merefaith: two friends on pilgrimage

This was posted two days ago on the front page of the Evangelical Baptist Church web site:

On August 7th, 2008 the Georgian authorities were provoked by the Russian military intervention in the break away region of South Osetia. In responce of this provocation Georgian military was forced to to start regaining full control over the region. The Georgian attempt for regaining control on its own territory triggered the full scale attack by Russian armed forces both in South Osettia and in other parts of Georgia, far away from the conflict zone.

Georgia which is a very new democracy has been punished for its pro-Western orientation and its bid to join the NATO. The Russian authorities have been very explicit about this matter. Georgia is in need. Perhaps in the greatest need in its recent history. The fate of Georgia rests upon the shoulders of the international community. That does create a dilemma for the Western nations. Either they have to support Georgia and uphold its struggle for justice, peace and
democracy, or stay silent, in fear of Russian influence, in this moment of great distress for the Georgian people.

Regretfully all the religious groups in Russia are lining up with the party line of the Russian authorities without leaving room for open dialogue between two countries. Because it is clear that this is Russian-Georgian rather than Georgian-Ossetian conflict that has been at stake.We pray that the conflict is peacefully resolved and opposing sides reconciled. Mutual forgiveness and acceptance exercised. We mourn about the death of soldiers, children, men, women, elderly
from both sides who lose their lives even as I write this statement. We deplore injustice, agression and the conflict resolution at the cost of civilian lives.

We call on the international community, religious leaders and all the people of goodwill for their support of the long suffering people of Georgia.

Archbishop Malkhaz Songulashvili, 9 August 2008, Westminster, London

Labels: Baptists

Posted by Chris Schelin at Wednesday, August 13, 2008 | Permalink | Comments

Most Americans will spend this day celebrating the mythos of liberty won at great cost. For my part, I'm content to reflect on the great cost of crucifixion that won my eternal liberty. Yet I am indeed thankful that, when it comes to the practice of the gospel, America is at least more redeemed among the powers than most. Too bad we have so often squandered that redemption by buying into the seductions that America the power presents us. Nevertheless, there are Christians around the world who have much worse to contend with than we, and for them we should pray, for they face persecution in response to the freedom they have already found in Christ.

*****

Hamid Shabanov, a Baptist pastor in Aliabad in the Central Asian country of Azerbaijan, was arrested on Friday, June 20.

Elnur Jabiyev, General Secretary of the Baptist Union of Azerbaijan (BUA), reported that the “police claim to have found an illegal weapon in his home.”

Denying the allegations against Shabanov, and suggesting that the weapon was planted by the police, Jabiyev stated that the arrest “was a provocation by the police,” and that it was “a deliberately targeted action.” The BUA leader asserted that “the police's aim is to halt Baptist activity and close the church in Aliabad.”

BWA president David Coffey stated that “the BWA will do all we can to publicize among the world family what has happened in Aliabad” and that “the global family” will be praying for the Shabanov family.

General Secretary Neville Callam expressed his disappointment at the arrest. “We are registering our grave disappointment at the denial of religious freedom that is evident in Azerbaijan,” the BWA leader said. “Our Baptist brothers and sisters in Azerbaijan should be completely assured of the BWA commitment to pray for them as they struggle in the context of oppression, and, as an expression of our historic commitment to personal liberty, freedom, and justice, to make representation on their behalf.”

Labels: Baptists, Discipleship

Posted by Chris Schelin at Friday, July 04, 2008 | Permalink | Comments

Pictured: Rev. Malkhaz Songulashvili, the presiding bishop of the Evangelical Baptist Church of Georgia, follows the cross in the Baptist-led ecumenical procession on Good Friday, 2007.

Readers of this blog remember the praise I have given to the Evangelical Baptist Church of Georgia, a tiny Baptist community that has nevertheless managed to exercise remarkable influence and moral authority in an officially Eastern Orthodox post-Soviet country. I am not the only young theology student in America who has acknowledged and sought to reflect on their experience. In fact, a Duke Divinity grad (now Catholic University of America doctoral candidate), Ben Boswell, recently wrote two articles about the EBCG for the journal Religion in Eastern Europe. For his thesis, Ben draws a parallel between the organizing efforts of the student-led democratic movement Kmara and the corporate life of the Georgian Baptists. Each group, a "radical" force in its society, played an effective role in the 2003 "Rose Revolution" precisely because each practiced its own liturgy, a "revolutionary" or looping-back movement that sustained identity and provided the impetus for engagement with society. Boswell writes:

[T]he EBCG’s ability, as a monastic movement within the Orthodox Church, to recover a democratic polity in the form of a Free Church ecclesiology, was the most significant reform that enabled their successful participation in the non-violent revolution for democracy in Georgia. In their intentional recovery of a Free Church ecclesiology the EBCG refused to abandon the Orthodox liturgical resources that had enriched their worship since the fourth century. Radical Reformed, Free Church ecclesiology, coupled with the ancient liturgical resources of the Orthodox Church, provided the EBCG with an impetus for a revolution in their social relationships and the practical and spiritual foundation to sustain them.

