The Basis of Our Unity
“By this everyone will know that you are my disciples, if you have love for one another” (John 13:35).
The bonds of love among American Baptists have been sorely tested recently. In some ways our struggles are just one small strand in the culture wars wracking America’s “oldline” Christian bodies and the culture at large. But they are particularly galling for many American Baptists because of our historic emphases on freedom, inclusion and diversity.
As we approach the Denver Biennial, many of the folk I talk with have a deep sense of foreboding. Rumors fly about the initiatives being hatched in this region or that by “fundamentalists” intent on imposing doctrinal restrictions on our covenanted togetherness as American Baptists, or extracting concessions from the General Board or the various program boards through the threat of withholding donations.
At one level, these threats are very real to those of us who have valued a free and lively fellowship among Christ-loving Baptists exhibiting a variety of ideas and ways of being church. Yet on another level I sense a real confidence that God will honor our faith if we manifest graciousness and love for one another no matter what, and I trust that a distinctively American Baptist unity will prevail in the long run. But what does “a distinctively American Baptist unity” mean? Or to put it another way: what is the basis of our unity?
Our common history yields interesting insights with respect to this question. Early modern Baptists in England and the American colonies were Calvinists and Armenians, producers of creeds (“The Philadelphia Confession”) and “Bible-only” frontiersmen, mission advocates and religious isolationists, highly educated and illiterate. One might claim that through it all the only universal and abiding doctrinal distinctives were the insistence on the centrality of Jesus to our faith and the practice of believer’s baptism.
Common (but not universal) Baptist emphases on the cross of Christ as instrument of salvation, freedom of conscience, separation of church and state and the gathered church can be seen as deductions from these two central distinctives in certain contexts and situations. But from the beginning American Baptists gathered and organized beyond the local church not on the basis of doctrinal accords but around the imperatives of ministry and mission.
The precursors of the Boards of International and National Ministries coalesced as Baptist believers of the early nineteenth century strove to share the love of Jesus as widely as possible. Twenty years ago I was privileged to serve the Central Baptist Church of Elizabeth, New Jersey, whose pastor in the first decade of the twentieth century, Dr. Everett Tomlinson, was the founding director of today’s Ministers and Missionaries Benefit Board. Once again, the impulse uniting Baptists was a desire to share the love of Jesus – in this instance, by caring for our own.
In my opinion, it would not be too great an exaggeration to say we have been together because we love Jesus and want to serve him, period. Our unity has been a unity of loving service, not of doctrinal uniformity. In the long run, those who want to continue serving with us will do so; those who wish to separate from us will do so. Procedural compromises and pauses by regions and boards may be expressions of love and respect, but giving in to extortion will not preserve our unity, especially if it fundamentally changes the basis of our life together. Those who gain “victories” of this sort will always want more.
I am willing to grant the presumption of good faith to folks who have all sorts of opinions about homosexuality, the nature of biblical authority and other issues. Love would have me do that. But it is hard for me to take seriously the Christian commitment of those who are unloving, and therefore unlike Jesus.
Again, those who wish to continue fellowship and service among the American Baptist Churches will do so; those who wish to separate from us will do so. To those in the latter camp, we may finally need to say, “Go in peace.” But, we may be called upon to struggle, in order to protect institutions and other shared assets that are the legacy of previous generations of Americans Baptists to their spiritual descendents. In such struggles we will be called upon to be both loving and resolute. “wise as serpents and gentle as doves” (Matthew 10:16).
It will be a very interesting biennial; it also promises to be a long road ahead. See you in Denver.
Dr. David L. Wheeler