Thoughts of a Pastor-Historian

“I Am Not Ashamed”: Having Boldness in a Day of Tolerance

2 Timothy 1:8-14

It is a privilege to preach in this 195th meeting of the Franklin Baptist Association.   This association has a rich history of standing for the truth.  Just recently I visited Frankfort Cemetery and just across from Daniel Boone’s grave I found the grave of Silas Mercer Noel who served as moderator of this association during the Campbellite controversy of the 1830s and 1840s. He was valiant for the truth in a day of trouble. The circular letters which he wrote still survive and are a testimony to his faithfulness.  Many other courageous pastors and church members have stood for the truth in this community of churches.  Today it is more important than ever to stand for the truths which our forefathers in this association believed.

We now live in a postmodern age, where we are told, there is no such thing as absolute truth. In fact that is the one absolute truth of our day: absolutely no absolutes.  The last outpost of those who believe in absolute truth are the members of the church of the living God. Those who stand up for absolute truth in our day will be branded as fundamentalists, troublemakers, or worse.  In our day, tolerance (which says everyone’s belief system is equally true) is the ultimate virtue.   As G. K. Chesterton once said, “Tolerance is a virtue of a man without convictions.” That is where we are today as a nation.  The only thing which is not tolerated is intolerance.  In fact, one school administrator has said, “It is the mission of public schools not to tolerate intolerances.”

My hope is built on nothing less / Than Jesus’ blood and righteousness;  

I dare not trust the sweetest frame, / But wholly lean on Jesus’ name.

On Christ, the solid Rock, I stand; / All other ground is sinking sand,

All other ground is sinking sand.

My sheep hear my voice, and I know them, and they follow me.  (28)  I give them eternal life, and they will never perish, and no one will snatch them out of my hand.  (29)  My Father, who has given them to me, is greater than all, and no one is able to snatch them out of the Father’s hand.  (30)  I and the Father are one.

Are we to admit members into the church and into office, are we to license and ordain preachers without enquiring for their creed? Shall we ask them no question in regard to principles or doctrines? Shall we receive license and ordain candidates, upon a general profession of faith in Christ requiring of them this only, that they agree to take the Bible for their guide? Can we do this and still expect to preserve the unity, purity and peace of the church?

Note what we owe them, and let us pay to our sons the debt we owe our fathers.  It is today as it was in the Reformers’ days.  Decision is needed.  Here is the day for the man, where is the man for the day?  We who have had the gospel passed to us by martyr hands dare not trifle with it, nor sit by and hear it denied by traitors, who pretend to love it, but inwardly abhor every line of it. (C. H. Spurgeon, Metropolitan Tabernacle Pulpit, Vol. 34, 83)

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Useful men are some of the greatest blessings of a people. To have many such is more for a people’s happiness than almost anything, unless it be God’s own gracious, spiritual presence amongst them: they are precious gifts of heaven….  Particularly, I would beseech and exhort those aged ones that yet remain, while they do live with us, to let us have much of their prayers, that when they leave the younger generations, they may leave God with them.

Jonathan Edwards, “The Death of Faithful Ministers a Sign of God’s Displeasure,” in The Salvation of Souls, 34, 39.

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I recently completed this quiz and discovered that I am actually Justin Martyr.  Complete the quiz to see which Early Church Father you are.  Post your result in the comment session.

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Dr. Nathan Finn begins the last day of the conference with an address on “Southern Baptists and Evangelicals: Passing on the Faith to the Next Generation”.   Finn serves as Assistant Professor of Church History and Baptist Studies at Southeastern Baptist Theological Seminary. Dr. Finn is the co-editor of Domestic Slavery Considered as a Scriptural Institution (Mercer, 2008) and has contributed to Calvinism: A Southern Baptist Dialog (B&H, 2008) and Southern Baptist Identity: An Evangelical Denomination Faces the Future (Crossway, 2009). He also serves as associate editor of The Journal for Baptist Studies.

Finn begins by stating that, as a seminary professor, he is self-consciously trying to pass on the faith to the next generation of ministers and missionaries.