The Georgian Baptists' radical liturgy has taken various forms. As Boswell notes, it has included the adoption of native Orthodox practices of worship and spirituality so that their proclamation of the gospel is contextualized within the broad tradition of the church Catholic and the cultural history of Georgia as well. While the appropriation of tradition is understood as a positive good in its own right, it has helped the Baptists in Georgia because a) they disabuse themselves of the charge that they are a novel "sect" with no respect for the Church of ages past and b) they send a signal that they are committed to being a part of the Church of Georgia and for the Georgian people.

The liturgy has been radical in swinging open doors towards diversity and wide participation. Despite the typically fundamentalist climate of the Eastern European Baptist churches, the EBCG ordains women deacons and pastors. While some churches have adopted the liturgical reforms that bring their worship closer towards the Orthodox, there is no demand for uniformity and congregations are free to construct their liturgies as befit their needs under Christ's Lordship. Although Georgia is riven by ethnic tensions, the Baptist Cathedral in Tbilisi maintains four separate congregations based on language: Georgian, Russian, Armenian and Ossetian. The Baptists have taken seriously Christ's call to minister all people. When Chechen Muslims fled across the border into Georgia, Bishop Malkhaz and other members of the EBCG took a wheeled "mobile Eucharistic table" to the mountain hinterland so that they could feed the refugees and share in table fellowship:

Moved by this act of hospitality one Muslim imam remarked, “When I return to Grozny I will do two things. I will build a new mosque because ours was destroyed by the Russians, and I will build a Baptist church because the Baptists were the only people with us in our time of need.”

Finally, the Baptists have practiced a radical liturgy of ecumenical cooperation and brotherhood. For several years they have organized and led a procession of the cross on Good Friday in which all Christians are invited to participate. The procession begins at the Armenian Apostolic cathedral, moves to the Roman Catholic cathedral, the Lutheran cathedral, and then finishes at the Baptist cathedral. Bishop Malkhaz also aided Christian unity when he led the EBCG to respond to the terrorism of a rogue Orthodox priest with love. Once the priest, Basil Mkalashvili, was apprehended and tried, the bishop made the dramatic gesture of calling for his release and crossing the courtroom to shake the defrocked priest's hand in a gesture of forgiveness. While the court still sentenced the priest, he and Malkhaz continue to exchange letters regularly.

When the revolution for democracy came in 2003, Baptists were active and visible participants in the demonstrations:

During the days of the Rose Revolution, Baptists were actively protesting alongside opposition party leaders and even extended hospitality by bringing hot drinks and food to the demonstrators during the cold and rainy hours of the revolution.10 Alongside the Georgian flags (a neo-medieval flag with five blood red crosses) flown by Saakashvili and opposition leaders in Tbilisi Freedom Square flew the flag of the EBCG, which was designed with an ancient cross from monastic cave paintings found in the Georgian desert. The Baptist flags provided the only visible religious presence of any kind during the revolutionary democratic movement. When demonstrators armed with roses non-violently stormed the Presidential office building during the illegitimate Parliamentary session, a Baptist named Lela Karvelishvili, who worked forthe Liberty Institute, carried the Baptist flag into Shevardnadze’s office as a religious symbol of revolutionary power.

It is Boswell's contention that the intentional construction of a Free Church-Orthodox liturgy by the Baptists gave them the revolutionary character that has allowed them to participate in nonviolent revolution and share an active, compassionate love for the enemy and the other. As Free Church Christians they inherit and uphold a tradition of principled dissent and a commitment to what John Howard Yoder described as an ecclesiology of dialogical reciprocity, which his Anabaptist tradition had dubbed "the rule of Paul." In this church practice openness towards the gifts and voices of all is cultivated and cherished. The EBCG has externalized this process by making itself open to the gifts and insights of other Christians and of democratic movements like Kmara. The result has been a unique form of "radical catholicity" that engages the wider Church and the wider society in pursuit of fuller obedience to the gospel of JEsus Christ. Boswell writes:

To the extent that the EBCG was able to incorporate the deep liturgical resources of the Orthodox tradition within their own Free Church polity, they embodied the most radical form of the “rule of Paul,” in that they were open not only to hearing the voice of the other, of the enemy, but they were open to learning from and embodying the best of their interlocutors practices into their own liturgies as a sign of reconciliation and revolutionary dialogical reciprocity.

The result has been an inspired liturgy, a true "work of the people" that has shaped the EBCG into a vibrant expression of radical and catholic Christianity, committed both to the crucial demands of discipleship and to the beauty and unity of the faith as it has been shared across time and space. I pray that Baptists and all other Christians in America will attend to their example and consider how our liturgies - that is, our life together in proclamation and praise - will in fact shape us to be revolutionaries who continually "loop back" upon the Gospel to order ourselves afresh.

Labels: Baptists, Ecumenism, Liturgy, Theology

Posted by Chris Schelin at Saturday, May 03, 2008 | Permalink | Comments

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

Clarence Jordan, that fiery and folksy Baptist-on-the-edge, changed the spiritual center of the world from Jerusalem to Atlanta in his Cotton Patch editions of the Gospels. In a prescient move, that meant Washington was equivalent to ancient Rome as the capital of the empire! Badda-bing, badda-boom.

Years later, Tom Key's musical version of "Cotton Patch Gospel" featured a rousing song by Jesus' excited disciples after learning from their master that he had set his face to go to Atlanta. They understood him as meaning it was time to party, for surely their Messiah was ready to claim his rightful authority and light up the fireworks. The disciples rang out:

We're going to Atlanta for the hoedown!
We're going to Atlanta for the sho-o-ow!
We're going to Atlanta for the bright lights, big time,
sho' enough, it's time for us to go!

