GAZA CITY, Palestine (ABP)—Fighting between Israeli troops and Hamas militants has damaged a Baptist church in Gaza.

On Dec. 27, the Israeli Air Force launched a series of attacks on targets throughout Gaza retaliating against rocket and mortar fire against Israeli towns and villages by Hamas and other militant groups in Gaza.

According to media reports, windows at Gaza Baptist Church were shattered when an Israeli air strike on a nearby police station killed about 40 people. All church members were reported safe, because most people are too afraid to go outside their homes.

It isn’t the first time for the only Protestant church in the Gaza Strip to be caught in the crossfire between battling forces. Palestinian police twice seized the six-story building, which also includes a public library and one of the area’s few breast-cancer clinics, as a sniper post.

Hanna Massad, pastor of Gaza Baptist Church, described the plight of Palestinian Christians in a message at last year’s New Baptist Covenant Celebration in Atlanta.

“We live between two fires,” he reported, noting, “The fire of the Israel occupation; the siege we live under” severely restricts travel.

“Also, we experience the fire of the militant Muslim, who is not happy about what we do and who we are.”

Terrorists twice bombed the building of the Palestinian Bible Society, and last year militants kidnapped and executed the manager of the society’s Christian bookstore.

Most American Christians know the state of Israel was established in 1948, Massad said, but fewer are aware that when that happened, 700,000 Palestinians—including 55,000 Christians—became refugees.

Massad said his father’s family lived the Gaza Strip all their lives but lost property, even though they had the official documents to prove ownership.

“Because you experience the grace of God and love of God, you are able to forgive and move on,” he said. “But if you didn’t experience his grace, this is going to create bitterness and hatred in your heart. And this is why the fights between the Palestinians and the Jewish people are more intense and more and more difficult.”

With 1.5 million residents, the Gaza Strip is one of world’s most densely populated places, increasing the likelihood of collateral damage when fighting erupts.

The U.S. State Department has called for a “durable and lasting cease-fire” in the conflict.

President-elect Barack Obama, who has been criticized for not speaking out on the Gaza attacks prviously, broke his silence Jan. 6, calling the loss of civilian lives “a source of deep concern” and vowing to “hit the ground running” on brokering Mideast peace when he takes office Jan. 20.

The economic downturn is taking its toll on Southern Baptist entities, with at least two seminaries and national Woman’s Missionary Union cutting their 2009 budgets.

Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary has announced plans to cut its budget by about 10 percent—a reduction between $3.5 million and $4 million—to “protect the institution from future financial crisis.”

That announcement followed a similar report from Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, where the school’s president predicted layoffs and tuition increases to manage a $3 million shortfall.

Meanwhile, national WMU announced $1.4 million in budget cuts, a hiring freeze and a four-week unpaid furlough for staff. But by implementing the cost-cutting measures, WMU should be able to avoid layoffs and keep health insurance affordable for its employees, leaders stressed.

At Southwestern Seminary, casualties of the budget cuts include the school’s childcare center, its study program in England and most overseas travel. More cutbacks are anticipated.

A news release quoted seminary President Paige Patterson as saying, “The administration is doing the best it can to find ways to cut spending that do not involve the release of existing faculty or the students employed by the school.”

Suspended children's center 

Southwestern is suspending for at least 18 months the work of its Naylor Children’s Center, a laboratory school under the direction of the School of Educational Ministries that provides care and instruction for preschool age children from 6 weeks to age 5.

The seminary also has suspended its Oxford study program and all traveling scholar overseas on-site study trips, except for travel directly related to a missionary training program in the Roy Fish School of Evangelism and Missions.

“We anticipate that other cutbacks in the budget will be necessary to ensure that Southwestern maintains its debt-free operational position and to be certain that revenues cover expenditures,” Patterson said.

At Southern Seminary, President Al Mohler said in a letter to the seminary community that cost-saving measures—including a hiring freeze on nonessential positions and reduced travel—already have trimmed the school’s budget by $1.7 million. That leaves a projected $800,000 to $1.5 million in further reductions projected over the next several months, which likely would mean a reduction in the seminary’s workforce and increasing tuition to boost revenue.

Budget reductions at WMU 

At national WMU, cost-cutting measures include budget reductions, streamlining expenses, a hiring freeze on vacant positions, a reduction on employer contributions to employee retirement plans, a freeze on merit pay increases, elimination of incentive bonuses in 2009 and the implementation of four weeks of unpaid furlough for each staff member between January and August 2009.

The hiring freeze and reduced retirement contributions will continue until Sept. 30, 2009, according to a statement released by the organization.

“The greatest asset of any organization or company is dedicated employees who believe in the mission of the organization. WMU is blessed with employees who exemplify this. Therefore, retaining staff and providing them with affordable health care remained priorities as executive leadership explored other creative options to lower expenditures in 2009,” WMU Executive Director Wanda Lee said.

