Dr. Platypus

The February edition of Baptists Today contained a letter to the editor expressing one Baptist’s opinion of ecumenical catholicity. In his words, BT “really opened a serious can of worms” in its December issue by running an article suggesting that Baptists could stand to be a bit less legalistic when it comes to receiving new members who were first discipled in other Christian denominations that practiced infant baptism. In the words of this letter-writer,

It is quite ironic that on the 400th anniversary of Baptists, one of their major publications should give space to attacks on believer’s baptism. With the December issue, the traditional definition of a Baptist church, “a body of baptized believers,” goes out the window.

It is also quite ironic that, in making this charge, this brother is found to accuse (among others) John Bunyan, one of the biggest names in Baptist history, of betraying the “traditional definition of a Baptist church”—for Bunyan was an advocate of the same policy of “open membership” that the offending article proposed nearly 400 years ago! In fact, if the letter-writer had acquainted himself with George R. Beasley-Murray’s Baptism in the New Testament—an exegetical tour de force by a Baptist scholar of impeccable academic and ecclesiastical credentials—he would have known that receiving Methodist, Catholic, etc. members without requiring re-baptism has in fact long been the majority opinion among British Baptists. That doesn’t mean that “open membership” is the correct policy for Baptist churches to embrace (although I think it is), but it does mean that some Baptists have thought so since the 1600s, and in some parts of the world the majority of Baptists still do today.

On this Shrove Tuesday, however, I mostly want to discuss the second part of the letter. After some rather condescending remarks about Christians in other denominations, the writer continues:

Also, not content to wreak so much havoc in one area, this same issue of Baptists Today tries to justify the liturgical ceremonialism and the papist trappings that our predecessors in the faith rejected and condemned.

The writer has a problem with liturgical ceremonialism. So do I when it gets in the way of an authentic relationship with God. The thing is: everybody has a liturgy and a ceremony! Growing up, there were certain phrases that I knew were going to be a part of any prayer that certain people prayed—even though they were all ostensibly praying extemporaneously! “Father we just want to….” “Lead, guide, and direct….” “Bless the giver and the gift….” You get the idea. We all get into ruts. That’s as true for the preacher or deacon in the sport coat as it is the one in the Geneva gown or the alb. Perhaps a new pastor at this writer’s church will some day suggest fiddling around the the order of service they’ve used for the past fifty years and we’ll see how much ceremonialism he’s willing to justify.

As to the “papist trappings” (do people still use the word “papist”?), I have pointed out in my old series on Ancient Christian Worship that many of the specific customs that apparently offend the writer go back to pre-Constantinian times. So do many customs that I have never seen or even heard of being practiced in any Baptist church—the sign of the cross, remembrances of departed saints, daily Communion, etc. (Okay, I make the sign of the cross when I receive Communion, but I don’t think anybody else does.)

The writer is of course correct that historically Baptists have rejected or even condemned these practices. But where do you draw the line? The Charleston tradition of Baptist worship featured clerical gowns, a structured order of service, responsive readings, and so forth. It was far more “liturgical” or “ceremonial” than the evangelical fervor of the Sandy Creek tradition. The New Testament itself indicates the first Christians continued to follow certain liturgical ceremonies they learned from their Jewish heritage: chanting the psalms, set hours of prayer, set prayer forms (such as the Lord’s Prayer), etc. Once you concede that God might in fact be honored by people putting some forethought into worshiping well, you open the door to at least considering the possibility that some customs of the greater church might be worth reclaiming. Just because some people might do them emptily doesn’t mean we can’t try to do them right.

It seems that some Baptists no longer identify Lent as the useless self-mortification and works (autosoterism) that it is. Most Baptists have stood for “faith alone” and rejected such ascetic practices as fasting, meatless Fridays, cutting tonsures in the hair, clerical garb, flagellations, and acts of penance as being the outward show of Pharisees.

