Rewriting history?
We Baptist students here at Duke who have aligned themselves with the theological project of Curtis Freeman, Steve Harmon, Elizabeth Newman, Philip Thompson, and others consciously understand themselves as rejecting the two major alternatives in our tradition right now. On the one hand, we cannot return to the biblical foundationalism of inerrantists in the Southern Baptist Convention who appeal to Sola Scriptura yet practice an unacknowledged, ever-narrower tradition. On the other hand, we cannot continue in along the course of the moderates who stress freedom of the individual conscience and revision at all costs. One seeks to wall up the church in an imposing but claustrophobic fortress and the other would have it morph into a wandering morass of pilgrims going who knows where.
Neither aimless nor sheltered, the "third way" hopes to balance both steadfastness and openness. Perhaps the corresponding image would be for Baptists to see themselves as a village, neither constricted nor boundless. The village does its business in the commons where people gather for market, for debate, and for decision. It acknowledges and depends upon the history of its families and office-holders. Its identity is shaped both by its particular seasons, festivals, and traditions as well as the traditions, customs, and values of the wider people group to which it belongs.
Much of my metaphor, I hope, corresponds with the simultaneous retrievals of Baptist heritage and the broader Christian tradition that have been at play in the work of these "other Baptists." Our village of disciple-baptizers and covenant-makers can and should heed both the testimony of the forebears who rest in the cemetery and the insight of visitors from the neighboring towns. And so, listening and learning, many Baptists have striven for recovery of an authentic theology and practice for our times that is communal, sacramental, catholic in dissent, and even creedal.
Unfortunately, some of the natives in the other towns are up in arms, so it seems. They have picked up their pruning hooks and shovels and gnashed their teeth at our seeming impudence for not being the puckish little village that they could always write off. The third-way Baptists (or Duke Baptists, or catholic Baptists) must be rewriting history! They're so un-Baptist! Of course, they're gladly joined by a number of our neighbors in the same village too who either wish to guard their meagre little fences or who pride themselves in scorning much of what has made the village itself before.
And so I urge that back to the commons we should go. Unlock your gates, drop your blunt instruments, and walk with us to the meeting-place where we tell our stories and feast on the fruit of the land. Let us remember the settlers who founded this village and the leaders and artisans who shaped its common life. Remember now Balthasar Hubmaier, Menno Simons, Thomas Helwys, Thomas Grantham, and Charles Spurgeon. Let us see whether the village is as it always was or whether we have lost the vision and the hope of its early inhabitants. Let us see, then, if we can be better reconciled with our neighboring towns - but not, as some may claim, by merely copying what they foolishly claim is rightfully theirs and theirs only. Perhaps these villages may more fully understand themselves not to be isolated settlements, but the whole people of God sharing in the promises of his bountiful Land.
Neither aimless nor sheltered, the "third way" hopes to balance both steadfastness and openness. Perhaps the corresponding image would be for Baptists to see themselves as a village, neither constricted nor boundless. The village does its business in the commons where people gather for market, for debate, and for decision. It acknowledges and depends upon the history of its families and office-holders. Its identity is shaped both by its particular seasons, festivals, and traditions as well as the traditions, customs, and values of the wider people group to which it belongs.
Much of my metaphor, I hope, corresponds with the simultaneous retrievals of Baptist heritage and the broader Christian tradition that have been at play in the work of these "other Baptists." Our village of disciple-baptizers and covenant-makers can and should heed both the testimony of the forebears who rest in the cemetery and the insight of visitors from the neighboring towns. And so, listening and learning, many Baptists have striven for recovery of an authentic theology and practice for our times that is communal, sacramental, catholic in dissent, and even creedal.
Unfortunately, some of the natives in the other towns are up in arms, so it seems. They have picked up their pruning hooks and shovels and gnashed their teeth at our seeming impudence for not being the puckish little village that they could always write off. The third-way Baptists (or Duke Baptists, or catholic Baptists) must be rewriting history! They're so un-Baptist! Of course, they're gladly joined by a number of our neighbors in the same village too who either wish to guard their meagre little fences or who pride themselves in scorning much of what has made the village itself before.
And so I urge that back to the commons we should go. Unlock your gates, drop your blunt instruments, and walk with us to the meeting-place where we tell our stories and feast on the fruit of the land. Let us remember the settlers who founded this village and the leaders and artisans who shaped its common life. Remember now Balthasar Hubmaier, Menno Simons, Thomas Helwys, Thomas Grantham, and Charles Spurgeon. Let us see whether the village is as it always was or whether we have lost the vision and the hope of its early inhabitants. Let us see, then, if we can be better reconciled with our neighboring towns - but not, as some may claim, by merely copying what they foolishly claim is rightfully theirs and theirs only. Perhaps these villages may more fully understand themselves not to be isolated settlements, but the whole people of God sharing in the promises of his bountiful Land.
Labels: Baptist Catholicity, Baptists, Ecumenism
Thanks for this post. I like this very much and I think you have a lot to offer here. I'm interested in more thoughts about what a Third Way way of being baptist might look like.
For some time I've been using the term "orthodox center" to get at the place I'm trying to locate between the two extremes. Commitment to a Baptist way that is truly evangelical but not fundamentalist, that supports separation of church and state but supports the role religion plays and should play in the public square, that is Biblically rooted but not Biblicist, that experiences the Risen Christ as the Living Word...
there's more, of course. I'm going to try to parse this out a bit more over the next few days. Your thoughts and comments are very welcome.
Keep up the good work.
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BaptistLikeMe |
Saturday, April 28, 2007 8:54:00 PM
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