But Jesus, of course, knew that they were running headlong into treacherous waters and that his message of God's kingdom was not something that would be defended by force of arms. Jesus would willingly face the fury of the powers with no worldly armor. The price could be too steep. He began to sing softly and slowly:

What does Atlanta mean to me?
What does Atlanta seem to be?

In a moment he started to pray to the Father and concluded with the hope that "there won't have to be a lynching."

His hope was for naught.

Political pundits and speechwriters like to point out how, during this presidential election, the nation may be standing at a decisive historical moment. The "New World Order" optimism of the early nineties has faded amidst ongoing turmoil. Islamist radicalism, tribalism, the gap between the haves and have-nots, and climate change hang like ominous clouds over the cheery, and often false, promises of globalism. Are we at a crossroads?

I'm not sure where we stand globally, but I think the Christian communion is also at a very decisive point in history. Christian faith is growing rapidly in Africa and southeast Asia. The pope is sticking his scepter in the ground and taking a stand for re-Christianizing Europe. Meanwhile, the bright hope of ecumenism in the 20th century has largely given way to conflict over sexuality and biblical interpretation. The Christian world is also agitated (along the spectrum) between "traditionalists" who favor established liturgical forms and the wisdom of older communions seated at Rome, Canterbury, or Istanbul, and the "restorationists" who repeat the mantra that we must sing a new song and who favor the revivalism and fervor of the still-ballooning Pentecostal movement.

Here in America, efforts at unity such as the National Council of Churches, Christian Churches Together in the USA, and the National Association of Evangelicals compete for churches and for vision. The quest for visible unity and harmony is complicated by the incredible rise of nondenominational and consumerist forms of Christianity, which overlap but are not one and the same. Perhaps we're even witnessing the end of evangelicalism. I won't even go into the confusion caused by the emergent movement...

And yet...and yet...there's always the hope that things can be different. On Wednesday I and a couple dozen other students with the Baptist House of Studies at Duke Divinity School will depart for Atlanta, which is in fact a spiritual center for Baptists-in-the-South-who-happen-not-to-be-Southern-Baptist. We will join a projected 20,000 other Baptists for a celebration of the New Baptist Covenant, which is a statement of fundamental agreement of gospel ministry between Baptist organizations that are members of the North American Baptist Fellowship, a wing of the Baptist World Alliance. While there, we will supposedly discuss our unity, or much-needed unity, in evangelism, alleviating poverty, and overcoming racial divisions. Sadly, it took two former presidents (Carter and Clinton) to get Baptists to come together in this way.

At its worst, the meeting could be a rah-rah party for being Baptist, and for not being *that* kind of Baptist over there (i.e., fundamentalists). In that case, important theological challenges and the biblical imperative for unity might be left off the table. At its best, the meeting could foster the kinds of dialogues and questions that will encourage Baptists in North America to continue conversation and prayer to the end that "they may all be one." But I worry that old wounds from the battle over the Southern Baptist Convention will encourage many to accept our currently divided state, and even embrace it as a God-given blessing.

We're going to Atlanta for a hoedown, but we should go to Atlanta in the footsteps of Jesus. We need much prayer and confession. We need much yearning for something different. We need to see our present pain for what it is, and we need to envision hope in what Martin Luther King eloquently described as "the daybreak of freedom."

Come, Lord Jesus. Come meet us in Atlanta and change us.

Labels: Baptists

Posted by Chris Schelin at Monday, January 28, 2008 | Permalink | Comments

Here's an encouraging story from the news page on the web site of the Evangelical Baptist Church of Georgia:

*****

One more Break-away congregation comes back

On June 24th a special service took place at the First Baptist Church in Stalin’s home city of Gori. This particular congregation had spent 7 years in separation from the Evangelical Baptist Church of Georgia. The split was caused by the undermining activities of fundamentalist groups in Germany namely Friedensbote represented by somebody called Viktor Rogalski. They had stirred up the congregation against Ecumenical movement of which Evangelical Baptist Church is an active part.

The congregation was founded in Soviet time. It was the second Georgian speaking Baptist Church to be established in Georgia. For a long period of time the church was led by the Revd Vladimir Songulashvili, later senior pastor of the Cathedral Baptist Church and Bishop of Tbilisi region.

A statement signed by all the members of the congregation was read before the service started. It said: “After seven years of estrangement we come back to the Evangelical Baptist Church of Georgia and admit that it was wrong and sinful to break away from the Church for which we seek forgiveness both the Lord and the Church of Georgia. We would like to forget the past and think of the future...”

The Archbishop and the President of the EBCG re-consecrated the church building and than anointed all the members of the congregation with oil as a sign of the renewal of the church. At the end of the service the Archbishop Malkhaz celebrated the Eucharist in con-celebration with the President and representatives of the regional clergy.

In Georgia everything ends with a party. At the party the toast-mastership was carried out by Revd Sulkhan Murmanishvili, a newly appointed interim minister of the Gori congregation.

