merefaith: two friends on pilgrimage

This is what I wrote for Amazon.com (4 stars):

Steve Harmon has taken a great leap forward in his bold appropriation of the tradition of the Church universal as an integral resource for renewal in Baptist churches. He shows how Baptists might conceive of a derivative authority for tradition while maintaining the primacy of Scripture, highlights our implicit allegiance to Nicaea and Chalcedon in our confessions, and offers Protestant/evangelical paradigms for ressourcement by way of engagement with the early church fathers and mothers. Harmon shows that tradition does not eliminate dissent - a cherished Baptist practice! - but rather sets the boundaries within which dissent is actually a constructive task.

This reviewer is ever thankful for this recent work by Harmon as well as the writings of Philip Thompson, Elizabeth Newman, Curtis Freeman, John Colwell, Paul Fiddes, D.H. Williams, Timothy George, and others. These current voices in Baptist theology and historiography demonstrate that one doesn't need to swim the Tiber or Bosporus to feel at home in the grand current of Christianity throughout the ages. More immediately, they provide insights into Baptist identity which transcend the stale and shop-worn divide between "biblical conservatives" and "freedom-loving moderates." It's time to move on!

So why not five stars? This is an important book, but because of the sophisticated style of writing it may be fairly inaccessible to many Baptists, both laity and pastors. I believe that its fruits would require a lot of "translation" to be applied in most local churches, especially since the typical theological dialect for Baptists is very different from that of persons and communities which explicitly value little-c catholicity. That being said, Harmon's chapter on corporate worship is very accessible and can be reproduced for church committees considering how they may incorporate practices that would enrich Sunday morning.

It is my hope that more and more Baptists will read this book and take it seriously, and that more and more Christians in the "traditional" communions will read it and take US seriously as well!

Labels: Baptist Catholicity, Baptists, Ecumenism, Theology

Posted by Chris Schelin at Monday, February 11, 2008 | Permalink | Comments

Martin Luther's religious life centered in the worship and practice of the Order of St. Augustine until his excommunication. Five years later, he married Katharina von Bora, a former nun. They made their home in a former monastery.


Henry VIII of England received the appellation "Defender of the Faith" from Pope Leo X for writing a book that denounced Martin Luther. After pulling England out of Rome's ecclesiastical orbit, he closed the monasteries and confiscated their lands.

Protestant reformers attacked priestly celibacy as an unnecessary and unbiblical doctrine. They rejected its communal institutionalization in the form of convents and monasteries as a distraction from the real work of proclaiming the gospel. Much of the history of so-called "Protestantism" has carried forward this bias against specialized Christian communities.

Yet early in the Reformation a movement of Protestants implicitly seized upon the monastic ideal as the proper character for local Christian gatherings. The continental "Anabaptists" engaged in laicization: while medieval Catholics had distinguished between the requirements demanded of the "laity" and of the "religious," these radical reformers universalized the rigor of the latter as the high calling of all Christians. The church was not primarily the place where one went to receive the sacraments (although the dominical sacraments remained important for the Anabaptists, and they even elevated a few of their own practices to a central role) but where Christians covenanted together in a community of equal disciples who would share common work and leadership.

Other renewal movements have risen in the Church since that time. John Wesley preached the practice of social holiness and gave it a mechanism through his methodist class meetings. Lay monasticism in the Roman Catholic Church appeared in the last century when Dorothy Day and Peter Maurin chose to live in community with the poor and founded the Catholic Worker Movement. Clarence Jordan, a Baptist minister, founded Koinonia Farm so that one community of Christians could demonstrate the vision laid out in the Book of Acts.

Although Baptists themselves emerged in the religious turmoil of 17th-century England as a movement centered upon radical discipleship forged in community covenants, we are more generally known throughout contemporary Christianity as radical individualists who divide over competing claims to spiritual competence. Many among our number even celebrate this reality. Only in very few contexts would anyone consider that to be Baptist and also to be communitarian, even monastic, is not a contradiction in terms.

But the ecumenical New Monastic Movement of our time possesses deep similarities to the vision of the early English Baptists and continental Anabaptists, who themselves echoed the Desert Fathers and Mothers that fled the growing cosmopolitan Christianity of the fourth century. Absent the neo-Platonic prejudice against human sexuality and the medieval hierarchy of superior and ordinary piety, these modern intentional Christian communities exhibit a devoted way of life that no Baptist should find objectionable on the grounds of Scripture or traditional Baptist commitments. Baptists should make good monastics!

