Through a Glass Darkly: Contested Notions of Baptist Identity
344
Through a Glass Darkly: Contested Notions of Baptist Identity
344Overview
Product Details
| ISBN-13: | 9780817386146 |
|---|---|
| Publisher: | University of Alabama Press |
| Publication date: | 07/13/2012 |
| Series: | Religion and American Culture |
| Sold by: | Barnes & Noble |
| Format: | eBook |
| Pages: | 344 |
| File size: | 984 KB |
About the Author
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Keith Harper is the author of The Quality of Mercy: Southern Baptists and Social Christianity, 1890−1920 and editor of American Denominational History: Perspectives on the Past, Prospects for the Future.Read an Excerpt
Through a Glass Darkly
Contested Notions of Baptist IdentityBy Keith Harper
THE UNIVERSITY OF ALABAMA PRESS
Copyright © 2012 The University of Alabama PressAll right reserved.
ISBN: 978-0-8173-5712-2
Chapter One
Baptists, Church, and StateRejecting Establishments, Relishing Privilege
Bill J. Leonard
We still pray our lord the king that we may be free from suspect, of having any thoughts of provoking evil against them of the Romish religion, in regard of their profession, if they are the true and faithful subjects to the king. For we do freely profess that our lord the king has no more power over their consciences than over ours, and that is none at all. For our lord the king is but an earthly king, and he has no authority as a king but in earthly causes. And if the king's people be obedient and true subjects, obeying all human laws made by the king, our lord the king can require no more. For men's religion to God is between God and themselves. The king shall not answer for it. Neither may the king be judge between God and man. Let them be heretics, Turks, Jews, or whatsoever, it appertains not to the earthly power to punish them in the least measure. This is made evident to our lord the king by the scriptures.
—Thomas Helwys, A Short Declaration of the Mystery of Iniquity (1611/1612)
Writing around 1612, Baptist founder Thomas Helwys set forth one of the earliest statements on religious freedom, anticipating liberty of conscience and religious pluralism. In fact, the paragraph contains in itself some of the essentials of Baptist approaches to church and state. It (1) attacks establishmentarian religion; (2) emphasizes the centrality of individual conscience; (3) affirms loyalty to the state; and (4) opens the door to state-supporting religious diversity. It sets forth the idea that God alone is judge of conscience and thus neither state nor established church can assess the conscience of the heretic (the people thought to believe the wrong thing) or the atheist (the people who do not believe at all).
Writing in 1847, British historian Edward Bean Underhill asserted: "It has been already seen, that the claim, for the church and for the conscience, of freedom from all human control, was a distinguishing and characteristic trait of the Baptists in former reigns. The divine saying, 'FAITH IS THE GIFT OF GOD,' moved, animated, strengthened them. Its practical assertion brought them into collision with every form of human invention in the worship of God." Baptist emphasis on religious liberty was there from the beginning, building on the assertions of certain Anabaptist groups and antedating those of the Quakers and various Enlightenment-influenced philosophers.
Why was such freedom so important to early Baptists? The concern for freedom of religion was grounded in a commitment to the reality of a Believers' Church, the conviction that those who would claim church membership should first profess faith in Christ, followed by believer's baptism. A Believers' Church was built on the premise that faith and conscience must remain free, uncoerced by an established church or an arbitrary state.
Edward Underhill understood this to mean that "Faith, God's gift, must not be subjected to man's device, nor enchained by the legislative enactments of parliaments or kings." He concluded that for the earliest Baptists, "To worship God aright, the highest function of humanity, the spirit must be free; true worship can come only from a willing heart. For this [belief] the Baptists bore cheerfully, cruel mockings, and scourgings; yea, moreover bonds and imprisonments, and death." Thus, Baptist obsession with religious liberty developed, not out of a flirtation with "secularism," but from their commitment to personal faith in Christ. Perhaps the most distinguishing characteristic of Baptist identity rests in their concern for a Believers' Church grounded in the power of conscience and the inevitability of dissent.