Labels: Baptists, Discipleship

Posted by Chris Schelin at Wednesday, November 14, 2007 | Permalink | Comments

And that is a scientific fact. A Jamaican pastor, a theologian, an active ecumenist in the Faith and Order Commission for the World Council of Churches, Callam was recently elected the first non-white general secretary of the Baptist World Alliance. Here's a snippet from an interview in the November '07 issue of Baptists Today, where he clarifies a much misunderstood doctrine:

***

Q: Baptists cherish autonomy, though it can be difficult. How does one lead a worldwide alliance of autonomous Baptists?

NC: In the Baptist movement there is an appreciation for the autonomy of the congregation. But I'm afraid autonomy is not always properly understood.

Autonomy is not about power. Autonomy is about competence to discern what the Spirit is saying. So to say a Baptist church is autonomous means that, gathered together in a meeting, that group is competent to discover how the Holy Spirit is leading. And what the Holy Spirit is leading is always consistent with what the Bible is teaching.

I prefer to talk about "Christonomy" rather than autonomy. The rule of Christ among the churches...and if the rule of Christ exists within all the churches, we discover a number of commonalities and discover how to move forward together.

So I have no displeasure serving as a leader within the worldwide Baptist movement because there is a responsibility on me and on the councils of the Baptist World Alliance and on all the churches and Baptist communities to discover what the Spirit is saying. We are on a journey to discover where God is leading us...It is easy to serve in that context.

***

Now if you got a problem with that, take two doses of John Howard Yoder's Body Politics and place a cold compress on your forehead.

Diggin' radical catholicity...

Labels: Baptists

Posted by Chris Schelin at Thursday, November 08, 2007 | 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

In worship we discover that we are engrafted into the story of God. It is in worship that we acquire the skills to recognize who we are - sinners. In Trinitarian worship, we also acquire the skills to discover and live our identity as priests, an identity centered in blessing and offering, or receiving and giving. We receive the forgiving and sacrificial love of Christ, and are enabled to extend this to others through intercession and service. Paul Fiddes describes this ecclesial identity well when he states that the church as a priestly people has the 'power to serve, to focus the presence of the Spirit and to mediate blessing only because it is caught up in the life of the triune God'. To be caught up in the life of God is most certainly a gift of God's grace, one mediated to us through the material Body of Christ. With Schmemann, we need to emphasize that in the church the sum is greater than the parts, not because of human effort but because of the presence of the risen Christ who freely uses 'the created order in the work of redemption, particularly the gathering and building of the church'. The priesthood of all believers is not an internal, spiritual phenomenon, but an ecclesial form of life, sustained by the faithful worship of God.

- Elizabeth Newman, "The Priesthood of All Believers and the Necessity of the Church," in Recycling the Past or Researching History?: Studies in Baptist Historiography and Myths. Anthony R. Cross and Philip E. Thompson, eds. Carlisle: Paternoster, 2005. Final italics mine.

Labels: Baptists, Discipleship, Theology

Posted by Chris Schelin at Wednesday, October 17, 2007 | Permalink | Comments

According to the story found here.


There are some interesting nuggets in here that one wishes would be explored more, but of course that wouldn't be the case in a brief article for a regular newspaper. I am particularly prone to ask certain theological and ecclesiological questions:

1. Was Bishop Edmonds "consecrated" in the sense that this office is understood as a higher, or at least different, ordination? Or is this simply an installation to a different office that is already validated by a prior ordination?

2. When leaders of the church asked to make Edmonds bishop, how did they understand the office and what did they think they were changing?

3. Edmonds speaks of a move from a "democratic" to a "theocratic" process. How does his elevation to a bishopric change the structure of discernment and decision-making at St. Mark's? How do he and the members of the congregation see the role and value of the average "layperson" in discerning the mind of Christ?

4. Edmonds received the imposition of hands from ministers of various denominations. How do he and his congregation understand the place of his office within the broken unity of the Church catholic? Does he intend for his office to exercise an ecumenical function?

5. Of which Baptist denomination is St. Mark's a member congregation? How does his office fit within the workings of that denomination, or will it fit in any way at all? How are denominational leaders and sister churches reacting to this move?

Labels: Baptists

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

Thomas Grantham's name keeps popping up in more places these days. When I first encountered him in the Baptist Roots volume for Curtis Freeman's course on The Free Church he appeared to me an intriguing but obscure figure. That didn't keep me from writing a paper last semester on his doctrine of confirmation, but all my copies of his writings were scanned internet versions of old folios that are probably shelved in a rare books room in some place like Cambridge. Unfortunately that site, a really fine Free Will Baptist collection of early materials, has apparently been erased. Nevertheless, Dr. Freeman has let me know that a couple of dissertations on Grantham are in the works. Meanwhile, Nathan Finn at Southeastern Baptist Seminary has just recently praised Grantham on his blog – and it's always quite a feat for a Calvinist to honor someone who is not!

