The Baptist Story - A Review

There has been a need for a new textbook on Baptist History for some time. Leon McBeth’s book, The Baptist Heritage had its day, but his presentation of Baptists was slanted toward his perspective on a number of issues. Also, McBeth’s book was published in 1987 before the culmination of the SBC’s conservative resurgence.

As such, The Baptist Story: From English Sect to Global Movement is a welcome volume. Three historians collaborated to write this 300-page volume. Anthony Chute serves at California Baptist University, Michael Haykin teaches at Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, and Nathan Finn recently left Southeastern Baptist Theological Seminary for Union University. The collaborative effort is helpful on a textbook that covers hundreds of years of data because each man has a different area of expertise.

The Baptist Story aims to tell the tale of Baptists from their beginnings to the present in an irenic matter. Besides eating, Baptists excel at quibbling over seemingly trivial matters. The priesthood of all believers (or freedom of conscience) has at times given rise to a contentious spirit in some. The three authors of this work seek to give an even handed explanation for the origins of Baptists, the historic soteriology of the Baptists, and some of the social ills that Baptists have tolerated or even aggravated. This is neither a whitewashing nor an exposé.

Summary

The book contains three sections. The first section deals with Baptists in the 17th and 18th centuries. This is the period of Baptist beginnings, through a time of persecution and possible extinction. At the end of that period, however, Baptists were growing and beginning the modern missionary movement in hopes of taking the gospel to all parts of the globe.

In section two, the authors trace Baptist History through the 19th century, which was a time of rapid expansion and rise to prominence of the Baptists. In particular, the low-church approach of Baptists with little requirement of formal education of clergy allowed a more rapid growth. It also led to theological ignorance, which made Baptists subject to fragmentation and heresy in the face of the challenges of Modernism.

Section three documents the twentieth century through the present. The impact of the World Wars, the Social Gospel, and Liberation Theology are all documented in these chapters. So is the continued growth of Baptists in most lands. The book would be remiss if the Conservative Resurgence of the Southern Baptist Convention were neglected, so thankfully the coverage of that important topic is adequate.

The fourth section outlines some of the basic beliefs of Baptists: those things that make Baptists distinct from other denominations. This final section is the only prescriptive section of the volume; the remainder of the volume is fairly even-handed historical description. Even in this prescription, though, the authors are attempting to describe what has historically made Baptists different. It is apparent, though, that many of these things are also held to be good by them.

Analysis

The greatest contribution of this volume is that it provides an updated resource for those seeking to teach or understand Baptist History. Nearly thirty years after McBeth’s book was published, it was beginning to fall out of favor in many circles. Bebbington’s volume, Baptists Through the Centuries, will likely remain popular. However, The Baptist Story provides a different perspective on Baptists that may be more helpful for American students and better adapted to the college level.

This volume has explanatory power. It is readable and informative. It explains the Baptist movement without devolving into petty critique and promotion of factions. This is a book that explains the Baptist story in a global context, shedding light on the 1/3rd (or so) of worldwide Baptist believers that live outside of the United States. As such it serves to explain the American story and illuminate the global story beyond a missionary narrative. This is a book worth owning.

The Baptist Story aims to be a college level textbook and to provide visual cues along the way. There are textboxes with primary source quotes and pictures of key individuals and locations throughout the text. In addition to these graphics, it would have been beneficial for the volume to include charts and timelines that provide visual representations of the historical progression of Baptists. The Baptist history is complex, so that there is a constant battle between sorting information topically and chronologically. Timelines and charts would have helped readers navigate the transitions.

Another potential improvement for a second edition would be to add a glossary with some of the key theological terms. This is not a theology textbook, it is a history. Still, when concepts like the Social Gospel and Liberation Theology are mentioned, it would be convenient to have a brief explanation close at hand. It is impossible to understand the history of a religious movement without a firm understanding of some contours of the theology. A future edition could be enhanced by supplementing the text with a brief theological glossary.

