AMERICAN BAPTISTS: A UNIFYING VISION
STUDY DOCUMENT
Preface
The American Baptist Churches are heirs to a rich and powerful heritage. It is rooted in the Bible and has been informed through the centuries by voices speaking in many lands and representing many cultures. Now spread across this continent, we are made up of people who differ significantly in ethnic background, educational opportunity, regional origin, socio-economic status, and theological orientation. Yet, because we are all American Baptists, we also share a common core of convictions, memories, hopes, and purposes.
Today, we are engaged in a search for a fresh sense of identity. This is not because we have no sense of identity at all, but because a true sense of identity must always be a dynamic process. Our identity as American Baptists consists not in the mere repetition of the traditions of the past but in our continuing struggle to understand our calling anew both in the light of our history and in the face of the challenges to which we now must respond. In the midst of our pilgrimage we ask: Who are we and what is the call of Christ to us as we move toward another century? Identity is bound up with mission as well as with memory. It looks to the future as much as to the past. Loyal to our heritage in all its many-splendored variety, we seek to reaffirm our commitment to Jesus Christ in forms appropriate to this time and place, to be grasped once more by the vision of what God has in store for the world and for the Church.
In other words, American Baptists will realize their identity only as they hear the Word of God once more in the midst of the total global community of which they are a part. In the urban technological society which this century has shaped, American Baptists are not a people living in a backwash but are in the mainstream, sharing with those around them the pains and blessings, perils and hopes which are the portion of the human family. Yet, like all those who have acknowledged that Jesus is Lord, we are more than just a segment of this world. We exist in the world for the sake of the world, in Christ’s name placing ourselves at the disposal of the world’s welfare. Our fundamental focus is the al testimony concerning God’s will for the whole world, God’s Christ-centered purpose action, and ultimate goal for human beings in their lives, in their communities, and in their institutions. We will discern our calling and reason for being as we take this focus with complete seriousness.
American Baptist identity cannot be reduced to one or two simple affirmations by means of which we may be said to stand out from among the many communities who make up Christ’s Church. Most, if not all, of the convictions we profess taken individually are to be found also in the life and faith of other denominations. What makes American Baptists what they are, is the way in which these convictions are bound together. When we speak of our identity, we speak not of isolated items but of a special constellation or configuration of elements. The “convictional genes” which continually affect our confession and practice are notable not for any particular characteristic but because in their sum and in their effect upon one another they bring about the total reality which is the American Baptist Churches, USA.
Denominational identity, like human identity, is not fixed and rigid. It is constantly being reshaped as, in the outworking of our life with God, we appropriate under contemporary circumstances the great affirmations which are our legacy from the histories in which we are rooted.
In the material which follows, the Commission offers to the churches what we believe is an accurate account of the convictions which have informed our history, together with a picture of the situation in which we now live, and a summary of the issues which call for our attention as a people. The new awareness of our identity will come, we believe, not from the easy acceptance of what we have presented buy from the study and engagement which we hope our documents will stimulate. Our identity will emerge more sharply into focus as we struggle honestly with the question: Is this truly who we are as American Baptists? If what we have written calls forth among us a candid examination of our heritage, our faith, our practice, and our mission, we shall take a giant step toward a fresh, vital consciousness of what God intends us to be and to do. The Commission asks not for ready acquiescence in its judgments but genuine involvement in the task of determining whether those judgments are correct.
Our research, study, and reflection have led us to believe that American Baptist identity may be understood in what follows. In Part I, “A Basic Premise,” we make assertions about fundamental Christian assumptions – God’s sovereignty, God’s eternal purpose, and God’s calling a particular people to bear witness to his Kingdom. Part II, “The Peculiar People,” highlights some historic Baptist emphases (“convictional genes”). We have selected certain strands of our experience which have pertinence to contemporary concerns. In connection with these insights from our tradition, we point out some implications for the present.
I. A Basic Premise
The basic premise of all Christian doctrine is the sovereignty of God. In grace God has called the whole Church into being in order that is might continue the reconciling ministry of the Incarnate Christ. As part of that great Church, American Baptists have been summoned by God to play their part in the fulfillment of the divine purpose “to unite all things in Christ.” A richly diverse people bound together by a common vision from our history, we bring to the Church’s reconciling ministry a particularly important gift: the conviction that all things, including the Church, are to be tested by and gathered under the Sovereignty of Jesus Christ. The context for everything we affirm and undertake is the Biblical vision of God’s reign in Christ.
I.A. God’s Sovereignty (The Kingdom)
The sovereign Ruler and Redeemer of the universe is the One who has caused the whole structure to be joined together in Christ. Christ is therefore supreme above all things, and in Christ all things hold together. God’s Reign is expressed through Jesus Christ who calls the entire creation, personal and impersonal, natural and spiritual, into a new transforming relationship with God. Christ is Lord both of the Church and of the whole cosmos. The purpose of Christ’s reign is to reconcile all things to God (Colossians 1:20). Nothing and no one is alien to Christ who is the Saviour of the world (John 3:17).
Our ministry and mission are grounded in the conviction that “God was in Christ reconciling the world to himself” (II Corinthians 5:19). We, therefore, rejoice in Christ’s saving power and reach out in compassion to the whole world. The Biblical vision of redemption includes every human being and very human structure. It is on this earth and in this world that Christ works out his purpose for us, and it is here that in the light of the Gospel we discover this central meaning of the human enterprise. As stewards of the Good News and custodians of God’s creation, resources, and gifts, we bear witness to the One who promises to make all things new in Christ. Through the Holy Spirit, the Risen Christ is even now at work in the midst of human institutions and in individual lives. As Christ’s co-workers, therefore, we testify to what Christ is seeking to do, and so we become a sacrament of hope in the world.
This means that the world cannot be given over to any other sovereignty than Christ’s. Every creature is destined to be in community with all others under the will of God (Isaiah 2:2-4). In the Biblical vision all are members of a single humanity and heirs of a common hope. The world belongs to Christ, its rebellion and fall notwithstanding. The Reign of God is present here and now, even though it is also yet to come in its fullness when Christ returns.