First, we need to once again revisit the relationship between Southern Baptists and evangelicals. And second, we need to consider what it means to pass on the Southern Baptist and/or evangelical faith to the next generation.

Southern Baptists and Evangelicals

Evangelicals Defining Evangelicalism

• Some describe evangelical Christianity using primarily theological categories (Bebbington and Rosell).
• Some underscore evangelicalism’s diversity by emphasizing activism (Wallis, Sider, Perkins, and Dobson).
• Some understand evangelicalism as some sort of common affinity (Marsden and Carpenter).
• Some focus on evangelicalism as a common piety (Grenz, Olson, and Franke).

The one thing all of these approaches have in common is that they focus predominantly on white, or at least western, believers. This is important because there are strong indications that the ethnic ethos of American evangelicalism is changing (see the works of Philip Jenkins).

Southern Baptists Defining Evangelicalism

The same definitional ambiguities that characterize the aforementioned scholars also plague Southern Baptists who have addressed this issue.

I prefer to make a distinction between the terms evangelical and evangelicalism.  I agree with Bebbington and Rosell that an evangelical affirms a high view of Scripture, a conversionist piety, the centrality of the cross in human salvation, and a gospel-inspired activism, especially (though not exclusively) evangelism and missions. Any piety that might be common to evangelicals is necessarily shaped by these core convictions and priorities.

Thus, not all evangelicals are participants in evangelicalism, which I would argue is more a movement than a set of beliefs and priorities.

Southern Baptists and Evangelicals Revisited

• Southern Baptists as Evangelicals
  Most Southern Baptists would have no trouble affirming a list of basic evangelical convictions about the Bible, conversion, and the cross, though we might nuance those categories in ways that differ from some other types of evangelicals. The same goes for activism; from its inception the SBC has been a body that draws together autonomous churches for the purpose of gospel endeavors, especially missions and evangelism.
• Southern Baptists Must (sometimes) Be Against Evangelicals
  Southern Baptists are denominational evangelicals who are at odds with those card-carrying evangelicals who find their primary identity in parachurch evangelicalism.  Most Southern Baptists remain a people committed to the primacy of the local church. As long as evangelicalism remains a parachurch-driven coalition, Southern Baptists will remain nervous about certain types of cooperation with the broader evangelical movement.
• Southern Baptists Among Evangelicals
  Despite the above concerns, I’m in favor of continued Southern Baptist engagement with other evangelicals, even within segments of movement evangelicalism.  Southern Baptists have been involved since the 1940s in engaging evangelicals.  I agree with Albert Mohler that a healthy future for the SBC “lies in the rediscovery and reclamation of an authentic and distinctive Southern Baptist evangelicalism—genuinely Baptist, and genuinely evangelical.”

  Southern Baptists must recognize that we are ourselves evangelicals who must at times swim against some evangelical currents, nevertheless always seeking to remain in the evangelical river itself. Balancing our respective identities as Southern Baptists, evangelicals, and Southern Baptist evangelicals is crucial to passing on our faith to the next generation.