Early Baptist identity was characterized by emphasis on biblical authority, regenerated church membership, and believer's baptism by immersion, congregational church polity, religious liberty, and the priesthood of all believers. Amid those essentially sectarian characteristics, one of their most enduring legacies involves the importance of a regenerate church membership based on faith in Christ. Such a faith required the autonomy of the human conscience and because religious and political establishments inevitably inhibit conscience, dissent was inescapable.
Those who founded the first Baptist church in Amsterdam in 1608–1609 began as an unashamed Christian sect, born of the idea that the church should be composed only of believers, those who could testify to a work of grace through faith in Jesus Christ. Their earliest confession of faith, known as A Declaration of Faith of English People Remaining at Amsterdam in Holland (1611) sums up this idea in a concise statement: "That the church of CHRIST is a company of faithful people ... separated from the world by the word & Spirit of GOD ... being knit unto the LORD & one unto another, by Baptism ... upon their own confession of the faith ... and sins." Baptists understood conscience and dissent in light of the need for sinners to be "regenerated," made new through conversion to Christ. Yet in their assertion that conscience could not be compelled by either state-based or faith-based establishments, they flung the door wide for religious liberty and pluralism in ways that even they may not have fully understood. By regeneration, they meant, in the words of the Orthodox Creed of 1679: "those who are united unto Christ by effectual faith, are regenerated, and have a new heart and spirit created in them through the virtue of Christ his death, resurrection, and intercession, and by the efficacy of the holy spirit, received by faith."
Conscience and religious liberty were not based on secular theories (although they would influence them), but on the necessity of uncoerced faith mediated through a congregation of Christian believers. A commitment to freedom of conscience led Baptists to oppose religious establishments and develop principles of religious liberty that anticipated modern pluralism.
Baptists began as a community of dissenters. They challenged political and religious establishments in various ways. First, they were nonconformists who often refused to abide by the rules of religious uniformity demanded by the state-based churches of their day. Second, they rejected any laws of church or state that compelled financial or devotional support for a religious communion in which they had no voice. Third, they defied any church that attempted to mandate belief by virtue of birth, economic status, or culture privilege; and they sought to separate from it.
Anglican priest Daniel Featley's description of seventeenth-century Baptists illustrates the basis of their radical nonconformity. His list of Baptist teachings is clearly an establishmentarian nightmare. It also provides insight into how seventeenth-century dissenters were perceived by their religio-political enemies. Featley described Baptists' beliefs as follows:
First, that none are rightly baptized but those who are dipt. [They rejected the culturally mandated mode of baptism.]
Secondly, that no children ought to be baptized. [They cast aside the link between baptism and citizenship—i.e., to be born into a "Christian" state required immediate baptism into the Christian Church.]
Thirdly, that there ought to be no set form of Liturgy or prayer by the Book, but onely [sic] by the Spirit. [They demanded the freedom to determine their own spirituality apart from government enforced prayer.]
Fourthly, that there ought to be no distinction by the Word of God between the Clergy and the Laity but that all who are gifted may preach the Word, and administer the Sacraments. [They challenged the status of a privileged religious class that controlled theology and admission to the sacraments.]
Fifthly, that it is not lawful to take an oath at all, no, not though it be demanded by the magistrate. [The oath reflected the loyalty of citizenship. Baptists would swear only to God, not governments.]
Sixthly, that no Christian may with good conscience execute the office of civil magistrate. [Some early Baptists followed their Anabaptist spiritual cousins in rejecting the idea that Christians could serve in public office. Others rejected that idea, but it was a sign of their struggle with church/state relations from the beginning.]
Every article in this list reflects elements of political and religious nonconformity evident among seventeenth-century Baptists, as interpreted by one of their sharpest critics.
Suffice it to suggest that these Baptists were an unruly lot. They challenged the status quo in areas related to theology, church polity, class, economics, and politics. At the same time, their confessions make clear that they wished to be good citizens and honor the government as long as its policies did not interfere with faith and conscience. The Declaration of 1611 asserted, "That Magistracie [sic] is a Holy ordinance of GOD, that every soul ought to be subject to it not for fear only, but for conscience sake. Magistrates are the ministers of GOD for our wealth, they bear not the sword for naught. They are the ministers of GOD to take vengeance on them that do evil."