Though the visible Church in any form cannot equate itself with “the Kingdom of God,” it is called to take up gladly its commission to be an agent or sign of the Kingdom, and to order its life accordingly. Under the gracious Reign of Christ, American Baptists celebrate their interdependence and relationships, their covenant and community. We are certainly not able to “produce” the Kingdom, but we bear witness joyfully to the possibility of a new order in the light of God’s Reign, hearing daily the Lord’s prayer: “Thy Kingdom come, they will be done on earth…” In an age of confused priorities, we engage eagerly in the exciting mission adventure of planting new churches, calling women and men to acknowledge the Lord Christ and to welcome the new life which breaks in when the Reign of God is allowed to transform human life and affairs.
I.A.1. The Priority of Vision
Our first priority as American Baptists is, therefore, not program but vision, a vision of the saving Reign of Christ and of the discipleship Christ demands. Discipleship is the discipline which makes us ready to announce the Rule of God and to act in obedience to God’s will. Full of hope, we bring to the world the joyful message of God’s mighty deeds in the past, even as we testify to this same God as the One who acts in the present and in the future. Forgiveness, reconciliation, peace, and justice will distinguish the life and community of the people of God. As we issue the call to repentance and faith in Jesus Christ, so will we point also to God’s ethical demands. The two cannot be separated in the Gospel. Our personal relationship to Christ, and our spiritual nurture and growth are bound to the ministry of justice and peace in the world. All Christians are called both to work for the realization of God’s purposes in the world and to attend to the quality of their own inner life. Our hope in the return of Christ as the final goal of human history is grounded in our faith that Christ in his Kingdom is really present here and now. From the prophets and from the Lord Jesus we know that our faith must be practiced in the midst of our specific history. Our hope must be embodied in particular situations. The call and character of the Kingdom are to be expressed and enacted precisely in the hungry, politically exploding world of which we are part. There we must do the truth as well as speak it.
This grand message of the Reign of God in Christ, present and coming, offers us as a people a profound unifying vision. The Bible summons us to be such a people, living in community, convinced that the purpose and end of their community is mission.
I.A.2. A Theology of Mission
The mission we have as a people is first God’s mission. It originates from and belongs to the very specific God whose grace and will are declared and enacted in the history of the people Israel and in Jesus Christ. The mission comes to us because we are a community formed by the Incarnate Christ to bear witness to God’s redeeming Rule and to declare God’s life changing claims. It is a mission universal in scope, a mission inseparably related to God’s cosmic purposes. Accepting the reality of God’s Reign, we urge others also to receive it in glad obedience.
The mission we have been given, as Christ’s mission, is always incarnational. The Word must become flesh in every time and place. We have a Gospel to share which has to do with the whole of human life, both inner and outer, physical and spiritual. God’s purpose through the Church is to unite all things in the unity of Christ.
Reconciliation and new life with God are the theme of God’s Rule and Christ’s Lordship. We announce God’s determination to replace our present sinful, broken state with a world of righteousness and joy. The purpose of every individual life is to accept and live under the Rule of God in Jesus Christ. Every human person has, in fact, failed to fulfill this purpose. Therefore, we who rejoice in the Lordship of Christ have received this charge: to declare and demonstrate reconciliation and new life in the Holy Spirit, to make it plain that those who would escape from sin and its consequences, from bondage, anxiety, and despair must turn in repentance and faith to Jesus Christ and accept in him the New Creation.
Jesus Christ means that the human condition is not hopeless despite the universality of sin and the tragedy of our separation from God victory of Christ over sin and death proclaims that reconciliation with God is open to everyone. Since their very beginnings, Baptists have been moved by the missionary imperative to share this good news with the world. Called into covenant with God and with one another, we have understood ourselves to exist in order to honor and bear witness to the Lordship of the Christ under whom we live and through whom the new life is given. We are a “peculiar people” set apart in order that as a redeemed community we may be a community in mission.
I.A.3. The Life of Covenant
Citizens of the Realm of God, of the Redeemer’s Kingdom, are called in Christ to attend seriously to life in community, to the meaning of our pilgrimage together in covenant. As God’s people, we celebrate our covenant with God and with one another, rejoicing that Christ has delivered us from the isolation off self-willed autonomy. By definition as individuals, churches, and associations we are called into family of God, and we strive in the Spirit to order our life accordingly.
In the light of this vision, we also reach out beyond our own fellowship and enter freely into relationships with other communions and bodies of believers. There is one kingdom, not many kingdoms; and each family of faith under the Rule of God is related to the same Lord and to the same sovereign call. This reality is rightly expressed in our historic ecumenical stance.
In loyalty to the Redeemer who realizes the Reign of God through communities gathered in covenant, we affirm our fellowship together and with all those who make up the whole people of God.
I.B. God’s People (The Church)
God’s Rule in Jesus Christ is expressed in and proclaimed by the people of God, the Church. In the Bible God’s purpose is always to create a people for the divine mission “…you are a chosen race, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, God’s own people, that you may declare the wonderful deeds of the One who called you out of darkness into a marvelous light.” (I Peter 2:9) Like Israel of old, the Church is the holy people of God, God’s special creation for a special ministry on behalf of all humanity. They are a “peculiar” people, a treasure in the midst of the nations. All human beings are God’s, but members of the human family have been chosen for a unique and particular role, to live among the earth’s folk as a “kingdom of priests and a holy nation.” To be “holy” is to be distinct, set apart, and dedicated. To be a “priest” is to be a bridge-builder, a go-between God and humankind, a bridge which makes possible also the unity of humankind itself. That is, the Church points to Jesus Christ, the mediating Lord of history, and is ordained an agent of that Lordship.
In the Bible, the form of the people of God may develop and change, but the mission of the Divine Ruler remains the same. It is this mission and the vision it embodies which is meant to determine the outward shapes and forms and structures we adopt.
II. A Peculiar People
American Baptists have long sought to understand their task and mission as a particular part of a peculiar people, a people set apart for a special purpose. We have long recognized the larger family of the Church and championed cooperative Christianity. The interaction of our roots with time and place has also produced a constellation of gifts to the Church which are distinctly our own. We carry these with us like “convictional genes” as we move into the future. What are they? What kind of people are we, on the basis of what we have been?
II.A. A Contemporary People
We are a people who are in dialogue with the issues of their time. It was a particular set of times and circumstances which produced the folk called “Baptists” in the first place.
II.A.1. The Context Which Called Us Forth
Our story begins in seventeenth century English Dissent. Baptists were at first found among those who challenged the established order in the name of the purity of the Church, and they were quickly led into the separatist wing of the Puritan movement. Pursuing their convictions to the limit, they soon broke away on their own and, in the face of severed persecution, became ardent protagonists of complete religious liberty. Both in Britain and in North America, Baptists became distinguished as those who pressed the issues of religious freedom until it issued in a demand for the full separation of the Church from the State. We played a crucial role in the process by which this remained a people vigilant for the liberty of the religious conscience.