When I was young, I did in fact identify Lent as “useless self-mortification and works.” Of course, that was before I knew anything about it! Since then, I have had the opportunity to read the Bible, where I learned that fasting was a common practice in both Testaments, and that it happened sometimes privately and individually and sometimes corporately as part of a group. (The members of the leadership group at Antioch were fasting together when God instructed them to set aside Paul and Barnabas for missionary work.) I also learned—and I admit I learned this as much from personal experience as from biblical study—that I’m not especially good at being holy or resisting temptation, so it would probably be a good idea for me to give special attention to these areas from time to time.

Like all Baptists (at least all the ones I know), I believe that a person’s standing before God is a matter of grace. I categorically reject the idea that anything I can do can make God love or accept me any more or less than he already does. But I also have a theology that is bigger than the “plan of salvation.” God loves me just the way I am, but he loves me too much to let me stay this way. Therefore, it is appropriate for me to search both Scripture and the witness of Christians who came before me for wisdom that will help me grow in my discipleship. Since I am firmly rooted in the “Free Church” tradition, I consider myself free to embrace whatever helps me keep my focus on Jesus, be it fasting (Mt 6:16-18; Acts 13:3), meatless Fridays (a subset of fasting), meaningful haircuts (Acts 18:18), symbolic clothing (Rev 4:4), or appropriate acts of restitution or penance (Mt 5:23-26; Jas 5:16). (I can’t find a biblical justification for flagellation, nor do I want to go looking for one. But seriously, has this person ever observed Baptist Christians literally whipping themselves in their religious fervor?)

He concludes,

I am Baptist. If I needed ritualism or if I thought God enjoyed seeing people lighting candles (magical vehicles for sending up prayers through sacrificial flames), I would join some faith tradition that features such religious frippery.

I am also a Baptist. I don’t need ritualism in the sense that I need more than the grace of God, but as a card-carrying member of the human race, I do need religious forms of some kind—that is a fact of anthropology and sociology.  I can’t get away from them, so I had better admit that fact and get on with choosing good ones. I doubt God cares one way or another about whether people light candles, but I know he likes the prayers that accompany them. And I do know (because I’ve read Exodus and Revelation) that God loves symbolic acts of worship.

Therefore, tomorrow night I’ll join with the other members of my Baptist church in receiving ashes on my forehead as a reminder of my humanity, my mortality, and my desperate need for more of Christ, his teachings, and his grace.

If I were betting I’d bet that Jim Somerville doesn’t practice glossolalia. I’m quite certain, however, that he understands what the Bible says about it.

Which is only a problem because I grew up in, and continue to identify with, a spiritual tradition that has often settled for homodoxy instead.

Fortunately, here in the heart of central Georgia is a Baptist church that is at least taking baby steps toward orthodoxy as Fr. Peters describes it: the liturgical year, spiritual formation, etc. Heck, we even have Sunday school classes that study ancient Christian psalmody and Eastern Orthodox spirituality, and we’re going to be offering a class this summer on the Apostles Creed.

Of course, if you asked anybody in the merely homodox Georgia Baptist Convention, they’d probably tell you we were a bunch of “liberals.” Go figure.

Bosco Peters links to a fascinating video about the power of the pentatonic scale. I love it when bloggers add value when they link. In this case, the value added is the observation that singing in tongues, despite its randomness, harmonizes because the congregation is using the pentatonic scale, and “any combination of the pentatonic scale sounds great.” Nifty!

(The entire program from which this snippet came discusses how much of our appreciation of music is culturally determined and how much of it is “hard-wired” into our brains.)

Another gem from Jeanie Miley:

We talk about the Ten Commandments, and when we do I always think about how God asked this young Jewish girl to put herself in the position of being censured and shunned, at the least, and even stoned to death because of the perception that she was breaking the law.

What was God up to, seemingly breaking his own rules to accomplish something so grand?

