merefaith: discipleship in the ruins of empire

My friend Jacob's question given in his comment to my previous post is a good and worthy one. What kind of authority would the ecumenical councils (and, perhaps most importantly, the creeds they produced: Nicene, Chalcedonian) have in the baptistic paradigm of congregationalism?

It might seem at the outset that the creeds would be given no validity in such an ecclesiology. First, there is the fear that they take away from the authority of Scripture. Second, they are often interpreted as having been imposed upon the early church by emperor and bishop and thus might be forced upon churches as alien "litmus tests" today. Third, the introduction of an external creed may be understood as a violation of the rights and responsibility of each congregation to discern the mind of Christ in their own context.

I will examine these potential objections in reverse order. The final charge against creeds reflects an assumption that congregational authority is properly understood as congregational independence and "autonomy." While "local church autonomy" is often labeled a "Baptist distinctive" in our day and age, in truth Baptists have largely believed that each church is also answerable to the the larger association and assemblies for guidance, correction, and mutual admonition. For example, the 1644 London Confession declared that, although each congregation is a distinct body, "yet are they all to walk by one and the same Rule, and by all means convenient to have the counsel and help one of another in all needful affairs of the Church, as members of one body in the common faith." Or, as Nigel Wright of Spurgeon's College puts it in his book Free Church, Free State: The Positive Baptist Vision, a congregation's prerogatives do not include redefining the essential Christian faith. The Baptist vision is not properly marked by an "anything goes" or "I'm ok, you're ok" attitude; nevertheless, it is defined by a belief that congregations sincerely seeking the mind of Christ, internally and externally, will move toward a unity that is not coerced or imposed, as Yoder states. Part of that movement toward unity includes the recognition that the faith taught and lived by a particular church is also the faith defined and symbolized in such a statement as the Nicene Creed.

Moving to the second objection, we see that this is in fact, historically, the way the creeds were received. As Baptist patristics scholar D.H. Williams says, "Credal statements had to represent the common mind of the church or else they would not be accepted and employed by the wider body of believing Christians" (Retrieving the Tradition and Renewing Evangelicalism, 155f.). We look at Nicea as a watershed moment but it took decades for the formula drawn up by the bishops to become accepted. D.H. Williams again:

Even the epithet "ecumenical" was assigned to the Council of Nicaea, in the
sense of being a special and definitive category of synod, only gradually.
The problem of the "fall" paradigm with regard to Nicaea is that it exaggerates
the centrality of the council's position in history, even though little
acknowledgment owas made of its creed for roughly thirty years. Evidently,
it was not at all clear to the majority of bishops after the council that the
Nicene Creed was the best articulation of the Christian doctrine of God (162).

Indeed, the creed remained controversial and alternatives were presented during the next quarter-century. Most churches continued to prefer their own local, pre-existing creeds for baptismal interrogations. Only in the mid-350s did the Nicene Creed start to emerge as the singular orthodox standard. Even then it continued to be opposed. The Council of Ariminum (359), the largest so far in the west, rejected the Nicene Creed and put forth a substitute. Over time, however, Nicea was "proven and internalized by the life experience of the churches (Williams, 163)." Even in Orthodox literature I have seen the point made that a creed or ecumenical council decision is only truly thus once approved by the faithful. In other words, the authority of creed and council is something tested, discerned, and then either received or rejected...by local gatherings of believers seeking the mind and will of Christ. D.H. Williams concludes his chapter on councils and creeds by noting, contra Vatican II, that the early church did not view councils as infallible or as oracles of divine revelation.

Finally, the creeds are properly understood as derivative of Scripture, marking out the space in which interpretations are understood as faithful and excluding interpretations that make Scripture incoherent. The most controversial element of the Nicene Creed's formulation, homoousios, was controversial precisely because it was not Scriptural language, and it took Athanasius' persuasive argumentation to show that it cohered with biblical testimony. As the history of drawing up confessions of faith shows, Baptists are not averse to making claims about what they believe are the sensible and valid interpretations of faith to be proclaimed and to which assent is encouraged.