It is in this context that our stress on “independence” for the local congregation is to be understood. Words like “independence” and “autonomy” were intended to point to the congregation’s freedom to respond to Christ’s Lordship against the pretensions of the State or the established church rather than to define the relationship of churches to one another. The churches were to be independent from the establishment; but they were bound together in “the common faith,” a community “under Christ their only head.”
II.A.2. The Challenge of Our Kind of World
As Baptists became a people in response to a particular time and set of challenges, so American Baptists seek to shape themselves and to minister in a new time and in the face of new challenges. To address identity today is to recognize the context in which we live. Consider these issues as examples of what confronts us as we respond to God’s call to being and to mission:
With accelerating intensity we must deal with the growing assertive power of world religions, once regionally localized but now spread worldwide. Religion today plays a conspicuous role in war and strife in such countries as Ireland, Iran, Lebanon, Pakistan, and India. Far from urging the world toward peace and unity, humanity’s faiths contribute to growing disharmony among the peoples and the nations.
In many ways science and technology are the dominant factors of our age, and for large numbers of people confidence in science has become a form of religion. The obvious achievements of science and technology have given scientists an authority akin to that of priests, and scientific approach to truth has become virtually a universal article of faith. But science and technology also have terrifying potential for destruction, and unchecked by higher moral standards they could threaten the very existence of the world as we know it.
As evidence of this, take the question of the sustainability of the fragile biosphere “spaceship earth.” We are all too familiar with the appalling danger of nuclear holocaust, and some competent opinion holds that the ecological crisis which faces us is as serious a threat as that of nuclear war. The quest for a peaceful and ecologically viable world is clearly of critical importance for planetary human life.
For great masses of human beings such concerns as these are overshadowed by the basic fact that they have hardly enough food with which to feed their families. The tyranny of grinding poverty enslaves billions of people, even as others live in comfort. The gap between the developed and the developing nations continues to widen rather than to shrink. In our own land, the burden of want lies heavily upon a far greater proportion of the population than ought to be conceivable in a nation so well endowed.
Does the world have any hope for the future? That may be said to be the issue which sums up the context in which American Baptists live today. Ours is a time of almost unprecedented uncertainty, and this has given rise to an incredible variety of confused and confusing eschatologies, some claiming Biblical authority. Humanity needs a fresh vision which refuses to be resigned to negativity and fear but reaches out to new possibilities for the common good in a just and peaceful world community.
If American Baptists are true to their heritage, they will not retreat from the opportunity for witness and ministry which such a context presents. This is the world in which Christ, the Lord of history, has placed us. Like our forebears who fought for religious liberty (a principle of civil structure), we too will announce the Reign of God in the social and political order as well as in the hearts of women and men. With Walter Rauschenbush and Martin Luther King, Jr., as churches, as individuals, and as a denomination, we will seek to proclaim the Gospel also to the institutions and powers which govern and shape human life. We will refuse to be silent on matters of public and national policy, or to be absent from the struggle which resists the terrible evils of our time. When the need of the hour is for God’s word and deed, we cannot allow ourselves to be limited by any secular authority which does not approve of the message we bear.
II.B. A Biblically Based People
Baptists have consistently championed the Bible as the bedrock of Christian life and practice. No matter how different their points of view or how diverse the matters before them, the Bible has been central to their existence. Every period of our history and every movement among us bears testimony to this allegiance to the supremacy of Scripture. The people and the angles of vision may vary greatly: John Smyth and Thomas Helwys, William Carey, Augustus Strong, A.J. Gordon, William Rainey Harper, Helen Barrett Montgomery, William Newton Clarke, Walter Rauschenbusch, Harry Emerson Fosdick, Martin Luther King, Jr. In every case, however, their vigorous Biblical emphasis can be documented. Even the controversies which have troubled us bear witness to the devotion to the Bible which has characterized us.
The Baptist insistence on “Scripture only” was also linked early to the conviction that every person has the right, responsibility, and privilege to interpret the Bible for under the guidance of the Spirit. The Church and the clergy could not impose an interpretation by force. However, this did not amount to the assertion of an individualism which uses private understanding to fragment the body of Christ. The Baptist heritage has strong precedents for the view that “sola Scriptura” and “soul competency” are valid only as practiced within the context of the Christian community. Individual conscience is nurtured by the fellowship of the gathered people as the Holy Spirit works within the Body and as collectively and individually the Lordship of Chris is experienced. Scripture is the Word of God in the midst of the Church. Private and individual interpretation is a right given by and under God and tested within God’s community.
American Baptists are urgently called today, as local churches and as individuals, to rediscover and renew this love for the Bible. It is crucial that the Bible, under the leading and guidance of the Spirit, be allowed to give birth to the people we are to become. The Bible must be allowed to speak to us, directing in our times what we should do and what we should be. Let God’s Word addressing us in Holy Scripture give rise to reflection and let reflection give rise to action. In the best sense, the question of our identity calls us “back to the Bible.”
II.C. An Inclusive People
To be God’s people is to be an inclusive people. That is the nature of Christian community in the Bible. An inclusive people is one in which there is diversity in unity through interdependence, a people united in Christ. The Gospel breaks down the walls of hostility (Ephesians 2:14), and the Body of Christ by its very nature seeks to overcome the divisions which exist so sinfully on earth, divisions grounded in race, social class, and cultural background (Galatians 3:28).
American Baptist both in their history and in their present reality embody this Biblical vision to a remarkable degree. There is among us today a great diversity of race, ethnicity, culture, and theology. This is rooted in and consistent with the past from which we have emerged. Roger Williams in the 17th century related positively to Native Americans. Our early mission outreach involved a stress upon ethnic evangelism so that by 1911 there were more than 500 bilingual churches among us (including German, Italian, Swedish, Danish, Norwegian, Hungarian, Hispanic, Asian, and Native American). The Home Mission societies built major b ridges in Black-White relationships through the founding of Black educational institutions following the Civil War. This tradition has continued in more recent decades and has seen growth in the role of Black, Hispanic, and Asian American churches in American Baptist life. One of the great opportunities for American Baptists today is provided by the extent to which these many communities are constituent parts of our fellowship. There is special potential in the contribution now increasingly being made by groups who have often in the past been kept on the margins or relegated to relative silence.