The document also distinguishes the group of English Separatists gathering around Baptist ideals in Amsterdam from their Anabaptist neighbors. Unlike the so-called Radical Reformers, the Baptists asserted that believers could indeed serve in political office. The confession suggested that "members of the Church of Christ" could retain "their Magistracie, for no Holy Ordinance of GOD debarreth any from being a member of CHRIST'S Church." They were free to swear oaths of allegiance as might be required in seventeenth-century political culture. The confession noted that it was "Lawful in a just cause for the deciding of strife to take an oath by the Name of the Lord."
The Standard Confession written by General Baptists in 1660 suggested that "civil Magistrates" are called of God for "the punishment of evil doers" but warned that if they should "impose things about matters of Religion, which we through conscience to God cannot actually obey, then we with Peter also do say, that we ought (in such cases) to obey God rather than men; Acts 5:29." Thus, Baptists accepted the jurisdiction of governments in keeping order and punishing wrongdoers, but they were willing to challenge government when it invaded matters of faith and conscience. It was a similar experience for Baptists in America.
Although he only remained a Baptist for a short time, Roger Williams was instrumental in the founding of the First Baptist Church in America at Providence in what became the colony of Rhode Island, probably around the year 1639. His challenge to the Puritan establishment opened the door for other Baptist responses in colonial America. He claimed that "a Civil Magistrate's power extends only to Bodies and Goods, and outward state of men," and he insisted that the Native Americans, not the English monarch, were the owners of the American land and should be compensated accordingly.
Exiled in 1636 by the Massachusetts church-state establishment, Williams bought land from the Indians to found Providence Plantation. Years later, reflecting on that action, he recalled: "I desired it might be for a shelter for persons distressed for conscience. I then considering the condition of divers of my distressed countrymen, I communicated my said purchase unto my loving friends, who then desired to take shelter here with me."
Dr. John Clarke, Baptist physician and preacher, joined Williams in Rhode Island, founding the town of Newport and the First Baptist Church there by 1640. He insisted that "No such believer, or Servant of Christ Jesus hath any liberty, much less Authority, from his Lord, to smite his fellow servant, nor yet with outward force, or are of flesh, to constrain, or restrain his Conscience, no nor yet his outward man for Conscience sake." Clarke, who never left the Baptist fold, wrote the charter of Rhode Island, the first colony to extend complete religious liberty to all its citizens. The charter states, "No person within said colony at any time hereafter shall be in any wise molested, punished, disquieted or called into question for any differences of opinion in matters of religion ... but that all and any persons may, from time to time, and at all times hereafter, freely and fully have and enjoy his and their own judgments and consciences in matters of religious concernments throughout the tract of land hereafter mentioned." That statement set the tone for much of the Baptist emphasis on religious liberty during the colonial period.
Over a century later, Isaac Backus took up the cause as an advocate for the Warren Association of New England Baptists beginning in 1772. Backus lobbied the Continental Congress at their first gathering in 1774, urging them to take action on religious liberty. The Congress passed a resolution dated December 9, 1774, that expressed its hope for providing "civil and religious liberty" for every group but essentially sending the matter back to the "states." The resolution condescendingly advised the Baptists to take their grievances directly to the "general assembly" of Massachusetts "when and where their petition will most certainly meet with all that attention due to the memorial of a denomination of Christians, so well disposed to the public weal of their country."
Although the Massachusetts religious establishment remained intact until 1833, Baptists gave a continuing witness toward its demise. In 1778, Backus provided this statement for religious liberty and against the Standing Order:
Nothing can be true religion but a voluntary obedience unto God's revealed will, of which each rational soul has an actual right to judge for itself; every person has an inalienable right to act in all religious affairs according to the full persuasion of his own mind, where others are not injured thereby. And civil rulers are so far removed from having any right to empower any person or persons to judge for others in such affairs, and to enforce their judgments with the sword and that their power ought to be exerted to protect all persons and societies within their jurisdiction, from being injured or interrupted in the full enjoyment of this right, under any pretense whatsoever.