“None of the positions that we have are expendable; we already have a lean staff and need all the staff members we have to accomplish the work we do. While our nation is experiencing some of the most challenging economic times in our history, we recognize jobs are scarce, and we are doing everything we can do to protect jobs and ensure the future of WMU.”

WMU’s executive leadership made the cost-cutting decisions in consultation with the organization’s finance and personnel committees.

Under a revised $9.6 million budget for 2009, Woman’s Missionary Union will be self-supporting through the sale of magazines and products and from investments, according to the statement.

As an auxiliary to the Southern Baptist Convention, WMU receives no funds from the SBC’s Cooperative Program allocation budget. WMU promotes the Annie Armstrong Easter Offering for North American Missions and Lottie Moon Christmas Offering for International Missions but does not benefit financially from those offerings.

Compiled from Baptist Press and Associated Baptist Press reports

Some Baptists stress evangelism, and others emphasize the social gospel. Some believe Christ died for all people; others say Christ died only for the elect whom God predestined to salvation. Historically, some defended slavery; others championed civil rights.

Even a cursory look at Baptists reveals wide diversity in beliefs and practices. But Baylor University religion professor Doug Weaver believes a common thread has run throughout Baptist history—the desire to replicate the New Testament model of the church.

“Baptist history has often been a journey in search of the New Testament church. Many Baptists assumed that the New Testament only had one type of church structure, and they embodied it. However, this restorationism, this constant quest for the pure church, produced an ever-flowing stream of different readings of the Bible. One distinctive would be emphasized by one group, and then another group would emphasize something else,” Weaver wrote in his recently published book, In Search of the New Testament Church: The Baptist Story.

Other historians have noted the importance Baptists have placed on modeling their practices and beliefs after the New Testament church.

In Baptist Ways: A History, Bill Leonard noted, “Biblicism led many Baptists to adhere to a strenuous ‘primitivism,’ a belief that the true church in any era is the one that best replicates the New Testament church.”

William Brackney, writing in A Genetic History of Baptist Thought, said: “Among the Baptist theologians, Scripture was the starting point for a new doctrine of the church. They found the charter and practices of a New Testament form of Christianity in the Bible free from the corruption of ecclesiastic machinery.”

Baptists share with Protestants in general a commitment to Scripture, Weaver noted. But they bring alongside that commitment to biblical authority a belief in the soul competency of every person and a fierce dedication to religious freedom.

“What is essential to being Baptists? It’s the freedom to read the Scriptures and to say God can give a fresh word—not a new revelation contrary to the Bible, but a fresh understanding from the Bible,” Weaver said in an interview.

“The issue of conscience is crucial. The conscience of the individual has to be free to answer to God first and only secondarily to anyone else. … Emphasis on individual conscience, alongside the search for the New Test-ament church, is a distinctive way for us.”

Baptists’ emphasis on “unfettered conscience” has proved important because it “preserves or guarantees the right to dissent against conformity, whether it be from church or state,” Weaver observed.

Adherence to that principle has resulted in “messy freedom,” and most Baptists have accepted messiness as a price they have been willing to pay for liberty, Weaver added. Sometimes, that has cast Baptists in the role of troublemakers.

“Baptists have been dissenters. When we have been a dissenting minority, that has been the best of the Baptist tradition,” he said.

Baptists have held in tension the role of the individual conscience before God and the role of the faith community in practicing discipline, he added.

“Individual conscience should always be honored, but in Baptist life, the local church acts as the ‘bishop.’ It surely can exclude the lonely prophet, but the lonely prophet and dissent were allowed because no one could come between a believer and God,” Weaver said.

At their best, Baptists have honored individual conscience, biblical authority and belief in Jesus Christ as Lord, Weaver insisted.

He pointed to E.Y. Mullins, the early 20th century theologian and author of The Axioms of Religion, who insisted truly born-again believers are “impelled” to be part of the church.

Weaver expressed hope Baptists in the future will find ways to honor both the role of the individual conscience and the community of faith.

“For the unfettered conscience to remain a vital principle for Baptists, we need to remember this dynamic of the individual and the church,” he said.

“Freedom is messy,” he said. “But that has been the Baptist tradition.”

All Landmark Baptists believe in church succession, at least to some degree, but not every Baptist holding that position is—or was—a Landmarker, according to Alan Lefever, director of the Texas Baptist Historical Collection.

Neither J.M. Carroll, author of The Trail of Blood defense of Landmarkism, nor his more-famous brother, B.H., was a Landmark Baptist in the truest sense, said Lefever, author of Fighting the Good Fight, a biography of B.H. Carroll.