The Black Baptist experience is a high water mark in the history of the Church. It helped preserve the dignity of human beings in the midst of intolerable oppression, and pointed a whole people toward a hope which defied their present circumstances. With their powerful preaching vibrant worship, and outspoken public witness, Black Baptists today are a living testimony to the power of Christ to resist all forms of injustice and to enable men and women to triumph over the worst that can be done to them by others.
Native Americans express the spirit of a people who have never yielded to the cruel demands which have been placed upon them by those who deprived them of most of their land. In the face of inhuman socio-economic pressures they have maintained their independence, refusing to concede their way of life to a society which has all too often despoiled the streams, forests, and plains which it seized from them by force and cunning. By their faith and life they point eloquently to the possibility of another mode of being in close harmony with the earth which is the Lord’s (Psalm 24:1).
Hispanic Americans, in turn, have never been intimidated by poverty or social isolation into sub subservience to the unjust. Whether toiling in the fields or providing much of the lab or force in America’s cities, often under fearful conditions, they have refused to retreat into silence. Their spirit of courageous dissent is constantly reinforced by their capacity to celebrate with enthusiasm the presence of the living Christ in their midst.
Asian Americans bring special gifts and challenges to American Baptist life. Unlike most other immigrant peoples in the US they are linked to great cultures in which Christianity is a minority faith. They represent points of significant whose place in world history cannot fail to be of tremendous importance in the future. They also pose the question whether expressions of the Gospel appropriate to an Asian context can flourish here as well or must be made to conform to Western patterns. By the nature of their origins they keep before American Baptists one of the vital issues of contemporary faith and witness: What does Christ mean for the great religious systems of humankind, most of which originated in Asia?
American Baptists are also greatly the richer for the strong ministry of women in our midst. Women were ordained by the Free Will Baptists as early as the 18th century. We celebrate the remarkable contribution of women like Helen Barrett Montgomery, president of the denomination, Bible translator, and advocate of women’s rights. We have benefited from the service rendered by a host of women who have given leadership in a variety of denominational offices, in education, and in mission work of all kinds both at home and overseas.
In the course of this profoundly diverse history, American Baptists have sought also to be inclusive theologically, despite the pain this has often brought us. We recognize clearly that true Christian inclusiveness revolves around an evangelical center for which Scripture is basic and in which the Good News of the forgiveness of sin through a personal relationship to Jesus Christ is central, but we refuse to allow differences in faith and conviction to relegate brothers and sisters to second class citizenship. Our historic insistence on the right of dissent under the sovereignty of Christ mandates that we be open to the new light which can still break forth from God’s holy Word.
II.C.1. Timely Questions
As we celebrate this Gospel inclusiveness in our time, American Baptists find ourselves presented with the opportunity to respond to some vital questions and to make some crucial decisions. We are at present somewhat divided on these matters. We are still called to make our heritage a matter of deed as well as word, and to deal Biblically and prayerfully with issues. There is no glory in diversity unless the strengths of that diversity can be united into a common thrust which has focus, direction, and energy.
II.C.2. Perceptions and Contributions
The effort to realize the vision of an inclusive American Baptist community requires that we perceive sensitively the contribution being made to our identity by the different parts of our denominational mosaic. We must be patient with the process by which different ethnic groups learn, after years of rejection and suspicion, to live and minister together. The whole is invited to be ready to receive the gifts of each part, and all are called to strive toward genuine mutuality. It is not that “they” would join “us,” whoever the “they” or the “us” might be, but that each should join the other in the full recognition of the riches every community brings.
How much richer and more powerful American Baptist life could be if we could but give full reign to the contribution now being made by the Black, Asian, Hispanic, and Native American communities. Leadership roles and positions at the national and regional levels, in theological education, and pastorates in predominately Caucasian churches should be open to these rich diverse peoples of our denomination. Our spirituality, theology, and sense of corporate being can be given new dimensions if we can learn to hear and accept one another for what we are and have to offer, none seeking to dominate, but all being ready to move toward the others.
If we are to be what our inclusive vision portends, women also will need to be free to fulfill their roles in American Baptist life and ministry. Our history is full of the deep and powerful contribution women have made, and we should not delay in opening every possible door to their dedication and energy. Some progress has recently been made at many levels in this regard, but there have also been serious disappointments, and movement is still painfully slow everywhere. Women stand among us with rich resources of intellect, gift, and spirituality. American Baptists are called to remove every barrier from their way so that we may be the fully inclusive Christian fellowship proclaimed by Scripture and by our own past.
In sum, as the uniqueness of each aspect of the American Baptist family is affirmed, our larger identity will be found in a genuine mutuality among the parts on behalf of the richness of the whole. With such an inclusive identity realized, American Baptists will model true Christian community, and by their character so defined will bear witness in a pluralistic world to God’s great reconciling intention.
II.C.3. Cooperating Christians
The vision of the Church as an inclusive community, diverse but unified through interdependence, is the foundation of American Baptists’ commitment to cooperative Christianity. The Church is one in Jesus Christ. We should act as one. Despite our history of strong convictions on theological and other issues, therefore, we have steadily refused to be exclusivistic or sectarian in our approach to other denominations and the larger Church.
Our ecumenical relationships today reflect the Biblical faith we share with the entire Body of Christ. Although we have not wished to be bound by human creeds, we joyfully take our stand in historic Christian orthodoxy. American Baptists are clearly Trinitarian, confessing the one true God as Eternal Creator, Redeeming Saviour, and Empowering Holy Spirit. We acknowledge the Lord Jesus Christ to be both fully human and fully divine. We proclaim Christ’s sinless life, atoning death, mighty resurrection and triumphant return to consummate God’s eternal reign. With the Bible as our final authority in all matters of faith and life, we embrace the Reformation stress on grace alone, faith alone, Christ alone, and Scripture alone. With the evangelical tradition in which we stand, we are committed to the power of the Gospel and its universal proclamation.
Given this adherence to the classical Christian faith, American Baptists from the outset have worked freely with other Christians in the mission enterprise of the Church. We took part in the 1910 International Missionary Conference at Edinburgh. The following year we joined the world-wide Faith and Order Movement. American Baptists also became charter members of both the World Council of Churches and the National Council of Churches, in each case playing a significant role in making the Free Church tradition known among other communions. In these world and national bodies, and in local ecumenical groups, American Baptists have given outstanding leadership, and have made a notable impact on behalf of the Baptist witness. Drawing upon the rich Biblical view of the Church which has shaped us, we have sought to enhance the unity of the church for the sake of the unity of the world. For us, this unity is not an option, but a sacred gift and trust.
