Presidential Remarks by Dr. David L. Wheeler
Roger Williams Fellowship Banquet
In these stressful days, when competing visions of Baptist faith and mission are troubling our life together, it’s a good thing to stop and consider the role of the Roger Williams Fellowship.
We might think of ourselves as a political power bloc among other power blocs in the American Baptist Churches, USA. But the truth is that though there are at least two former presidents of the ABCUSA in attendance this evening, along with several present and former regional executives, Roger Williams Fellowship as such is not a center of power in our denomination. We’re not particularly strong in numbers or resources these days, and there have been some in recent years who have questioned the utility of our continued existence.
Nor is Roger Williams Fellowship as such one of the players at the negotiating table when there are regional assemblies or gatherings of regional executives or meetings of the general board to discuss the shape and content of the covenants which guide our life together -- though it is true that individual members of RWF are often at these tables.
But I would maintain that the Roger Williams Fellowship has a unique role to play when fundamental questions about the obligations and privileges of Christian discipleship and the shape of our life together and the nature and role of biblical authority heat up again, as they seem to do at least once in every generation.
Together at gatherings of the Roger Williams Fellowship, and through over sixty years of distribution of our publication, Baptist Freedom, we have invited one another to drink deeply at the well of our biblical and historical roots as Baptists. We have welcomed and indeed created honest, sustained reflection that keeps our spiritual and intellectual compasses aligned when we go to negotiating tables and when we engage those whose visions of the Christian life are different.
I think of the marvelous conference in Washington, D.C. in October, 2002, when we explored the challenges of postmodern culture to Christian faith and proclamation, in conjunction with friends from the Alliance of Baptists and the Baptist Joint Committee. And I look forward to the exploration of the nature of biblical authority that we are about to hear tonight from our good friend, Dr. Bill Herzog.
Theologians often speak of the imago dei, the “image and likeness of God” impressed upon humankind at our creation (Genesis 1:26-27). I believe that one of the key components of the imago dei is freedom. We are called by God at our creation into relationship, and we are gifted with the capacity to accept or reject relationships and to define the terms of those relationships. We can say “yes” or “no” even to God.
This freedom is not the freedom of the self-subsisting, autonomous individual described in Enlightenment philosophy. The Christian believer is called into “freedom in community”. We are called to be accountable to our Creator and to one another. We read Holy Scripture and act upon its counsels in community. We answer to those who have gone before and to generations yet unborn. But “freedom in community” is not forced conformity nor must it yield a uniformity of belief and action. For American Baptists historically, it has been the freedom to disagree with all due respect, the freedom to be wrong, the freedom to sit at the big table where all who love the Lord Jesus and who are seeking to follow him in good conscience are welcome.
At this big table, theological liberals and theological conservatives have sat together and have developed and carried out mission together for generations. Although I must say that in some sense American Baptists as a denomination have been characteristically “liberal”, if by that term we do not refer to the acceptance or rejection of certain doctrines, but instead reference such generic uses of “liberal” as these: generously making the assumption of good faith in others, and believing that the free exchange of ideas serves the search for truth.
“For freedom Christ has set us free”, says Paul. “Stand firm, therefore, and do not submit again to a yoke of bondage” (Galatians 5:1). As I hear these words I imagine two graphic images. One is the image from Dostoevsky’s Brothers Karamasov of the “Grand Inquisitor”. The Inquisitor insists that security is humanity’s greatest need, and mocks Christ himself for daring frail humans to risk discomfort, hunger and failure. Would the Inquisitor call American Baptists today to the “security” of creed and enforced agreement?
Then I see the martyr Dietrich Bonhoeffer. In the days before he was hung by the Nazis in April, 1945, he mused about the role of faith in a dawning epoch of “human maturity”. Even in the wreckage of the Great War, he believed that God calls us not to a perennial dependence -- often desired by traditional religious faith -- but to a noble autonomy which manifests itself in a responsible freedom.
Part of what Bill Herzog will explore with us this evening is the thesis that freedom is not antithetical to biblical authority, but is a core teaching of scripture itself. When the Bible is read as authoritative, our freedom is upheld. And so, tonight, as Roger Williams Fellowship, we go to the well of instruction and encouragement again. May we drink deeply. I give you our friend, the American Baptist New Testament scholar and statesman, Dr. William R. Herzog II.