By accident I also stumbled onto a new book in the Divinity School's library early last week. From Biblical Criticism to Biblical Faith: Essays in Honor of Lee Martin McDonald features a chapter by William Brackney entitled “Thomas Grantham, Systematic Theology, and the Baptist Tradition.” Here Brackney summarizes Grantham's magnum opus, Christianismus Primitivus, and argues its importance as the first effort at a systematic theology in the Baptist tradition. Grantham lacked the methodological sophistication and structural integrity of modern systematics, yet his contextual and detailed writing set the bar high for a persecuted minority group. He set in place certain “genetic” traits that recur through Baptist history – biblicist theological inquiry, the centrality of the doctrine of the church, and the theme of religious liberty. Meanwhile, Grantham stands apart even today for some “unusual” ideas which defy typical conceptions of the Baptist character – he quoted extensively from the Church Fathers, declared the importance of assent to the Apostles' and Nicene creeds, considered the apocryphal books useful for edification, promoted a connectional ecclesial framework over against the independence of the local church, and even voiced what I would call an “evangelical” sacramentality. As striking as all this may appear to many, a good question worth asking would be, “How much influence did Grantham's writings actually exercise over 17^th century General Baptists?”

Grantham was a man of his context and therefore has some drawbacks as well. He was as virulently anti-Catholic as any Protestant of his era, quite contentious, and his trinitarian convictions are questionable. His biblicism resulted in flat, literalizing interpretations of Scripture. Yet Grantham was also pastoral and gracious. He was certainly shaped by his dedication to small, isolated congregations in Lincolnshire and by repeated imprisonment. Grantham was on one occasion falsely accused by a Church of England rector for sheep stealing. The rector recanted but was himself convicted, and Grantham subsequently paid his court costs and kept him from jail. Another priest who debated Grantham on baptism later asked to be buried beside him in the parish church. These stories remind us of the value of theology made real – in other words, that Grantham lived what he also meant to write.

Labels: Baptists

Posted by Chris Schelin at Monday, September 24, 2007 | Permalink | Comments

http://www.bwanet.org/default.aspx?pid=654

Baptist World Alliance...hooray!

Labels: Baptists

Posted by Chris Schelin at Friday, September 21, 2007 | Permalink | Comments

Randy Sherron, the pastor at Greenwood Forest Baptist Church in Cary, has been three-for-three in his sermons during my visits to that church. I especially enjoyed his treatment of Luke 15 last Sunday. If anyone else wishes to shar in the fun, then you can listen to the sermon online. Go to www.gfbccary.org and in the middle of the page click on the link for the "Sermon Archive." The sermon is titled, "Which of you..."

Labels: Baptists

Posted by Chris Schelin at Wednesday, September 19, 2007 | Permalink | Comments

A good Baptist church is hard to find. Well, at least it is when one's understanding of, and desire for, the Baptist tradition generates firm disagreement with both of the highly visible “poles” that characterize the North American scene. Here in the Triangle area, at least in my experience so far, the available options have tended to be either a) the Democratic Party at prayer or b) unreflective evangelicalism-fundamentalism. If a church has earnestly incorporated elements of the broad liturgical tradition then it has done so in order to provide window dressing for its revisionist liberalism. Or if a church has seriously committed itself to evangelism and missions it has underwritten them by way of a soteriology that lacks true Gospel holism.

Today four of us attended Greenwood Forest Baptist Church in Cary, which was about a twenty minute drive from my house in Durham. The ministry staff must have been tipped off that we were coming because they pulled out all the stops – the service featured the baptisms of four teenagers as well as communion. We arrived on time to the church's delicately beautiful and thoroughly packed sanctuary and took note of the simple wooden lines running throughout the apse (if you can assign that traditional name to the “stage” in this church) and the white parament adorning the communion table. We scanned the bulletin and then wondered and prayed over the corporate worship near at hand.

And from beginning to end I was most pleased with the thought and devotion that went into the service. The baptismal service was the richest and fullest of any I had seen in a Baptist church and hit all the right elements that one would expect from a robust baptismal theology liturgically applied. The congregation was called to declare in unison that baptism is the covenant signature of a community that spans the centuries. As theologians and liturgical scholars have repeatedly noted, every new baptism should be the occasion for the entire church body to redeclare and renew baptismal vows made in the past, and we did just that in the call to worship. The pastor introduced the candidates with the reverence that signifies consciousness of the Spirit's presence and the ritual that signifies somebody must have read a little Hippolytus along the way. Drawing upon the complex of symbols that have been incorporated into baptismal celebrations throughout church history, the pastor placed salt on each candidate's shoulder and gave each a baptism candle, liturgically embodying the declaration Jesus makes concerning his followers in Matthew 5. The congregation verbally affirmed each candidate when he or she arose from the waters, offering welcome and rejoicing that God's Spirit has been present and active.

After an engaging sermon (er..”communion meditation” as it was called in this service) on Psalm 119 the pastor, Randy Sherron, directed the church into a service of the table. Here my praise may be quieter because I cannot bring myself to embrace communion incarnated as crackers and shots of grape juice. But recognizing where my tradition is in its Eucharistic practice, I do embrace the adage that “beggars can't be choosers.” So while I would prefer real bread and a congregational pilgrimage to the table I can still say that this Lord's Supper was served with attentiveness and reflection.

Another highly enjoyable and striking feature of Greenwood Forest was the strong presence of female leadership. Two of the clergy on staff are women and the majority of deacons on duty today were women. Meanwhile, two women were given direct responsibility for the distribution of the elements while Randy offered spiritual exhortation.

Of course there is much that still needs to be learned about this congregation. We were greeted very warmly after the service and Kelly and I intend to visit again. But it will be most helpful to experience other aspects of the community's life together, particularly education/formation and mission/outreach. Nevertheless this was the most theologically rich and spiritually sensitive service in a Baptist church that I have seen in some time. I do hope to share in more Sundays like this in the future!