II.D. A Redeemed People
From earliest times Baptists have emphasized the quality of the Church’s life. They have insisted on the necessity of Christian experience as the basis for church membership. The Church is a fellowship of believers, we have said, and entry into the Church should be preceded by evidence of faith in Jesus Christ and a life changing personal relationship to God in the Holy Spirit. A regenerate Church should lead to “visible saints,” Christians who not only speak of their Christian experience but who live it out in deed. Because such a view of church membership required scrutiny of a person’s testimony and practice, infant membership was rejected as unscriptural. The “Believers’ Church” remains still a foundational concept in Baptist identity.
It follows that the regenerate Church is a “gathered” body, not a geographical parish. This, too, has consistently distinguished Baptists from many other communions. What matters is not the boundaries of a neighborhood, but the reality of our relationship to Christ and the character of our experience of the Gospel.
II.D. 1. Membership in the Redemptive Body
Baptist convictions about the regenerate Church clearly involve important convictions about baptism. If baptism is a sign of new life in Christ, an entrance demonstration and seal, a public declaration of this new life in Christ and of participation in Christ’s Body, who should be baptized and on what basis? The Baptist answer has consistently been: regenerate membership means “believer’s baptism.” Confession of sin and conversion of heart should accompany baptism, even as repentance, faith, and baptism belong together in the New Testament. Baptism testifies to incorporation into the Body of Christ, and it is also an ordination to the service of Christ. A personal decision and commitment to discipleship are essential. Such faith and obedience demand a person mature enough to understand what is happening. As an act of faith and obedience, baptism is an instrument of the Holy Spirit for the blessing of the believer, and in this sense is a “sacrament” (a term not foreign to early Baptists).
For most Baptists the New testament mode of baptism has been immersion, though it has also been readily acknowledged that the spiritual realities to which baptism testifies are more important than the symbolic form. Among American Baptists today there are continuing discussions of this and other questions about baptism.
We need not be afraid of such questions, if only we discuss them in a spirit appropriate to our vision of the Church and recognize that the primary focus should be upon believer’s baptism and the gathered Church.
II. D. 2. Discipleship and the Redemptive Body
The regenerate fellowship is never static. To be a member is to be a disciple. To enter the household of faith is to enter a new family, and growth is to be expected. A commitment to the gathered Church is a commitment to a lifelong process of maturation in a disciplined context of training and sustenance. Culture Christianity and cheap grace are not enough. To prepare for obedience in the service of Christ’s Kingdom involves a journey which does not end in this life.
II. D. 3. The Regenerate Church and the Redeemed World
The regenerate Church anticipates a redeemed world. Like the individual saint, the Church should be both visible and active in the world. Our vision goes beyond individual experience in the conviction that God is also at work seeking to redeem the agencies and institutions of society. To confess Jesus Christ as Lord of history means taking up the responsibility to work together to bring history and its societies into closer conformity to God’s will revealed in Christ.
Therefore, American Baptists insist that social witness and evangelical personal piety belong together as a balanced whole. The Bible in both Testaments is concerned about all the forces and actions which rob people of power and possession. Since today corporate institutions even more than individuals shape the social fabric, redemptive witness means ministry within those institutions too. As a contemporary people we are called to strive to enact the Biblical vision of corporate and social salvation even as we proclaim the Gospel to individual folk. A regenerate Church lives as a sacrament of hope in the midst of the world’s institutions, a community of hope which anticipates the reality of God’s promise to make all things new.
II. E. An Interdependent People
The local congregation is not truly a church if it lives an entirely separate life. Baptists at many points in their history have resisted a weakened sense of the importance of the larger Church, even as they have upheld the primary status of the congregation.
II. E. 1. Biblical Setting
The images of the Bible are community images. Even being “born again” means to be born into a family. The Church of the Book of Acts and of the Epistles is one in which local congregations influence one another interdependently in an atmosphere of mutual trust and respect. There is no sense there of autonomous self-sufficiency.
For American Baptists, two Biblical images serve as crucial guides: the image of the covenant in both the Old and the New Testaments and the image of the Body of Christ which permeates the New Testament.
In the Bible, covenant assumes that God is sovereign. In grace and goodness, God gives a particular inheritance and commission to a people who then receive certain promises connected with the covenant. The covenant, will, or testament (diatheke in Greek) is made between God and the people, but as a result those who enter it participate in a kinship with one another. They are sisters and brothers under the “will” as part of the family of God. Throughout Israel there was a profound Testament pattern. As people are drawn to God, the covenant maker, so they are drawn to one another. Mutuality and interdependence are inescapable. It is not accidental that covenant played so clear a role for early Baptist churches and is so important today among American Baptists. Nor is a covenant simply a contract among more or less equal partners. Horizontal agreements within the community are grounded in our common vertical relationship to the Sovereign God.
Covenant is also a major image in the ministry of Jesus and throughout the New Testament. This image is enriched by the Apostle Paul when he uses yet another picture as a primary representation of the community of believers, namely the Body of Christ. Two basic principles emerge from this image: diversity and unity. Diversity of function and ministry is not divisive in the Church. It is normal and necessary. But in the midst of diversity there is also unity realized through interdependence. All parts of the Body are interrelated and depend upon one another. No part is self-sufficient or detached. Without both diversity and organic unity, there can be no Body (I Corinthians 12:19,25). The parts of members – diversity – would not be parts or members at all apart from the Body – unity.
This interdependence applies both to the local congregation and to the larger relationships into which congregations enter.
In Scripture the word “body” is singular (I Corinthians 10:17, 12:12-14; Romans 12:5; Ephesians 1:23; Colossians 2:19, 3:15; Hebrews 10:5). The Bible does not speak of the “bodies” of Christ, but of the one community of which Christ is the Head.
II.E.2. The Associational Principle
Responding to these Biblical images, Baptists from the beginning have sought to bind themselves together through the associational principle. Local congregations, while true churches, are to be understood in relation to the larger Body of Christ. Through associations of various kinds, Baptist polity integrates the individual fellowship into the larger expression of Christ’s Body. Patterned after the Body, the association allows for the freedom of the local congregation within the covenant, even as the individual member is free within the covenant of the constituent fellowship.