In his study Soul Liberty, William McLoughlin suggested that Backus, unlike Roger Williams, John Clarke, and John Leland, viewed America as a distinctly Protestant nation. He even looked toward a day when the Baptist position on adult believers ("antipedobaptism") would prevail in other Protestant communions. He agreed with the Massachusetts state constitution that required a religious oath of all magistrates and supported Sunday regulations on gambling, dancing, theater performances, and card-playing. McLoughlin wrote: "Backus and the Baptists of eighteenth century New England thought primarily of religious liberty in terms of ending compulsory religious taxation, not in terms of a high wall of separation." Generally speaking, however, Baptists were among the strongest advocates for the abolition of state establishments and the legalizing of religious freedom for all or none.
Backus's views are often contrasted with his contemporary, Virginian John Leland, who denied the idea of "Christian" nations and gave renewed emphasis to the breadth of religious pluralism in a free state. He wrote, "No National church, can, in its organization, be a Gospel Church," which alone "takes in no nation, but [only] those who fear God, and work righteousness in every nation." Leland rejected the idea of religious toleration, the willingness of an established religion to grant second-class status to minority communions. He declared, "The very idea of toleration, is despicable; it supposes that some have a pre-eminence above the rest, to grant indulgence; whereas, all should be equally free, Jews, Turks, Pagans and Christians."
In Leland's opinion, religious privilege, whatever the sect, was not simply politically incorrect, it was destructive to true faith. He wrote: "The fondness of magistrates to foster Christianity, has done it more harm than all the persecutions ever did. Persecution, like a lion, tears the saints to death, but leaves Christianity pure; state establishment of religion, like a bear, hugs the saints, but corrupts Christianity." He warned that "Bible Christians, and Deists, have an equal plea against self-named Christians, who ... tyrannize over the consciences of others, under the specious garb of religion and good order." These radical statements have long represented the separationist approach to church-state issues. Later Baptists would divide between the church-state approaches of Isaac Backus and John Leland.
(Continues...)
Excerpted from Through a Glass Darkly by Keith Harper Copyright © 2012 by The University of Alabama Press. Excerpted by permission of THE UNIVERSITY OF ALABAMA PRESS. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
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Table of Contents
Acknowledgments
Introduction
Part I. Key Themes
1. Baptists, Church, and State: Rejecting Establishments, Relishing Privilege
Bill J. Leonard
2. Democratic Religion Revisited: Early Baptists in the American South
Jewel L. Spangler
Part II. Biography
3. Persecution and Polemics: Baptists and the Shaping of the Roger Williams Tradition in the Nineteenth Century
James P. Byrd
4. E. Y. Mullins and the Siren Songs of Modernity
Curtis W. Freeman
5. The Contested Legacy of Lottie Moon: Southern Baptists, Women, and Partisan Protestantism
Elizabeth H. Flowers
6. Walter Rauschenbusch and the Second Coming: The Social Gospel as Baptist History
Christopher H. Evans
7. "I Am Fundamentally a Clergyman, a Baptist Preacher": Martin Luther King Jr., Social Christianity, and the Baptist Faith in an Era of Civil Rights
Edward R. Crowther
Part III. Historiography
8. "Written that Ye May Believe": Primitive Baptist Historiography
John G. Crowley
9. Reframing the Past: The Impact of Institutional and Ideological Agendas on Modern Interpretations of Landmarkism
James A. Patterson
10. Is There a River?: Black Baptists, the Uses of History, and the Long History of the Freedom Movement
Paul Harvey
11. Symbolic History in the Cold War Era
Alan Scot Willis
12. Southern Baptists and the F-Word: A Historiography of the Southern Baptist Convention Controversy and What It Might Mean
Barry Hankins
Contributors
Index