Passing on the Faith

• Catechesis: Passing on Our Convictions
  By catechesis, I mean that Southern Baptists and evangelicals must pass on our convictions in our preaching, discipleship programs, life-on-life mentoring, theological education, and parenting.
  1. We must seek to inculcate a Christian way of reading Christian Scripture.
  2. We must seek to pass on a robust view of the gospel.
  3.  We must pass on what I call a “gospel instinct,” which I believe will help us to be very hesitant about aberrant doctrines that seem to undermine faithful gospel proclamation (Ex.inclusivism, universalism, annihilationism, and hyper-Calvinism).
  4. We must pass on a balanced commitment to activism, including cultural engagement, evangelism, and missions.  . But I don’t want to see the next generation engage culture at the expense of personal evangelism and church planting, both in North America and to the uttermost parts of the earth.  I believe Jesus would have us weep for the lost and the hungry, to share the gospel and clothe the poor, to speak out against all manners of injustice and speak out about our personal testimonies.
• We must make sure that the faith we pass on is a distinctively Trinitarian faith.
• We must pass on the distinctives that are uniquely emphasized by our tradition.
  I argue in my classes that Baptist principles are simply the consistent application of the gospel to ecclesiological matters. We must pass on our belief that local churches, as communities of the gospel, ought to be comprised of individuals who give evidence of regeneration. We must pass on our conviction that believer’s baptism by immersion identifies a believer with the gospel and marks him out for the community created by the gospel. We must pass on our conviction that we live out the gospel personally by embracing the principle of individual liberty of conscience, under the lordship of Christ, and in submission to Christian Scripture. We must pass on a healthy understanding of congregational polity that enables us to practice the gospel in community with one another. We must preserve the freedom of each gospel community to pursue its own gospel agenda by passing on our belief in local church autonomy. We must defend the preservation of gospel freedom by passing on the firm conviction that a free church best flourishes in a free state where religious liberty for all is a basic civil right.

But there are some tendencies that both evangelicals and Southern Baptists must not pass on to the next generation.

• Southern Baptists must not pass on a cultural captivity that too often has confused southern culture with biblical Christianity.
• We must not hand down an ethnocentrism that is still present, albeit often subconsciously, in many quarters of our Convention.
• We must not pass on a denominational arrogance that has often assumed that we are the greatest group of Christians in history just because we are the largest Protestant denomination in America.
• We must not pass on our sometimes sectarian and/or overconfident tendency to withdraw from other believers and go at it alone, though we should be prepared to face some considerable resistance on this point.
• We must not impart an atheological pragmatism that continues to influence not a few of our churches and denominational ministries.
• We must not pass on our penchant for confusing bricks, budgets, baptisms, and bottoms with the blessing of the Almighty.

Narrative: Passing on Our Stories

We Southern Baptists have our own stories we need to pass on to the next generation. We are part of a tradition that advocated for full freedom of religion long before Jefferson’s and Madison’s grandparents were born. Our denomination has a unique ethos that is shaped by a number of traditions identified with locations like Charleston, Sandy Creek, Georgia, Tennessee, and Texas. Our missionaries have been leaders in taking the gospel to the uttermost parts of the earth and virtually every corner of North America.  We have undergone a Conservative Resurgence that has returned our Convention to its theological roots and likely prevented a theological downgrade similar to those that have infected so many of the mainline denominations. These stories must be told.

We have our own heroes. We must tell the next generation about figures like Mercer, Boyce, Rogers, McCall, and Pressler. We must also pass on the stories of other Baptist heroes like Thomas Helwys, John Bunyan, Thomas Grantham, William Carey, Andrew Fuller, Daniel Taylor, Isaac Backus, John Leland, Gerhard Oncken, Adoniram Judson and his three remarkable wives, Charles Spurgeon, Nannie Burroughs, W. B. Riley, and Martin Luther King Jr.

We should also note that Southern Baptists and movement evangelicals share some common stories and heroes.  All of their stories must be passed on too.

Billy Graham’s torch has apparently been passed on to the next generation. It is my sincere hope that Southern Baptists, evangelicals, and Southern Baptist evangelicals will be able to likewise pass on our faith to the next generation. After all, as Graham himself has reminded us on so many occasions, God has no grandchildren.

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Thursday night closes with a panel discussion featuring  participants Greg Thornbury, dean of the School of Christian Studies at Union University; Buddy Gray, pastor of Hunter Street Baptist Church in Birmingham, Ala.; Charles Fowler, senior vice president for university relations at Union; Danny Sinquefield, pastor of Faith Baptist Church in Bartlett, Tenn.; Roland Porter, associate professor of business at Union; George Guthrie, the Benjamin W. Perry Professor of Bible at Union; and Doug Baker, editor of the Baptist Messenger of Oklahoma.

The panel took questions from the attendees.  See Trevin Wax for a summary.

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Dr. Dockery is speaking tonight on “So Many Denominations: The Rise and Decline of Denominationalism and the Shaping of a Global Evangelicalism”.