This associational principle, with its mutuality and interdependence, characteristic especially of our Philadelphia heritage, is one of the most important “convictional genes” of American Baptists. For our forebears, the churches were independent from the Establishment and were free in matters of worship, order, discipline, and service. But they were not isolated from one another. They consulted frequently with one another, and there are very early examples of annual fellowship sessions. Joint meetings often produced confessional statements. In time permanent assemblies were created locally, regionally, and nationally; and around the world such bodies have become an integral part of Baptist life.
American Baptists have known their greatest strength when our congregations have chosen to associate with one another. There have been moments (notably in the nineteenth century) when an individualistic strain has asserted itself and “autonomy” has been stressed. But this had more to do with the culture of the times than with our own distinctive Biblical heritage.
The associational principle has much to do with the sharing of power. Because for the Body of Christ both unity and diversity are vital components, historic Baptist polity and practice recognize shared power according to the functions of the members. Each member is guaranteed the exercise of her or his gifts, and this in turn provides a sense of identity with or belonging to the Body. In the Body, power is not exercised to control portions of it. Here there is no room for a ruling class. Power is both vertical and horizontal. Christ is the Head of the Church. Under Christ each member participates in making the decisions which affect the life of the community. Our vision of the Church requires that authority proceed from the members to the pastor and from the pastor to the members, from local churches to their association and from the association to the local churches. There is reciprocity at all levels, local, regional, and national. In all cases authority is exercised in submission to another through the association and by means of our representational system. This provides the interdependence we need and grounds our denominational identity and strength.
“Autonomy” is a word often used even today by Baptists, but its implications are hard to reconcile with our heritage. Since it literally means “self-rule,” it clashes with our convictions about responsible freedom under the Lordship of Christ within the context of the interdependent Body. When “autonomy” is appealed to in the sense of radical independence and isolation, it approximates the basic sin of hubris, a self-centeredness of godlike quality which is foreign to the nature of Christian relationship and of the covenant portrayed in the image of the Body of Christ. We need one another if we are to bear faithful witness in the midst of today’s oppressive cultural, social, and political forces. Our watchwords are freedom and interdependence, congregation and association. Mutuality which affirms the diversity of gifts, not independence, would be the basis of our life together under the Rule of Christ.
II.E.3. The Ministry of the Whole People of God
The image of the Body, with its mutuality and interdependence, undergirds yet another emphasis long found among Baptists, namely, the ministry of the whole people of God, or the priesthood of all believers. All the people of God are called to ministry, to priesthood. There is no function in the Body which is reserved exclusively to a particular class of ordained clergy. God gives to everyone the “ministry of reconciliation” in its fullest sense.
This conviction, rediscovered by the Reformation, has a special place among American Baptists. It is rooted in the imagery found especially in Ephesians 4 and Corinthians 12. Every part of the Body has been given a gift for ministry (Ephesians 4:7), and every such gift is necessary to the ministry of the whole. No gift or individual ministry is to be regarded as insignificant or unimportant (I Corinthians 12). The Church in its mission functions fully and well “through the due activity of each part.” The meaning is the same whether we have in view the local congregation, the denomination as a whole, or the ecumenical community throughout the world. The mission involves the ministry of all the people of God and of every aspect of the Body. We are all ordained to our ministry in baptism. All the people of God engaged in ministry, especially in the “marketplace,” is an expression of the highest doctrine of our faith, namely the Incarnation.
Within the total ministry of the Church exists the special ministry of the pastor who, acknowledging Jesus Christ as the Chief Shepherd, helps “to equip the saints” for their ministry (Ephesians 4:11) and helps to build up the Body. This the pastor does by preaching the Word, administering baptism and the Lord’s Supper, and guiding the congregation in worship, mission, and service. While an integral part of the community to whom she or he is responsible, the pastor provides a focus for the unity of the life and witness of the Church, and is called to vigilance for the truth of the apostolic message and the mission of the Kingdom. The pastor’s authority resides in Jesus Christ, authenticated in and communicated by the community of faith. This is an authority whose power is not of control and domination but of weakness and servanthood (Philippians 2:5-8). Its sign is the pastor presiding at the Lord’s Table where the symbol of God’s Kingdom is not the sword and crown, but bread and wine, the broken body of the Lord.
Since no pastoral functions are exclusively restricted to the pastor, the distinctive nature of the pastor’s ministry should be found in his or her role as theologian and teacher. In line with Baptist practice and tradition, in which the pastor primarily preaches the Word and expounds the Scriptures, pastoral leadership today means especially discerning and interpreting the ways of God in relation to the complexities of the world in which we live. Corporate, institutional, and organizational issues must be dealt with as well as the continuing pastoral, personal challenges which emerge in the congregation.
The pastor, understood pre-eminently as theologian, serves in order that the saints might be equipped for the work of ministry. The laity (from laos or people) are the ministering Body. They are to be prepared for ministry to one another and with a view to the many roles of liturgical, administrative, and educational leadership to which they may be called in the Body. It should never be forgotten that the major arena of the ministry of the laity is the world, the institutions of society, beginning with the home, in which they live and work. The calling of the people of God is a ministry of persuasion, influence, and negotiation in these institutions, to the end that they may fulfill their true vocation under the vision of the Kingdom of God. The laity must, therefore, be prepared not only for the personal pilgrimage which is before them but also for parts they must play in the complex and urgent issues which dominate the corporate, institutional milieu in which they constantly move.
Pastoral ministries extend beyond the local congregation. Persons are called to lead our larger associational bodies regionally and nationally. Titles such as executive minister, executive director, and general secretary emphasize the administrative aspects of ministry, reflecting a business model. There is a growing consensus of recovering the pastoral model at every level, which is more ecclesial and Biblical, reflected in most denominations as bishop, presbyter, and deacon. Early Baptists recognized the need for a larger pastoral ministry and some indeed called it the office of bishop, even as do some European Baptists currently, and gave to it the functions of oversight of the churches and evangelism. This ecclesial model that affirms the relationship existing among all aspects of our denominational fellowship is a pastoral one, within which all other functions as theologian, preacher, teacher or administrator can be subsumed.
II.F. A Missional People
Baptists have for a long time been convinced that “the Church exists by mission as fire exists by burning.” Our missionary societies in the nineteenth century gave concrete expression to this missionary impulse. Our identity is truly established by mission.