Conclusion

This is an outstanding overview of Baptist History. I wish it had been published when I took my Baptist History nearly a decade ago. I read thousands of pages of primary sources to gain a similar understanding of the sweep of Baptist History. It is my hope this book will find a prominent place in theological education of Baptist students in the future, as well as in local churches as a means to explain how we got where we are.

The Baptist Story: From English Sect to Global Movement

$36.99

By Dr. Anthony L. Chute, Dr. Nathan A. Finn, Michael A. G. Haykin

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Note: A gratis copy of this book was provided by the publisher with no expectation of a positive review.

Marie Durand - The Story of Faithfulness in Persecution

If you haven’t heard of Reformation Heritage Books before today, you’ve been missing out. They produce a number of fine volumes on theology, particularly on Puritan theology.

One of the most significant contributions they are making to the life of the church is the Christian Biographies for Young Readers series. These are fully illustrated, hardbound books that are suitable early elementary through middle school. The books include drawings and paintings of historic scenes as well as contemporary photos of historical sites.

Summary

The latest edition in this series highlights the life of Marie Durand. Durand was a French Protestant who was born in the early eighteenth century. As a Protestant in Catholic France, her family was at times tolerated, but later on most of the family was arrested for meeting together and worshipping according to their conscience.

As a result of her faith, which led her to disobedience to the crown, Durand spent thirty-eight years in prison. She lived the first 19 years of her life free, though with threat of persecution through many of those years. Nearly her entire adult life was lived in the small confines of the Tower of Constance, where she and a number of other Protestant women and children were imprisoned. Snow and rain fell through the grating in the roof and through the slitted windows. Their meager provisions had to be augmented by their families and friends on the outside.

Inside, Durand served as a teacher to the children, letter writer for many of the other prisoners, and also spiritual leader because of her ability to read and write better than others. Her role was significant, and yet the reality is that she spent nearly four decades in a small one-room prison with only occasional opportunities to go outside into the fresh air.

While the women, including Marie Durand, were imprisoned, their husbands were made to be galley slaves. Or, like Marie’s brother Pierre, were executed outright if they persisted in preaching the Protestant faith.

And yet they persisted.

Analysis and Conclusion

This is what makes this biography so powerful and timely. Durand’s story reminds us of what real persecution looks like. This is not merely social marginalization but absolute, unfettered, and unreasoning punishment. Many men and women lost their lives in exchange for an unsullied conscience.

This book is written as a third person historical biography. In other words, it is not a story book, but a work of non-fiction directed to the young. This is the sort of story that can provide the sort of vicarious memory that a young Christian may need when attempting to sort through the social consequences of a vibrant Christian faith in the coming years. This volume shows that others have paid a greater price, and that it was worth it.

The author, Simonetta Carr, is a native of Italy with a multicultural background. She has been an elementary school teacher, a home-school teacher of eight, and a writer for newspapers and magazines. The book is illustrated by Matt Abraxas who is an artist by trade who lives on Colorado.

These books are not inexpensive, but they are well constructed. The illustrations draw the reader in and help to make the story come alive. This would be a suitable volume to incorporate into a homeschool unit, or as part of church library. The entire series would make an exceptional Christmas or birthday gift for a young reader. This is the sort of reading that will stick to a child’s ribs and provide encouragement in a time of need.

This is the ninth book in the series. Previous titles include John Calvin; Augustine of Hippo; John Owen, Athanasius; Lady Jane Grey; Anselm of Canterbury; John Knox; and Jonathan Edwards. Hopefully there are more planned in the near future. If the future volumes are as good as this one, the church will be blessed.

Marie Durand - Christian Biographies for Young Readers

$17.98

By Simonetta Carr

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Note: A gratis copy of this volume was received from the publisher through Cross Focused Reviews with no expectation of a positive review.

A Brief History of Mercy Ministry in the Church - Part Two

This is part Two of Three posts in a series on the history of Mercy Ministry in the Christian Church. Part One is accessible here.