So how have Baptists interpreted the theological value of the creeds and councils? It must be admitted that there is a mixed history. However, it is clear that the "no creed but the Bible" claim is derivative of the Stone-Campbell movement in the southern United States and not an original Baptist principle. The early General Baptist leader Thomas Grantham declared that the Nicene, Chalcedonian and Athanasian creeds should be received and believed by all, and this was also the conclusion of the Generals' Orthodox Creed of 1678. At the first meeting of the Baptist World Alliance in 1905, Alexander MacLaren asked, as the first order of business, that all delegates stand and recite the Apostles' Creed as an affirmation of their shared faith with the church catholic. The delegates could recite the creed from memory (a feat not repeated at the centennial celebration in 2005, in which a projector was required!).

Baptistic theological writings have, to various degrees, stressed the validity of the creeds and councils. D.H. Williams finds engagement with the historic tradition necessary and unavoidable but cautions against labeling the patristic creeds as "inerrant" (Evangelicals and Tradition, 78). James McClendon reiterates that creeds have no status as supplemental authorities, but "they may briefly witness to the truth that is more fully witnessed in Scripture. And, indeed, according to their authors, that was the point fo the early creeds; their makers always understood them as guides to the reading of Scripture" (Doctrine, 470). Creeds are "monuments of tradition" that tell us how Scripture has been read and "invite us to read it that way if we can" (471). The most overtly positive assessment of the creeds perhaps comes from Stephen Holmes in his book Listening to teh Past: The Place of Tradition in Theology. He surveys potential methods for rejecting the Nicene Creed but, pointing to the strong consensus of the universal Church over space and time, concludes, "I find it difficult to envisage a situation in which there could be sufficient evidence to doubt the Nicene Creed" (161). What Holmes is doing, I conceive, is extending the logic of trust in Christ's Lordship and the Spirit's guidance outward from the local congregation and into the Church as the whole Body of Christ. Proper discernment of the mind of Christ entails recognizing the authority of the entire community of saints. Finally, this is the point and title of a chapter in Steven Harmon's book Towards Baptist Catholicity. It would take much time to reproduce it here, but this chapter, "The Authority of the Community (of All the Saints): Towards a Postmodern Baptist Hermeneutic of Tradition," is an extended examination of how the Baptist understanding of the derivative authority of a church as covenant community opens the way toward recognizing the derivative authority of the entire communio sanctorum in interpreting the convictions and duties of the Christian faith.

So what kind of authority do the ecumenical councils have? The same kind of authority as that of a local church meeting, a synod, a general assembly, or a convention. The councils have moral and hermeneutical authority by virtue of the fact that they were gatherings of Christians, intentionally brought together in prayer and worship, that sought to discern what the Spirit says to the churches. It is an authority of testimony that is then weighed, tested, and deliberated over by each church. With Holmes and Harmon I would argue that the Nicene Creed, for example, has been so heavily tested and affirmed as to place an enormously strong burden of proof on the church that chooses to reject it. With the entire Baptist tradition and with Yoder, meanwhile, I contend that the acceptance of councils and creeds must be a process of mutual recognition and affirmation in which nothing is coerced or imposed, but rather that churches in sincere and genuine discernment come to realize that they faith they seek to live and teach is one and the same with the faith presented by another deliberative body that has previously placed itself under Christ's Lordship. We are responsible for each other but we must not lord it over each other. I believe that the way forward must live in that balance.

Labels: Baptist Catholicity, Baptists, Historia, Theology

Posted by Chris Schelin at Thursday, November 12, 2009 | Permalink | Comments

On the web site for The Anabaptist Network in the UK and Ireland there appears an article by Keith Jones, rector of IBTS, on the Anabaptist-style practice of communion at Sarka Valley Community Church. Here one finds, I believe, a Free Church convictional catholicity - that is, devotion to both the great Tradition of the Church universal as well as the key principles and practices of a particular spiritual tradition within that Church.