The beginning of the modern mission movement is usually attributed to the British Baptist William Carey and his associates who sent him to India. Stimulated by Carey’s work, Baptists in America shared in the inauguration of a dynamic new era of Christian outreach. The enlarged sense of mission resulted in a welter of new organizations intended to extend the influence of the Gospel and to reform American society. A new wave of revivals was accompanied by the rapid spread of Sunday schools, denominational colleges, and societies for foreign and home missions, Bible translation and distribution, and Christian literature publication. Simultaneously, a host of reform movements sprang up to promote temperance, peace, prison reform, anti-slavery, and other good causes. Baptists shared in these movements, sometimes organizing their own societies, notably those for foreign missions, home missions, publications, Bible, and education.
Some resisted the mission movement which stimulated new thrusts in evangelism and mission. In the end, however, the challenge was accepted and Baptists became a truly missionary people. In the United States, Baptists had already been stimulated by the Great Awakening of the 18th century and the development of many new churches, two factors which made them ready for the new missionary thrust which emerged in the early 1800s. A foreign mission society (The General Convention of the Baptist Denomination in the United States for Foreign Missions, (1814) was formed to support the Judsons in Burma, and the American Baptist Home Mission Society (1832) was organized to support John Mason Peck and the establishment of mission outreach in the western United States.
II.F.1. The Larger Setting
American Baptist identity is strongly linked to the role American Baptists have played in world evangelization. In the Constitution of the General Missionary (later Triennial) Convention, American Baptists agreed to the Redeemer’s Kingdom.”
Our overseas witness, under God, has brought into being large church bodies now in fellowship with us. In these churches today there are as many members as there are in our own home community. In international mission American Baptists from the outset have encouraged national leaders to take responsibility for themselves and the future of their churches. Unhampered by a complicated creedal system, and proclaiming the basic realities of the Gospel, the missionaries urged indigenous development and leadership in countries around the world. Many of those reached with the Gospel have been from groups on the margins of their societies. The experience of new life in Christ within a Church which believes in participation and partnership has meant for them liberation and empowerment. Through the Board of International Ministries, American Baptists minister today in relationship to these indigenous bodies in an atmosphere of Christian sharing and mutuality. The extent and effectiveness of this mission enterprise is testimony to the loyalty, faithfulness, and generosity of a host of American Baptist laity whose stewardship has undergirded all that has been done.
American Baptists have also been notably involved in the ecumenical aspects of world mission. Ministering cooperatively with other Christians, we have supported schools, colleges, seminaries, hospitals, publication ministries, and many different forms of outreach around the globe. Across the years American Baptists have also made important contributions to the cause of religious liberty and social justice in numerous countries.
II.F.2. The Local Connection
In our contemporary life, American Baptists are being enriched by a new phase of modern mission. Increasing numbers of people from our overseas partner churches are settling in the United States and taking their place in the American Baptist community. The major influx of Hispanic, Haitian and Asian immigrants since the Vietnam War is a national event of great significance resulting in the remarkable growth of Hispanic, Haitian and Asian American Baptist churches which will radically change the character of our denominations.
American Baptists have every reason to welcome this ethnic complexity. It is deeply rooted in our heritage. We are a diverse people, glad to affirm that “God has made of one blood all peoples to dwell upon the face of the earth” (Acts 17:26). We have been called “for such a time as this” in American history.
II.F.3. A Global Understanding and Mission
Stirred by Christ’s call to mission and to a global concern, and encouraged by the confluence of ethnic streams which puts us in the mainstream of history, American Baptists are challenged to go forward in hope and confidence, striving for a fresh perception of the world and their ministry in it.
Human sin is everywhere and human beings need to be set right with God. The Gospel is to be preached to this end. The marvelous message of God’s grace to individual persons is to be declared always in relation to the questions of justice which plague the earth. God has made the world and cares about it. The whole context of our humanity, therefore, is involved in our mission. Our vision of hope in the world beyond is interwoven with our equally strong vision of hope for this world. We announce the Lordship of Christ over all things and seek to be the instruments of that Lordship (Philippians 2:9-11). As we have fought for revolutionary convictions on religious liberty and the separation of church and state, so today we work for human freedom and social justice.
The incarnation of Jesus Christ is God’s announcement of hope for the world. The Church continues the ministry of the Incarnate Christ on behalf of the prophetic vision of a renewed earth, and the promise of God and humankind become one together.
II.F.4. A Wholeness of Thrust
Our global concern and our commitment to issues and people in the abstract need now be expressed in a vitally personal way. As we learn that evangelism and the vision for the whole of life go hand-in-hand, we must grasp afresh also our classical convictions about personal evangelism. Mission begins with God and leads to the calling of the Church, so that through the witness of the Church the Spirit may call out each individual to conversion and newness of life. Brought to Christ and thus transformed, women and men are joined to one another in the fellowship of Christ’s Body.
Baptists have been distinguished for their stress upon the necessity for Christian experience for membership in the Church. The personal response to the encounter with Jesus Christ, an encounter which leads to repentance, forgiveness and a renewed life, should never be obscured. Caring for others necessarily involves overcoming the timidity which hinders us from offering a personal invitation to embrace Christ. To speak of the caring God, the caring Christ, and the caring community is to issue a call to folk where they are and to lead them to the foot of the cross. Nothing could be more consistent with the “gathered church” heritage we treasure.
Nor can we forget that this ministry of evangelism, holistically understood, will be carried on in a world in which urban complexes are dominant. Though we are a denomination of predominately small churches, it is not to be taken for granted that American Baptist live in a rural world. Many of our churches are in urban settings, and they provide a strategic setting for our witness to the complex, multi-cultured world which has moved to our doorstep. God is calling us to a special task as an inclusive church in an increasingly urbanized society. It is here that we are to proclaim the reconciling power of the Rule of God.
II.G. A Worshiping People
The corporate life of worship is what holds the people of God together in community. From the beginning Baptists acknowledged that worship is indispensable for the Church. Meeting in “divine worship” they sought to praise God, to experience God’s presence, and to share a sense of holy, spiritual fellowship with one another.
II.G.1. Corporate Worship
Early Baptist worship was characterized by simplicity, spontaneity, and reliance upon the Hold Spirit. Simplicity was not sought for its own sake. A reaction against the liturgical forms of the Established Church, it involved an attempt to find purity and integrity in worship. Bible reading and Biblical sermons were accompanied by prayer, offerings for the poor, and more prayer. Eventually (after considerable debate) singing also became prominent. The principle of simplicity played an important part also in the design of Baptist meeting houses.