Beginning with a historical overview of the history of denominationalism.

American Christianity is on the verge of losing its identity through amnesia of its history.

The rise of non-denominationalism is not a new phenomenon.  It was already in existence as early as the Great Awakening with the ministry of George Whitefield.

History of Demonimationalism

1. The early church was more unified than what we experience today.  There were four major councils culminating at Chalcedon in 451.
2. The Reformation brought denominationalism through the fracturing of the Roman Catholic Church.  Anglicanism, Presbyterianism, and Lutheranism began to develop.
3. The 17th Century:  Expanding Denominational Differences.  The Puritan movement of this period sped things along in the direction of denominationalism.
4. The 18th Century:  Awakenings
5. The 19th Century: Revivalism
6. 20th Century:  The Holy Spirit and Sign Gifts
7. Denominational Distinctives (each group emphasizes each of their respective distinctives)
8. So Many Denominations
   1. Theological Differences
   2. Denominational Polity
   3. Liturgical Practices (Another way to understand the development of denominations is through the window of liturgy and worship)
   4. A Sociological Perspective
      Denominations as we know them are probably best traced to 17th century Puritanism in England and America.
9. Denominationalism through American Eyes.
   Denominationalism is primarily an American phenomenon due to American freedoms to expand and flourish. Denominationalism has resulted more in the Americanization of Christianity than the Christianization of America.

The Birth of American Evangelicalism

1. The Rise of Liberalism (Key Thinkers:  Schleiermarcher, Bushnell, and Rauschenbush), (Key Popularizers:  Fosdick, Beecher, and Brooks).  These attempted to adapt the substance of faith to changing times.  They elevated reason above revelation and experience above tradition.
2. Orthodoxy, Fundamentals, and Fundamentalism (Machen’s Christianity and Liberalism), (Also a reactionary fundamentalism began to exist with J. Frank Norris, etc.).  This resulted in the splintering of many new movements among the Presbyterians, and independent Baptist churches, etc.
3. 20th Century American (and British) Evangelicalism.  Billy Graham, Carl F.H. Henry and Harold Ockenga called for an engaged Evangelicalism that was not “anti-intellectual”, not “other-worldly”, and not separatistic/legalistic.
4. New Affinity Groups:  Transdenominational Evangelical Networks.  New Evangelicals are committed to traditional Christian beliefs.  The influence of first D.L. Moody and later Billy Graham produced networks which brought more commitment than to any denomination.  This has changed the way we think about denominations.
5. Networks, Denominations, and A Theology of the Church.
6. Denominational Rivalry and Geographical Perspectives
7. From Mainline to Sideline

Denominationalism and Evangelicalism: Questions About the Future

1. Denominational Conviction and Cooperation.  Networks are posed well to meet the challenges of the future.  Denominations that thrive must remain connected to their Tradition, while exploring and working together in a new global context and working cooperatively in a renewed way with networks and special purpose groups.  The SBC’s future can be very bright with doctrinal convictions and diverse cooperation.
2. A Global Perspective.  We must see the work of God among the nations.  The look of Southern Baptist churches must change as we see God working around the world.  There are more Christians in Africa today than there are citizens of America. By 2025 the typical Christian will be a woman living in Nigeria or Brazil.
3. Toward Hopefulness and Renewal.
4. A Plea for Denominational Faithfulness.  Denominational distinctives still give guidance.  These distinctives are particularly important at the local church level.  A model of dynamic orthodoxy must be reclaimed.  the orthodox tradition must be recovered in conversation with Nicea, Chalcedon, Augustine, Bernard, Luther, Calvin, Wesley, the Pietists, and the revivalists.

Trinitarian Christians, Gospel-Centered Missions, the Church, and the Future of Denominationalism

Denominations still matter and continue to matter if they remain committed to historic orthodoxy.  We need conviction and cooperation, boundaries and bridges, structure and Spirit.

Let us move from handwringing to hopefulness.  May God grant to us a genuine renewal and a renewed spirit of cooperation for the good of the Church and for the glory of God.

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