Labels: Baptists, Liturgy

Posted by Chris Schelin at Sunday, August 26, 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

Last week, eight Duke Divinity students showed up in the darkened sanctuary of Watts Street Baptist Church for an abnormal ceremony. Filling the baptistery with water and changing into swimsuits, they stepped into the water two by two...and re-baptized each other. And not just once. Repeatedly. In the name of the Trinity! One guy was immersed at least nine times.

Broken baptismal practice? Hardly. As a matter of fact, it was a very appropriate baptismal practice. For, you see, it was....well, baptism practice. Under Dr. Freeman's leadership several of us future pastors had the opportunity to hone our skills. Actually, it would be more accurate to say we were given the opportunity to create them in the first place. Like good divinity students, we pondered the theological ramifications of our practice session. Should we “baptize” in the name of the Trinity? Or should we do it in the name of Snap, Crackle, and Pop? We decided in favor of the three friends we admire most because the “baptism” was not performed based upon a new profession of faith and with the intention of the church in the sacrament of baptism. However, given that we live on this side of the eschaton, we cannot speak with certitude and there remains the possibility that we shall be smitten (smited, smoted, smoten?) for offering “strange fire upon the altar.” Perhaps in that case, like a traditional candidate for Presbyterian ministry, we could just say we're willing to be damned for the glory of God. Damn – and all that for earning some style points for ministry!

Seriously, though, I appreciate Dr. Freeman's intentional (oh, that Duke Divinity word!) formation of future Baptist clergy for the practices of ordained ministry. In the Free Church class last fall, our midterm was a paper in which we planned an imaginary discipleship class lesson to explain Baptist distinctive to church members. Our final was a heavily-footnoted baptismal liturgy. Although I believe Duke holds much stronger connections with both individual churches and the church universal in its confessional tradition, even in this place where nearly three-fourths of the graduates will enter congregational ministry the emphasis in courses scheduled and academic work assigned within those courses falls heavily in favor of second-order theological reflection. However, as baptist systematic theologian Jim McClendon has reminded us, doctrine is first and foremost a first-order practice and theological reflection is dependent upon the narrated practice of the church. A casual, jokey baptism practice late one Thursday afternoon called eight young Baptists to remember that the discourse of Christian theology begins, and only makes sense, in the tangible and lived experience of congregations living, and calling others into, the faith that calls us to die and rise in the water.

Labels: Baptists, Ministry

Posted by Chris Schelin at Wednesday, April 04, 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

How many Baptists are there in the world today? Certainly, it depends on how you define a person as a Baptist. Is it based on baptism, church attendance, stated preference? Certainly there are plenty of people who worship in Baptist congregations and yet they may not self-identify as Baptist, preferring a simpler label such as "just Christian." Perhaps most do not consciously think of themselves as in any sense "Baptist" versus anything else, and would not or could not identify a set of Baptist distinctives or traditional practices. Nonetheless, however such persons may subjectively perceive their religious identity, objectively there are millions who find their ecclesial home in a Baptist body. But how many?

On the "About BWA" page on the Baptist World Alliance web site, a curious combination of figures occurs. This body identifies itself "as a fellowship of more than 200 Baptist conventions and unions comprising a membership of more than 36 million baptized believers and a community of over 110 million Baptists worldwide."

Well, that got me scratching my head. How are we simultaneously 36 million and 110 million? Are a number of unions accepting as members people who haven't been baptized (a very un-Baptist practice!)? Is the latter figure the number of Baptists in the world total, and only the smaller set is actually part of the BWA? Searching for answers, I emailed...the Baptist World Alliance! The email actually made its way to the top, and I received a reply from General Secretary Denton Lotz himself.

And this all makes sense according to Baptist theology. The 36 million figure is the number of baptized believers reported by the churches, and therefore the actual membership of the various churches. The latter figure encompasses active participants in the community and worship life of their congregations who are not yet actually members because they have not yet declared their faith in baptism. This would mean infants, children, adolescents - perhaps even adults who are still not yet ready for a discipleship commitment. Of course, churches that baptize infants count them as members, so their figures would be much higher by comparison if Baptists did not have a way of accounting for disciples-in-waiting living in their midst. The latter number is a huge jump over the former, however, which makes me wonder about a) the birth rates for Baptists in the Two-Thirds World and b) the percentage of retention in the Church as Baptist children grow into adulthood. If the retention rate is good, shouldn't the membership numbers spike in the next decade or so? If it is not good, what should we do differently to keep our children feasting at the Lord's Table?

Interestingly enough, counting highly conservative Baptist groups that are not part of the BWA, such as Southern Baptists, should place the worldwide total of the "community of Baptists" at around 130 million or so. But even just considering membership in the BWA, if that body were considered a communion of churches, then it would be the third-largest after Roman Catholicism and Eastern Orthodoxy. I'm not interested in playing a numbers game, but I do find that fascinating. However, Baptists need to learn more about what it means to take seriously being in communion before a claim like that would be made. After all, we seem to schismate a lot and fight over territory - for example there are four Baptist groups in South Africa, five in the Philippines, and seventeen in the United States (not counting non-BWA members)!