After introducing the topic and giving a brief overview of Mercy Ministry in the Early Church,  today's post emphasizes the Patristic Era, Medieval Era and Reformation Era.

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Patristics

Photo by .craig. Used by Creative Commons License.  http://ow.ly/IHw3G 

During the Patristic Era, Christianity was the dominant religion in the Roman Empire. This period ended when the Roman Empire fell. The church rapidly went from political underdog to a political favorite. The new found favor led to a convergence between worldly politics and church offices. The bishop in Rome began to have more and more power, eventually gaining more significance in the eyes of the people than the emperor. Notably, it was Pope Leo I who negotiated a treaty with the Attila the Hun, not the Roman Emperor. By the time the Roman Empire collapsed due to repeated invasions in 590 A.D., the Church was a greater uniting force than the vestiges of the Roman government.

 The Emperor Julian, often called “The Apostate,” made an active attempt to remove Christianity from the Roman Empire in the middle of the 4th century. In his diatribe against Christians he wrote, “The impious Galileans not only feed their own poor but ours as well, welcoming them into their agape; they attract them, as children are attracted, with cakes.” Obviously there is some sarcasm here, but the point should be well taken that Christians had a significant impact in their society because they did mercy ministries.

 Ambrose of Milan wrote, “It is justice that renders to each one what is his, and claims not another’s property; it disregards its own profit in order to preserve the common equity.” (Ambrose, On the Duty of the Clergy, i.) So here, the merciful action of Christians is looking after the interests of others even at their own expense.

 For Augustine, the Bishop of the North African city of Hippo, seeking the common good was a demonstration of Christ’s command to demonstrate neighbor love:

“Now you love yourself suitably when you love God better than yourself. What, then, you aim at in yourself you must aim at in your neighbor, namely, that he may love God with a perfect affection. . . . From this precept proceed the duties of human society, in which it is hard to keep from error. But the first thing to aim at is, that we should be benevolent, that is, that we should cherish no malice and no evil design against another. For man is the nearest neighbor of man. (Augustine, Of the Morals of the Catholic Church)”

In the same work, he urges his readers to care for the physical needs of their neighbors. Drawing an all-encompassing circle around the needs of the human body.

“Man, then, as viewed by his fellowman, is a rational soul with a mortal and earthly body in its service. Therefore, he who loves his neighbor does good partly to the man’s body, and partly to his soul. What benefits the body is called medicine; what benefits the soul, discipline. (Augustine, Of the Morals of the Catholic Church)”

What we can see in this period of church history is that there was a theological impetus toward mercy ministry. Augustine, who remains a central figure in the development of Christian doctrine, balanced the need for evangelism with the need for meeting the physical needs of the people around. Far from a novel invention of the millennial evangelicals, mercy ministry has been a core Christian practice.

Medieval

The Medieval period runs from the fall of Rome to the beginning of the Protestant reformation. This is a period of time that sees the Papacy as largely the most significant political force in the known world. The Popes are the kingmakers, since according to the theological understanding of the day, the Pope held the keys to the kingdom of heaven while the kings only controlled daily life.

 Monasticism was a leading movement in implementing mercy ministry in the middle ages. Among the Sayings of the Fathers that record the words of many of the early monks, and which were influential in later monasticism, we have such statements as these:

“From our neighbor are life and death. If we do good to our neighbor, we do good to God: if we cause our neighbor to stumble, we sin against Christ. (From The Sayings of the Fathers, cited in George W. Forell, Christian Social Teachings (Minneapolis: Augsburg, 1966), 85.)

A brother asked an old man: “There are two monks: one stays quietly in his cell, fasting for six days at a time, and laying many austerities upon himself: and the other ministers to the sick. Which of them is more acceptable to God?” The old man answered: “If the brother, who fasts six days, even hung himself up by his nostrils, he could never be the equal of him who ministers to the sick. (Ibid.)”