Then the Pledge of Love is shared, either using the Hubmaier text, or some
other, or some contemporary form of the Pax. The table is set with a simple
single loaf made by one of the members. The wine comes from the vineyards around
Mikulov, Moravia, where once Hubmaier’s Anabaptist community enjoyed a peaceful
existence. The simple pottery chalice made in Bohemia reminding us of the
Anabaptist skills in Haban pottery, such a feature of central Europe and
entirely appropriate in the land of the Hussite proto-reformation, which
restored the cup to the people.

The classic prayer of thanksgiving rehearses in narrative style,
suiting the contemporary gathering church accent on narrative theology, the
mighty acts of God in creation and then in the life, death and resurrection of
Jesus. Again, this reflects the Anabaptist desire to see Scripture and faith
through the Gospel narrative of the life of Christ, focusing on the Sermon on
the Mount. A sharp contrast to the liturgies and prayers of the Catholic and
Magisterial Protestant traditions, which focus almost exclusively on the death
of Jesus. Then the bread is fractured and sisters and brothers pass the bread
round the circle breaking off a piece as they offer it to the next person. Some
keep the bread and dip it in the chalice (intinction). Others eat as they
receive, then drink the rich Moravian Frankovka wine.

When all have served each other, the cup and bread are placed back on
the table. Short prayers of thanksgiving are offered. Perhaps a hymn, or song,
or Taizé chant are sung. Then the community is dismissed in mission. Many
attending this celebration from beyond this particular gathering community have
found the simplicity and spirituality of the occasion highly moving. The
architectural setting is simple, though seasonal banners, the tablecloth and
napkins changing colour depending on the Christian year, add a holistic
dimension helping to emphasis that worship is to engage all the senses.

Labels: Baptist Catholicity, Baptists, Liturgy, Theology

Posted by Chris Schelin at Saturday, August 22, 2009 | Permalink | Comments

Today in our church's corporate worship I was responsible for the "children's sermon." I had been asked to talk about the Lord's Supper because we celebrated the sacrament today. While this may seem like hefty reading for preparation, one resource I consulted was the chapter on the Eucharist in John Colwell's Promise and Presence: An Exploration of Sacramental Theology. Colwell is a British Baptist theologian at Spurgeon's College in London, and his book is organized around the seven classical Catholic sacraments. After lengthy discussion of the various theological proposals for conceptualizing Christ's Real Presence in the elements/liturgy of His Supper, Colwell closes with a reflection on the the problem of Communion and Christian disunity. I found myself agreeing with him fully and grateful for his eloquent expression. So, I thought I would share Colwell's words and add a hearty "Here I stand!" to them. Enjoy!

*****

The greatest irony, the greatest tragedy, and perhaps the greatest apostasy of the Church is that the Lord's Supper, the central celebration of the Church's life and essence, given as a sign and focus of its unity, has become the principal sign and expression of its division. Both the immediate and the broader context of the passage cited at the beginning of this chapter [1 Cor. 10:14-18] constitute a sustained appeal for the Church's unity: '...we, who are many, are one body, for we all partake of the one loaf.' It should be noted that our unity with one another is an outcome of communion: it is not that we share communion as an expression of our unity (a unity defined and discovered in some other place or manner); it is rather that we are united by virtue of sharing communion. Our participation in Christ is both the possibility and the manner of our participation in one another. For this reason those who, like Zwingli, undermine the reality of our participation in Christ at the Supper, inadvertently also undermine the reality of our unity with one another. It may be historically true that groups that have most stressed the Supper as a celebration of our unity with one another have tended to be groups that have qualified the unique reality of Christ's presence here - but in so doing they have redefined the nature of the Church's unity.

The issue of the Church's unity, which is necessarily an issue of the Church's sacramental unity, will be revisited at the conclusion of this book. But for the present it must be conceded that, until, without hesitation, we can share communion together, every ecumenical pretension remains no more than pretension (for a denial of our sharing in communion can be no less than a denial of the validity of our common identity as the Church): we do not share communion as an expression of our unity: we share communion as the means of our unity; to seek unity through agreeing forms of words is to seek an inadequate form of unity and to seek it by inadequate means.