The membership figures bring up another interesting question. Some have suggested that Baptists need to promote better practices of affirming children and seekers as integral to the community, if not full members at the level of discipleship and commitment that means baptism. Might Baptists be willing to adopt for children an explicit catechumenate that acknowledges them as already encountering the grace of God and being moved by it in the midst of the community? I for one hope so, but that may be another post for another day...

Labels: Baptists

Posted by Chris Schelin at Thursday, March 08, 2007 | Permalink | Comments

Last week, without much fanfare, I finally received from Kelly what was meant to be first my birthday gift, then Christmas, then anniversary, and finally it's late arrival meant it was just, well, a random gift. But a good one at that. What she has been trying to get me for some time, but which has taken its time getting here due to trouble with vendors, is the new prayer book published by the Baptist Union of Great Britain in 2005. Gathering for Worship: Patterns and Prayers for the Community of Disciples is a helpful planning resource that is directed mainly towards worship and practices in the Baptist/Free Church tradition. But it also has the promise to be an ecumenically useful worship book for Christians of all traditions, and in fact it is one of the resources placed on reserve at the Duke Divinity School library for the Introduction to Christian Worship class taught by Ed Phillips (United Methodist). I have even found a favorable review by a British Roman Catholic who believes that Gathering for Worship provides complementary forms of worship and devotional practice as well as catechetical or semi-catechetical reminders of the purpose of certain ritual acts.

Actually, the main problem that this book has will not be convincing other Christians but Baptists of its usefulness. Ours is a tradition that is traditionally suspicious of traditions, especially services that are too tightly planned and which contain written prayers that some rightly fear can become merely rote delivery. However, the unintended consequences of this laudable pursuit of spiritual worship have been a diminishing of liturgics as a necessary and vital arena of sustained theological reflection, a disconnection with some historic and meaningful prayers and worship patterns, and certainly in some cases a laziness masquerading as “following the lead of the Spirit.” Gathering for Worship reflects a small but hopefully growing liturgical renewal among Baptists in order to recover, in our own particular way, worship as a carefully thought-out corporate discipline that can be imbued with multiple layers and resonances in both what is said and done. This renewal expresses itself in various ways, from the adoption of the Church Year and lectionary (at minimum among Baptists in North America we have witnessed a large-scale appropriation of the season of Advent) to litanies and responsive prayers to fuller liturgies for the Lord's Supper. It is not surprising that British Baptists, who seem to have less qualms about so-called “Catholic” practices, are leading the way with the publication of this book.

Thus like most such books Gathering for Worship has plans for acts such as Communion and Marriage and prayers for various seasons of the Church Year and various moments of spiritual meaning. Unlike most such prayer books, of course, it has a Baptist twist: the baptism rite is only for disciples who have made a conscious, verbal affirmation, there is a rite for presenting and dedicating infants, and there are various commissionings of ministers alongside ordination. The book also presents sections of prayers for occasions not marked by the Church Year, such as The Weak of Prayer for Christian Year. Unlike the Book of Common Prayer, a prime example of books with more of a so-called “catholic” or at least mainline bent, Gathering for Worship does not contain a catechism, rites for the daily office, rites for the other five “sacraments,” or any lectionaries.

Here I may hit on what I think are some of the weaknesses or deficiencies of the book. I highlight these with a caveat. Given that Baptists have tended to stick up their noses at structured liturgies, it is an accomplishment that such a service book even exists, let alone that it contains prayers for seasons of the Church Year. So these are not strong criticisms. But I do pine for the day that a Baptist prayer book does contain a daily office plan (it's Scriptural! - Psalm 55:17, among others) so that it can be useful for families, informal gatherings of disciples, and individuals in the rhythm of worship between Sundays. Providing the lectionary would also be useful for pastors and churches seeking to follow its discipline. Perhaps also because the book's continued production is contingent on its acceptance in Baptist circles – it is, after all, not required like the BCP – it only appears in one form, which is a good-sized hardback edition. A leather-bound edition would make it more flexible and so easier to use in the midst of corporate worship and a smaller edition would make it easier for personal use. But for now this problem can be answered by using the CD that provides PDF files of the entire text of Gathering for Worship.

Ultimately, Gathering for Worship is not comprehensive in the way that the BCP strives to be, and it is not as fit for personal use, either. It may be misleading to call it a “prayer book” since its beneficial use will largely be restricted to corporate worship. It is a “service book” primarily. However, in that respect it is a sure winner, providing both traditional and contemporary forms and touching on a number of theological themes and imagery. I am most excited about exploring its seven patterns for Communion, and I will describe more about them in a future post. If nothing else, let me say this as endorsement: I used Gathering for Worship to say a prayer in worship this past Sunday, and it is only the beginning of much use that I expect to make. This is a remarkable achievement on the part of the British Baptists.