And some of them have in fact done so as individuals. Jonathan Wilson-Hartgrove, a New Monastic leader and founder of Rutba House here in Durham, is a member of a local Baptist church. Other Baptists have been a part of Rutba House and Iredell House while also worshiping with Baptist congregations. Yet each house is openly ecumenical and specifically non-denominational in its inception and structure. I do not in any way cast aspersions on these communities because of their broad identity. But any participation by self-identified Baptists can be easily dismissed as incidental to their formative tradition; that is, some may say these Baptists are living in intentional community in spite of the fact that they're Baptist and not because their own theological heritage has provided the resources to envision this way of discipleship.

But what if, in fact, the Baptist tradition has done just that? During the New Baptist Covenant meeting in Atlanta I attended a breakout session on peacemaking directed by Glen Stassen, a professor of ethics at Fuller Seminary, and Paul Dekar, a professor of evangelism and missions at Memphis Seminary. Paul Dekar is a Baptist who has been practicing intentional community for some time. I learned that although he is an American, he has participated in the creation and ongoing work of Holy Transfiguration Monastery in Australia. Are you ready for this? Holy Transfiguration - believe it or not - is an active and tithing member body of the Baptist Union of Victoria. The community fully embraces and remains grounded in its Baptist origins. At the same time, it is also vigorously ecumenical, attracting members from various Christian traditions who, once they join, do not feel compelled to consider themselves Baptist. The community's ecumenism extends to its embrace of traditional monastic and liturgical forms, such as the Christian year, the daily offices, and even religious habits.

After attending the session, I purchased Paul Dekar's brand-new book about the monastery, entitled Community of the Transfiguration: The Journey of a New Monastic Community. I look forward to reading their story in what little free time I may have for this book. My prayers go out to HTM for their witness in Australia, and I hope that their example may be an inspiration for Baptists and for all Christians who are discerning how to live more faithfully.

P.S. - According to this blog, HTM is one of two Baptist monasteries in the world. I wonder what the other one may be...

Labels: Baptist Catholicity, Baptists, Discipleship, Ecumenism

Posted by Chris Schelin at Sunday, February 03, 2008 | Permalink | Comments

Check out Wyman Richardson's interview of the author of Towards Baptist Catholicity here at his blog.

Labels: Baptist Catholicity, Baptists

Posted by Chris Schelin at Monday, October 22, 2007 | Permalink | Comments

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.

Labels: Baptist Catholicity, Baptists, Ecumenism

Posted by Chris Schelin at Saturday, April 21, 2007 | Permalink | Comments

Writing in Christianismus Primitivus, the 17th-century English General Baptist leader Thomas Grantham declares concerning the Nicene Creed:

This Confession of Faith, as it is of great Antiquity, so verily, were it diligently considered, might be a good means to bring to a greater degree of unity, many of the divided parties professing Christianity.
-- C.P. II.2.V, p. 61.

Labels: Baptist Catholicity, Baptists, Ecumenism

Posted by Chris Schelin at Monday, March 26, 2007 | Permalink | Comments

What does a Baptist look like? If you had to picture a stereotypical or representative figure in your head, how would that person look and what would he say? Those of us who have grown up in the South (especially those like me who are Baptist) may conjure a very specific avatar. Obviously Mr. Baptist will be holding a fat, leather-bound study Bible stuffed at one end with a few old church bulletins. If he's older he listens to Ray Boltz or the Gaithers. If he's younger he listens to Chris Tomlin or Todd Agnew. You know the church he attends with its typical neo-classical design featuring a steeple on top, brick walls and, if it's big enough, a frontal pediment supported by columns. Since I am thinking of the South, then more than likely Mr. Baptist is of the – lo and behold – Southern Baptist variety. Sunday School and other study sessions may center on work by Charles Stanley, Beth Moore, Lee Strobel or Rick Warren. The pastor wears a suit, has put on at least a few pounds from potluck dinners and dining at members' homes, and has either a part or a solid combover in his hair. Mr. Baptist and his fellow devout congregants, unlike the Christmas and Easter Christians, are Republican-voting, socially conservative culture warriors who love God and country and see no paradox in that, wonder why a Congressman could take an oath on the Qu'ran, and pray regularly in services for the lost – that is, the vast majority of this planet's population.