In time Baptists came to realize that total lack of structure in worship can significantly limit the freedom it is intended to protect. Consequently, orders of worship were developed with a balance of prayer, congregational singing, anthems, and sermon. Prayer continued to be especially prominent. Spontaneity was joined with “decency and order.”
Within American Baptist worship today, there is great variety, and the influence of different environments and cultures is clear. Some stress carefully designed order, others spontaneity, others simplicity and inventiveness. The worship of the Black and Hispanic communities is adding new dimensions across our fellowship.
One universally recognized element in American Baptist worship is the significant role of preaching. This goes back to our earliest history. It has been our consistent conviction that in preaching Scripture should become a living reality, the words of the preacher becoming, b y God’s grace, the Word itself. Today preaching is receiving renewed attention in our churches and seminaries, and it remains high on the list of qualifications for the pastoral office.
Since it was recognized from our earliest times that the authority for proclamation rested with the congregation, the congregation participated in the calling out of a person for this special function. Those so called from within and by the urging of the congregation were regularly ordained to this ministry by the congregation. In sum, several things are clearly present in the Baptist approach to worship: simplicity, the present work of the Holy Spirit, prayer, Bible centeredness, and serious proclamation. A fresh interest among American Baptists in the centrality of Scripture and of Biblical preaching reflects our commitment to the heart of the Gospel and our desire to speak as a “bridge” community to all types of people in contemporary society, no matter what their perspective.
Of crucial importance to Baptist worship are baptism and the Lord’s Supper. Both are part of congregational worship because they are acts of obedience to God and are essentially community rites. Baptism marks a person’s entry into the Christian community. It is a testimony of commitment to God in Jesus Christ. Carried out in the context of worship, baptism affirms a person’s identity with a particular fellowship and heritage within the larger fellowship and heritage of the People of God.
The Lord’s Supper is also a community act of corporate worship. Our practice of passing the elements to each other and partaking of them together stresses the congregational character of the Supper. There has never been one, universally accepted view of the meaning of the Supper among Baptists, but we have held in common to the conviction that the Holy Spirit is present in the midst of the community gathered around the table. Through the re-presentation which is part of the memorial event, there is in the Spirit a reality of presence and experience. Past, present, and future are all involved as we celebrate Christ’s sacrifice upon the cross, his immediate presence among us, and his promised return. Our peculiar identity as the people of God in Christ is thus given us again and the covenant is confirmed. The worshiping company communes with God and with one another, faith is rekindled, and Christ is experienced afresh.
Our distinctive American Baptist contribution to Christian worship is not that we possess elements which others do not, but that we have woven common elements together in a manner peculiarly ours. We must keep continually before us these features of our pattern: simplicity, order, Biblical rootedness, reliance upon the Spirit, earnest prayer, the centrality of proclamation, and a particular appreciation baptism and the Lord’s Supper.
II.G.2. Personal Spiritual Development
Corporate worship in Baptist life has had vitality when it has been an extension of the private devotion and spiritual discipline which were part of regular daily living. Solitude and community are joined together so that the corporate contributes to the personal and the personal to the corporate. Corporate worship has been for American Baptists a joyous event celebrating the glory of God already experienced as individuals and families have gathered at meal times and have spent time in private corners to read the Bible and to pray. The Biblical message was not a strange happenstance in a weekly service but a deepening of a happy and familiar part of life.
All things that American Baptists seek to do will have a special vitality when personal devotion and corporate worship become part of the same pattern. Faith as the “rapture” (Martin Luther) which carries us beyond ourselves is integral to the total experience of the Christian life. Christian spirituality is an interweaving of the personal and the corporate. The path to spiritual growth involves personal disciplines of an inward nature (meditation, prayer, fasting, study) and of an outward nature (simplicity, solitude, submission, service). These come to focus in the corporate disciplines of confession, worship, guidance, and celebration. Our outreach in evangelism and social witness and action, to be truly effective, must be accompanied by the nourishment of an inner strength which keeps the vision sharp and the zeal undiminished. This implies that we as a people must learn both to live together in spiritual community and to live as individuals in personal relationship to God. Each form of the spiritual life nurtures the other.
II.G.3. A Devotional Thrust
The true balance and wholeness we need in our ministry in the work world will come when a devotional thrust is at the heart and center of it all. The challenge of a new loyalty to Jesus Christ and to Christ’s reign, the recognition of Christ’s Lordship in public and private life, and the realization that worship must be nurtured by the daily life of prayer – all contribute to our emerging identity. Ours is an age in which new light has become available on all kinds of world issues. To make a real difference, however, that light needs the power of God. The power of God is revealed in private and community adoration. In earlier days Baptists lived from devotion to devotion and were able to change the nature of the religious establishment and fundamentally to affect the character of the world. God is offering American Baptists that opportunity one more time.
CONCLUSION
We have certain Biblical, theological, and historical roots which have helped to make us what we are. We are who we are because we have responded to a particular set of circumstances at different points in our history in a manner guided by those roots. These encounters between root and circumstance have led to certain specific contributions which have in turn become “marks” or principles by which we traditionally have lived. These may not be distinctive in the sense that they belong to no one else. American Baptists have interrelated the “genes” in a particular pattern so as to create a distinctive identity for people called “American Baptists.” It is difficult to identify American Baptist with a precise definition, because we are always in the process of growing and emerging. In this process of becoming, the genes and the tone are recognizable. We are who we are and will be who we will be because of the ways we have sought and do seek to incarnate our marks and principles.
American Baptists have held that “visible saints” live out their life in a style and with a quality of character which authenticates the affirmations of the mind and heart. The people of God are to live as a sacrament of hope in the world. This requires a lively consciousness of the roots from which we have come, of the marks and principles which have distinguished us, and of the experiential encounter which has occurred between our history and ever new circumstances. The nature of the past and the nature of the world we now encounter provide the arena for American Baptist identity as a people. History alone cannot guarantee identity. A continuing identity is given by a vision of ministry and a mission undergirded by the principles which have informed our history.
Therefore, let us seek renewal in a remembered heritage and a vital vision. The remembered presence of God in the past can facilitate the representation of God in the present. The tone and quality of our denomination are more important than any particular polity or mode of organization. Unity and identity are found in a particular kind of discipleship to Christ. To know our heritage and to understand our world, each in vigorous relationship with the other, is to build for us a new sense of our identity as a people of God’s redeeming, reconciling Reign.
Report: Commission on Denominational Identity, February, 1987
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