And differences of understanding, even 'confessional' differences (such, at least, that do not offend the catholic creeds of the Church) are a wholly inadequate basis for continuing such disunity: I have tried to demonstrate within this chapter that it is the reality of our participation in Christ, rather than the manner in which that participation is expressed or analysed, that is crucial. Indeed, since we are dealing here with the central sacramental mystery we must concede that this ultimately will defy all analysis; our forms of words will never be adequate...Participation in this mystery is the means to confessional unity rather than its outcome. To fail to receive one another as we have been received by Christ is itself apostasy.

- John Colwell, Promise and Presence. Milton Keynes, UK. Paternoster Press, 2005. pp. 176-78.

Labels: Baptist Catholicity, Ecumenism

Posted by Chris Schelin at Sunday, January 04, 2009 | 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

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

Labels: Baptist Catholicity, Baptists

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

We Baptist students here at Duke who have aligned themselves with the theological project of Curtis Freeman, Steve Harmon, Elizabeth Newman, Philip Thompson, and others consciously understand themselves as rejecting the two major alternatives in our tradition right now. On the one hand, we cannot return to the biblical foundationalism of inerrantists in the Southern Baptist Convention who appeal to Sola Scriptura yet practice an unacknowledged, ever-narrower tradition. On the other hand, we cannot continue in along the course of the moderates who stress freedom of the individual conscience and revision at all costs. One seeks to wall up the church in an imposing but claustrophobic fortress and the other would have it morph into a wandering morass of pilgrims going who knows where.

Neither aimless nor sheltered, the "third way" hopes to balance both steadfastness and openness. Perhaps the corresponding image would be for Baptists to see themselves as a village, neither constricted nor boundless. The village does its business in the commons where people gather for market, for debate, and for decision. It acknowledges and depends upon the history of its families and office-holders. Its identity is shaped both by its particular seasons, festivals, and traditions as well as the traditions, customs, and values of the wider people group to which it belongs.

Much of my metaphor, I hope, corresponds with the simultaneous retrievals of Baptist heritage and the broader Christian tradition that have been at play in the work of these "other Baptists." Our village of disciple-baptizers and covenant-makers can and should heed both the testimony of the forebears who rest in the cemetery and the insight of visitors from the neighboring towns. And so, listening and learning, many Baptists have striven for recovery of an authentic theology and practice for our times that is communal, sacramental, catholic in dissent, and even creedal.

Unfortunately, some of the natives in the other towns are up in arms, so it seems. They have picked up their pruning hooks and shovels and gnashed their teeth at our seeming impudence for not being the puckish little village that they could always write off. The third-way Baptists (or Duke Baptists, or catholic Baptists) must be rewriting history! They're so un-Baptist! Of course, they're gladly joined by a number of our neighbors in the same village too who either wish to guard their meagre little fences or who pride themselves in scorning much of what has made the village itself before.

And so I urge that back to the commons we should go. Unlock your gates, drop your blunt instruments, and walk with us to the meeting-place where we tell our stories and feast on the fruit of the land. Let us remember the settlers who founded this village and the leaders and artisans who shaped its common life. Remember now Balthasar Hubmaier, Menno Simons, Thomas Helwys, Thomas Grantham, and Charles Spurgeon. Let us see whether the village is as it always was or whether we have lost the vision and the hope of its early inhabitants. Let us see, then, if we can be better reconciled with our neighboring towns - but not, as some may claim, by merely copying what they foolishly claim is rightfully theirs and theirs only. Perhaps these villages may more fully understand themselves not to be isolated settlements, but the whole people of God sharing in the promises of his bountiful Land.

Labels: Baptist Catholicity, Baptists, Ecumenism

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

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

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

Labels: Baptist Catholicity, Baptists, Ecumenism

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

www.ebcgeorgia.org

Labels: Baptist Catholicity, Baptists

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

Then here are the books I recommend:

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

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

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

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

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

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

Labels: Baptist Catholicity, Baptists

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