them with other systems of hierarchy. Scattered individuals and groups were asking the questions about religious authority without Popes, Bishops and Kings. They were social and intellectual outcasts and often paid the price of their lives for their radical views.

Shurden and others point out that these religious radicals were not intellectuals with well-defined principles. Rather, they were simple people attempting to understand what it meant to be devoted followers of Jesus Christ. Shurden’s four fragile freedoms did not suddenly appear, but rather they developed over an extended period of time.

Let’s look at Shurden’s four freedom.

The first freedom is “soul” freedom. I do not have a good definition of “soul.” I have never seen, touched or heard a soul. Yet I have one. The word points to the reality of being a human being. The word says that we are something more than flesh and blood. A human being is more than an animal that learned to think and speak. As inadequate as it may be, my soul is the very essence of being a human being. Being a Baptist is a statement of anthropology, not theology. Baptists concluded that human beings had a common heritage with every other human being. Baptists have declared the “priesthood of all believers.” Popes, priests nor any kind of leader was more special than the lowest, poorest, or most ignorant of believers. A person was his/her own priest before God.

The second freedom is “Bible” freedom. Early dissenters like the Baptists faced the need for some kind of authority. They rejected Pope, Bishops, kings and emperors. The Bible had been the uncontested possession of church hierarchies. Persons in congregations were told what was in the sacred text and what it meant. Gutenberg and the printing press changed things forever. With Gutenberg, lay people could then read the Scriptures for themselves. Baptists found their new authority. They became “people of the book.” Every Baptist was empowered both to read and to interpret the Bible.

The third freedom is “church” freedom. Local Baptist congregations claimed complete freedom to run their own churches. They elected their own officers; they chose their own ministers; they did their own versions of communion and baptizing. Congregations associated with one another, but the authority of the local congregation to run their own affairs was never challenged. The local church was autonomous.

The fourth freedom is religious freedom. Baptists rejected any interference of government in the life of their churches. Typically early Baptists were seen as outlaw congregations. For Baptists, churches and the state were to be completely separated. Christ is not Caesar and Caesar can never be Christ. For most of Christian history, beginning with Constantine in the 4th century CE, religion and the state have sought some sort of union or at least accommodation. Baptists challenged that construct. In the formation of the United States, it was Baptists that provided the solution to the issue of the relationship between church and state. It was Baptists who were behind the provisions of the First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution. “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof;”

Religion in America today is well and healthy. It features diversity rather than conformity, freedom rather than control, volunteerism rather than coercion, and a healthy individualism that keeps religious discussion lively and vital.

Baptist freedoms have been a huge gift to America and to the world. I am happy to be a Baptist.

The End

The Rev. Howard Bess is a retired American Baptist minister, who lives in Palmer, Alaska. He Is pastor emeritus of Church of the Covenant, an American Baptist church. His email address is hdbss@mtaonline.net.