What was he doing, asking this young girl to put herself in the position of appearing to be scandalized by breaking the laws of her people?

Later, Jesus scandalized the religious culture of his day and turned the values of his day upside down, eating with prostitutes, touching the unclean, lifting up the downtroddent and making friends with women.  He befriended  the lowly, the outcast, the littlest and the least, and whenever the woman caught in adultery was brought to him, he dealt with her with unusual sensitivity, compassion and forgiveness.  I’ve wondered if Jesus’ compassion was born out of a memory of hearing stories of his mother’s plight.

Amen.

Good words from my favorite Baptist contemplative, Jeanie Miley:

When I was growing up, Mary the mother of Jesus was consigned to a minor role, not because her role was minor, but because in my tradition there was a fear of the worship of Mary.  That fear of Mary and the neglect of her story sort of oozed and leaked over into other attitudes and practices within my religious tradition, but ’tis the season to focus on other things, I think.

Now that I’ve got some history at putting away childish things and attempting to grow up, I”m incredulous about that fear of Mary.  When I expressed to my spiritual director, Bishop Mike Pfeifer, that there were some in my tradition who held to the idea that sin came into the world through a woman, he quickly said, “But, Jeanie, the Savior also came into the world through a woman.”

That statement he made poured the oil of grace over a painful wound in my soul.

By all means, read it all.

I’m thankful for…

• A little girl who likes Homer and Louisa May Alcott for bedtime stories.
• A little girl who interrupts the bedtime story to ask about words or expressions she doesn’t understand.
• A freshly painted guest room—and all the people who will use it.
• Just enough time at the end of my day or week to learn something new.
• A very loving, very understanding wife.
• The Mercer University Children’s Choir.
• Churches that believe in adult Bible study—I’d be out of a job without them!
• The ability to get some money out of savings, load up the car, and go visit family far away.
• The Adult, Too Sunday school class.
• The book of Genesis.
• The Macon Symphony Orchestra.
• The ability to buy a couple extra cans of vegetables for my church’s Crisis Closet.
• The Beatles.
• GoogleBooks
• Students who smile at me when they “get it.”
• Phở
• Dr. Rick Wilson’s continued confidence in my suitability to serve as an adjunct professor at Mercer University.
• The alphabet.

What are you thankful for?

Jim Somerville makes an interesting point about the baptisms most Baptist pastors perform most of the time:

In the Bible the candidate for baptism is, typically:

An adult
Who has grown up Jewish or Gentile
Hearing the good news about Jesus for the first time
Responding in faith
Repenting of his or her sins
Entering the new life in Christ
Through the waters of baptism

How different is that from the candidate I often immerse:

A child
Dedicated to God as an infant
Having heard about Jesus all her life
Now professing her faith publicly
And joining the other members of the church by
Taking the next step in her Christian journey
Through the waters of baptism.

That’s beautiful, but it is not—in the strictest sense of the word—biblical.

As Jim says, there is a difference between “making” disciples and “raising” them, and that needs to be figured into how we talk about baptism—and what we expect of those who were baptized as infants and later seek membership in a credobaptist church.

Saints!  I think that basically, from the church’s point of view, what we need to do is form saints – people of faith, hope and love.

Thus says Glenn Hinson, one of my professors at the Seminary formerly known as Southern, and one of the major influences in my early appreciation of both patristics and Christian spirituality.

Scot McKnight is wondering whether low-church evangelicalism—having dispensed with the historic creeds and worship forms embraced by the likes of Luther and Calvin—deserves to be called “Protestant”:

Low church evangelicalism is too often theologically shallow, frequently chaotic in its order of worship, nearly always lopsided in which parts of the Bible it preaches and teaches and knows, and inexcusably ignorant when it comes to the history of God’s people called the Church. These are marks that it has wandered from the gift of the Reformation. These are marks of groups that are not Protestant.

I wonder, too. Actually, I don’t much any more.