Thomas Aquinas built on Scripture, church tradition and Aristotelian philosophy to argue: “Justice is a habit whereby a man renders to each one his due by constant and perpetual will.” (Aquinas, Summa Theologica, II/2.58.1.) So internal holiness is not the only goal, because “justice is an external operation, in so far as either it or the thing we use by it is made proportionate to some other person to whom we are related by justice. . . . Therefore the proper act of justice is nothing else than to render to each one his own.” (Aquinas, Summa Theologica, II/2.58.11.) Thomas was operating under a view of nature that held to common natural rights to the earth, and so God’s plan was for the earth to meet all the needs of the inhabitants of earth.

 In addition to these sources, there are many other evidences of active work in ministry done by the church on behalf of the poor. Taking care of the poor was a central pillar in the doctrine of the church. At times it became questionable whether it was consistently central to the practice of the church. However, there is clear evidence that during this period, mercy ministry was viewed as essential to being Christian.

Reformation

For the purposes of this discussion, the Reformation Era runs from 1517 when Luther posted his 95 theses on the doors of the Wittenberg Cathedral to about the end of the 30 Years war. During this time, theological strife was rampant and mixed with political issues as princes and kings were encouraged to engage in wars under religious guise but often for political reasons. This was also a period which saw the rise of the nation-state and a market economy.

 The theological thrust of the Reformation was the recovery of the gospel. In the view of Luther, the gospel had been so misrepresented by the Roman Catholic Church that radical reformation of the church practices and doctrines were required. In that time, though, everyone was “Christian” in the sense that all Europeans were brought into the church through infant baptism. Thus there were few questions about doing good to Christians vs. non-Christians. At the same time, Luther’s 95 Theses were largely driven by a desire to restore just dealings in Europe. Two of the injustices wrapped up in the sale of indulgences were the redirection of economic resources to Rome for improper purposes and the offer of forgiveness without repentance. Theses 43–46 read:

43. Christians are to be taught that he who gives to the poor or lends to the needy does a better work than buying pardons;

44. Because love grows by works of love, and man becomes better; but by pardons man does not grow better, only more free from penalty.

45. Christians are to be taught that he who sees a man in need, and passes him by, and gives [his money] for pardons, purchases not the indulgences of the pope, but the indignation of God.

46. Christians are to be taught that unless they have more than they need, they are bound to keep back what is necessary for their own families, and by no means squander it on pardons.

 Calvin, too, held mercy ministry as a central role of the Christian. These comments come from his treatise on the Ten Commandments, explaining the application of the Eighth Commandment: 

“The purport is, that injustice being an abomination to God, we must render to every man his due. . . . For we must consider, that what each individual possesses has not fallen to him by chance, but by the distribution of the sovereign Lord of all, that no one can pervert his means to bad purposes without committing a fraud on a divine dispensation. ”

Calvin was urging the righteous use of money, which is a form of mercy ministry. In his Institutes, Book 2, Chapter 8, Calvin explains that doing good to neighbors is an essential part of true piety: 

“Because a man does not easily maintain love in all respects unless he earnestly hears God, here is proof also of his piety. Besides, since the Lord well knows, and also attests through his prophets, that no benefit can come from us to him, he does not confine our duties to himself, but he exercises us “in good works toward our neighbor.” The apostle consequently has good reason to place the whole perfection of the saints in love. Elsewhere he quite rightly calls it the “fulfillment of the law,” adding that “he who loves his neighbor has fulfilled the law.””

 More could be said about the function of the external works of righteousness in the life of the Christian, but from these evidences it is clear that the Reformers held mercy ministry as a central function of Christians.

A Brief History of Mercy Ministry in the Church - Part One

Original photo by Alex Proimos, The Hand. Used by Creative Commons License. http://ow.ly/IHuJH

Over the past few decades, conservative Christians have had to “rediscover” the biblical doctrine of mercy ministry because many had retreated from the application of the gospel to society.