Labels: Baptists, Liturgy

Posted by Chris Schelin at Monday, February 19, 2007 | Permalink | Comments

In my earlier posts on the Evangelical Baptist Church of Georgia, I stated, essentially, that I take no theological or ecclesiological exception to the appointment of a presiding bishop as an office of spiritual oversight. Certainly this should raise up howls of protests from many of my fellow Baptists. The charge may be that I am doubling back on the gains of the Reformation by calling for the re-institution of hierarchy and the promotion of “spiritual masters” (to use Bill Underwood's phrasing) who will dictate matters of faith and practice to the quivering, docile masses. It may be claimed that such an office of personal oversight violates the clear two-fold office scheme of Scripture, subverts the autonomy (I prefer the term “competence) of the local congregation under the authority and rule of Christ, and so distances a communion from Baptist heritage that the very name cannot be rightfully claimed anymore. But are any of these claims feasible? Allow me to review certain lines of evidence:

1. Scripture

Biblical scholars have known for decades that the New Testament does not present an unambiguous, clear, and unitary ecclesiology that must be merely re-presented for succeeding generations to slavishly copy. Instead, as we will be learning in detail all throughout one of my courses this semester, the portraits of church and ministry stand in tension with one another through their great diversity. The great Catholic scholar Raymond Brown wrote the slim volume The Churches the Apostles Left Behind in an effort to capture the various images or models of the church promoted by different canonical writings. Is the church primarily a structure that passes down sound doctrine (Pastorals), a charismatic fellowship guided mostly by the workings of the Holy Spirit (Luke/Acts), or what? The remarkable (but I think not overwhelming) diversity of the biblical witness thus throws up a big question mark against any attempt to promote a univocal, normative teaching on church structure and authority. Should the church be governed congregationally, so that every member has an equal voice in decisions? Then a key text is I Corinthians 14:26. Or is the “biblical pattern” the entrusting of authority to a representative body of respected elders? You find your evidence in 1 Timothy 5:17.

Perhaps the great caveat thrown at my appeal to diversity is the apparent fact, acknowledged across the board by everyone from Baptists to Catholics, is the synonymous usage of the terms “bishop” and “elder” throughout the New Testament documents. Never does any text indicate that the bishop is an authority or leader who serves beyond the local congregation. The development of the three-fold pattern is just that: a development that solidifies sometime upon the close of the New Testament period. However, there are certain prefigurations of that pattern within the canon. Certainly, the apostles acted as translocal ministers as they planted churches, wrote letters, and visited the scattered Christian communities. Of course just noting that salient fact opens up a can of worms concerning succession in the apostolic office that I do not intend to touch. However, apostles were apparently not the only ones to whom the New Testament witnesses as offering broad oversight. In one instance, Titus 1:5, the recipient is charged by “Paul” with finishing the task of appointing elders in every town on the island of Crete. Leaving aside the question of authorship for this epistle, this nevertheless remains as a canonical witness to a ministry of personal oversight over a region. Titus' duty was to select and install congregational leaders. While the title may not be applied here, this is nevertheless a clear example, in at least one instance, of a kind of leadership that was later exclusively denoted as the office of “bishop.”

2. Baptist History and Heritage

Baptists have not been without ministers of translocal jurisdiction. The General Baptists of England, one of the two earliest Baptist associations formed in the 17^th century, apparently held to a three-fold pattern of messengers, elders and deacons (Orthodox Creed, 1679, article XXXI). The messengers ordained elders (pastors) in the churches to which they had been given charge. One such messenger was Thomas Grantham, a prolific writer who wrote various treatises in defense of “the Baptized Churches.” His magnum opus is the hefty volume Christianismus Primitivus, in which he defends the theology and practice of the Baptist churches by appeal both to Scripture and Early Church Fathers. Concerning the office of messenger, he writes:

Touching the Office of Messengers or Apostles, as a perpetual Ministry to the Church....

That though it is most certain there were several things proper and peculiar to the First and Chief Apostles, not to be pretended at all by their Successors the subordinate Messengers; yet it is also true, that many things pertaining to their Office as Itinerant Ministers, are of perpetual duration in the Church with respect to that Holy Function, and consequently to descend to those who were to succeed them as Travelling Ministers, to plant Churches, and to settle those in order who are as Sheep without a Shepherd, etc. For this Office is as firmly settled in the Church, as any other, and therefore the Abrogation of this is in effect to abolish them all (Book II, Section III, Paragraph 2).

Grantham goes on to say that a peculiar obligation of messengers that is not readily accepted by pastors of churches is the ministry of proclaiming the gospel of Christ to all the world and baptizing converts.

Since his time, while Baptists have argued that episcopacy is not a biblical office, they have elected and appointed all kinds of officials who have served in positions also not outlined in Scripture but seen as conducive to the good order of the Church. Here in America, regional associations typically have an ordained minister serve as a Director of Missions to ensure cooperation between churches in ministry and service to the community. The business of the state and national conventions requires certain leadership for day-to-day operation, and so Baptists have elected ministers to serve as presidents for one-year terms and executive directors as more permanent overseers of the various denominational agencies and programs. Meanwhile, the American Baptist Churches, USA and the Baptist Union of Great Britain both employ “regional ministers” who provide pastoral support for ministers, lay training for congregation, and other theologically informed, spiritually-minded, ecclesially-focused tasks of essentially episcopal oversight. And yet, except for scattered Independent Baptists and others who have probably been more influenced by the Restorationist movement or American individualism than Baptist tradition, none of these offices have been seen as an assault on local church autonomy. Is there, then, any legitimate theological concern with an office known as “bishop”? Despite the direction my post has taken, I believe there is, but I believe there is much ecumenical promise for answering the problematic consequences of the bishopric. But I've already said much today, so I'll save the question of a Baptist appropriation of episcopacy for another time.

Labels: Baptists

Posted by Chris Schelin at Friday, February 02, 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