This is of course a flat picture – it is after all a stereotype – but it is one that some may consider fairly representative. After all, of all the Christians in the world who identify themselves as Baptists, three out of four live in the United States, and of those half are Southern Baptists. Thus a typical impression is set: white, middle class, conservative, and proud to be an American. But then the picture gets complicated. Within this country several million African-American Baptists do not fit neatly within the frame set by this image. Martin Luther King was a Baptist. Other white Baptists vote Democratic (or on principle don't vote at all), listen to Paul Simon or Radiohead, and their pastor might even wear a stole. They may follow the church year, read Barbara Brown Taylor, and believe in absolute nonviolence. Wacky liberals, right?

Well, what does a Baptist look like when we consider many small and vibrant communities outside North America? It is only when we take a global view that we may recognize the incredible diversity of practices, styles, and theologies within a broad tradition defined principally by its ecclesiology and little else. A great example comes from the most recent issue of Baptists Today, a moderate periodical published in Macon, Georgia. The Georgia chapter of the Cooperative Baptist Fellowship may be forming a burgeoning partnership with the Evangelical Baptist Church of Georgia (the country, not the state). Already the name of the latter group strikes a distinct note among fellow Baptists, who are typically averse to naming their translocal organizational structures “churches” but instead prefer terms like convention, association, fellowship, or conference. This is due to the fact that Baptist ecclesiology typically emphasizes the independence and competence, under Christ, of the local congregation. Although the name for this union of Baptists as “Church” could be challenged as un-Baptistic, the Georgians have outdone themselves...by appointing a bishop! That's right, the leader of the Evangelical Baptist Church is not called moderator, coordinator, president or executive director – but that old-fashioned, hierarchical, “popish” title of bishop! This isn't really a problem in my opinion, but the article states how Bishop Malkhaz Songulashvili must explain to his American Georgian brethren that the office provides a symbol of unity and is not meant to replace the interdependence of the congregations with an exclusively top-down, authoritarian structure.

Not only does Malkhaz hold a title not typically approved among American Baptists, but he also dresses like the bishops of the predominant Georgian Orthodox Church in his country. The pictures on the church web site show a man with a very Orthodox-like long beard wearing a long, flowing robe, a big bishop's cross and a round hat with a cross emblem stitched into its front. He even carries a staff!

The Georgian Baptists are also fairly unusual by American standards in other ways besides their cross-wearing, staff-holding, beard-growing bishop. They have founded two religious orders – the Sisters of St. Nino, who focus on preaching and healing, and the New Desert Brothers, who promote fasting, contemplative prayer, and other facets of ancient desert spirituality. I cannot tell whether these orders are reserved for clergy or are intended for everyone. Yet the EBC also operates a retreat campus called the Beteli Center and a ministers' continuing education program called the School of Elijah that brings together Eastern and Western Christians for training, prayer and dialogue.

Yet despite taking on some fairly traditional, “catholic” accoutrements such as contemplative spirituality, religious orders, and a bishopric, the Georgian Baptists have made a step often regarded as unconventional or nontraditional: they ordain women to ministry leadership. All in all, the 103 churches and missions and the 15,000 members of this tiny Baptist communion are doing much to blow away the stereotypes and the hackneyed liberal-conservative conceptual spectrums that have made our categorizations so easy here in America. I could hardly be more happy!

www.ebcgeorgia.org

Labels: Baptist Catholicity, Baptists

Posted by Chris Schelin at Monday, January 08, 2007 | Permalink | Comments

Then here are the books I recommend:

Paul Fiddes, Tracks and Traces: Baptist Identity in Church and Theology. Carlisle, UK: Paternoster Press, 2003.

Curtis W. Freeman, "A Confession for Catholic Baptists" in Ties that Bind: Life Together in the Baptist Vision. Gary A. Furr and Curtis W. Freeman, eds. Macon, GA: Smyth & Helwys Publishing, Inc., 1994.

Steven R. Harmon, Towards Baptist Catholicity: Essays on Tradition and the Baptist Vision. Milton Keynes, UK: Paternoster Press, 2006.

D.H. Williams, ed., The Free Church & the Early Church: Bridging the Historical and Theological Divide. Grand Rapids: Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing Co., 2002.

D.H. Williams, Retrieving the Tradition and Renewing Evangelicalism: A Primer for Suspicious Protestants. Grand Rapids: Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing Co., 1999.

Nigel G. Wright, Free Church, Free State: The Positive Baptist Vision. Milton Keynes, UK: Paternoster Press, 2005.

Labels: Baptist Catholicity, Baptists

Posted by Chris Schelin at Wednesday, December 06, 2006 | Permalink | Comments