Aside from the clear theological error, one reason for this abandonment was a reaction to the strong push by many theologically liberal Protestants to do practical social ministry without proclaiming the gospel. Those who advocated social ministry over the gospel felt that meeting physical needs was the primary function of Christianity and teaching doctrinal truth was a divisive non-essential. 

The somewhat predictable overreaction led many doctrinally conservative Christians to overemphasize theological truth to the exclusion of practical ministries. Additionally, in the 19th and 20th centuries a particular view of the end times became very popular, teaching that the world would be annihilated and an entirely new kind of creation would be made by God. This form of eschatology tended to deemphasize the importance of good works done in this life that were not of an explicitly “spiritual” nature.

 In the middle of the 20th century, there was a rise in a stream of theology called Missional Theology, which tends to focus on a broader view of God’s working in the world. This movement has influenced evangelicals, even those outside of the Missional movement, to return to the earlier Christian patterns that emphasized both proclamation of the gospel and meeting people’s physical needs.

 In a series of three posts on the history of mercy ministry in the Christian tradition, I will attempt to show in very broad terms, that social activism is deeply rooted in the history of the Church. This is something that should characterize the way the church lives in addition to doctrinal orthodoxy.

 In order to gallop through this expansive history in a short time, I have divided Church History into five basic periods. We will look at the role of the church in doing mercy ministry during the Early Church, the Patristic era, then the Medieval era, the Reformation era, and finally the Modern era.  

Early Church

 The Early Church is generally defined as the period from the death of the Apostles to the acceptance of Christianity as a legal religion in the Roman Empire in the first decades of the 4th century. This is a period that was characterized by periodic and regional persecutions of Christians by the pagan Roman Empire. The Christian Church was often marginalized, but more socially than physically in most cases. During this time Christian theologians were fighting to establish legitimacy of the Church and to obtain permission to continue to exist as a Church “above ground.”

 Waldo Beach and H. Richard Niebuhr note that the early church was most known for the assistance provided to fellow Christians. They write, “The most striking quality of the Christians was their agape in the care of their own group, as seen in their assistance to the bereft, to orphans and old people, in the care for prisoners and the sick and those condemned to the mines, and in their hospitality and the sharing of economic goods.”[1] This is likely largely because it was illegal to be Christian and because the church was too small in the early days to be a significant social force.

 However, in the earliest Christian writing after the New Testament, the pursuit of justice on a broader scale is evident. The Epistle of Barnabas, the author (not Barnabas) speaks against the prevailing Roman practice of exposing children: “That we may avoid all injustice and impiety, we have been taught that to expose the newly born is the work of wicked men––first of all because we observe that almost all [foundlings], boys as well as girls, are brought up for prostitution.”

 The author of the Didache writes, “Give to everyone that asks, without looking for any repayment, for it is the Father’s pleasure that we should share His gracious bounty with all men.” This points toward mercy being shown to those around and not merely the Christian community.

 This attitude is described by Tertullian, “One in mind and soul, we do not hesitate to share our earthly goods with one another. All things are common among us but our wives.” This he included in his Apology for Christians. However, Tertullian makes it clear that their acts of mercy were not focused solely on Christians:  

“We have no respect of persons in doing good, because by so doing we do good to ourselves, who catch at no applause or reward from men, but from God only, who keeps a faithful register of our good works, and has ample rewards in store for this universal charity; for we have the same good wishes for emperors as for our nearest friends.”[2]

 Based on the historic evidence, neighbor love was a central aspect in the lives of the Early Church. Largely based on their position as (generally) lower class individuals outside of the usual power structures, it seems that often a great deal of effort was directed within their faith community before pursuing mercy ministry on a public scale.

[1] Waldo Beach and H. Richard Niebuhr, Christian Ethics: Sources of the Living Tradition, 2nd ed. (New York: Knopf, 1973), 53

[2] Tertullian, Apology, chapter XXXVI.