J.M. Carroll was the Texas agent for the Foreign Mission Board, secretary of the Texas Baptist Education Commission and president of Howard Payne College.

B.H. Carroll was the founding president of Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary.

“If you label them Landmarkers, then you have to call them ‘denominational Landmarkers,’ and that’s an oxymoron,” Lefever said.

The Landmark emphasis on succession was “almost inevitable” for Baptists, considering their consistent desire to replicate the New Testament church, said Doug Weaver, a religion professor at Baylor University and author of the recently published book, In Search of the New Testament Church: The Baptist Story.

“Landmarkism built on themes and ideas already present in Baptist history. To say with confidence and biblicist certainty that you are restoring the New Testament faith and practice implies what Landmarkism makes specific: We are the embodiment of the New Testament church,” Weaver said.

‘Direct line of dissenters’

“Once you set up a dichotomy of a true church/false church, it becomes easy to identify false churches throughout history. I think that the development of the ‘direct line of dissenters’ occurs, at least in part, to combat an inferiority complex that comes from being a new group with no history or tradition. Thus, the Landmarkers can say: ‘Hey, we are really older than all of you. We aren’t Protestants. And we are the direct descendent of the New Testament, and Catholics are a falling way from our doctrinal and structural polity purity.’”

Lefever disagrees with the notion Landmarkism was historically inevitable. Rather, he sees the Landmark movement as a direct response to Alexander Campbell, who taught baptismal regeneration and trumpeted the desire to restore the New Testament church. Campbell, a former Baptist, founded the movement out of which Disciples of Christ and the Church of Christ developed.

“Landmarkism was a reaction to the Campbellite movement. It was like a vaccine to inoculate Baptists against Campbellite influence,” he said, pointing out that it contained “just enough of the disease” to provide supposed protection.

“If Alexander Campbell had never come along, we’d never have had Landmarkism. There never would have been a need,” Lefever insisted.

Competition with Campbellites 

Both Lefever and Weaver explained the relationship between Baptists and the Campbell movement in terms of competition. A so-called Campbellite might say, “We have restored the New Testament church.” But a Landmark Baptist could respond, “We are the New Testament church.”

Weaver granted Baptists share with Disciples of Christ and Churches of a Christ “a hermeneutic of restorationism,” and Baptists in the 19th century certainly considered the Campbell-inspired movement a threat. He added the neo-Pentecostal movement of the early 20th century to that same category.

“We claim apostolic authority for our practices … especially baptism by immersion. But these groups do similar things. The Churches of Christ said, ‘No musical instruments because they aren’t in the New Testament,’ and the Pentecostals say, ‘We have the full gospel found in the book of Acts,’” Weaver said.

“Because we have vied for the same mantle with similar methods—biblical hermeneutics—we have raised the stakes in the competition and thus increased tension.”

Baptists and Church of Christ leaders have differed publicly, and often bitterly, to a large degree because they are so close in many respects, he added.

“It’s sibling rivalry,” Weaver said. “When someone is so much like you and you have so much in common, you tend to accentuate the differences.”

WASHINGTON (ABP)—Baptists’ signal contribution to American and world history and political thought, historians almost unanimously agree, is their uncompromising emphasis on religious liberty.

But, they hasten to add, the doctrine of soul freedom that grounds Baptists’ belief in religious liberty is the very reason Baptists of varying stripes have been found on both sides of subsequent political and social controversies.

“Baptists were among the first—if not the first—to say in English certainly by 1612 that God alone is judge of conscience, and therefore neither the government nor a religious establishment can judge the conscience of the heretic—the people who believe the wrong things—or the atheists—the people who don’t believe at all,” said Baptist historian Bill Leonard, dean of the Wake Forest University Divinity School.

Baptists, Leonard said, “are really among the inventors of modern religious pluralism. They step way beyond mere toleration of second-class religious ideas to call for a full-blown religious pluralism.”

But it wasn’t out of a belief that all religions are equal. From their earliest roots, Baptists “continued to assert the uniqueness of their vision of the truth of not only Christianity, but their particular vision of the gospel,” Leonard said. He noted, for example, in theological debates early Baptists “fought the Quakers as readily as they did atheists.”

Nonetheless, in civil matters, Baptists “said everybody has the voice, and they said (neither) the state nor an official church can privilege a particular voice.”

Primacy of the individual conscience

Historian Walter Shurden, retired director of the Center for Baptist Studies at Mercer University, said this belief in the primacy of the individual conscience is what animated early Baptists’ advocacy for religious freedom.

“The Baptist people did not accidentally stumble upon the idea of religious liberty after years of opposing the idea; they were born crying for freedom of expression,” he said, in a recent speech about 17th-century Baptist leader John Clarke.

Clarke co-founded Rhode Island and the Newport church that historians generally agree is the second-oldest Baptist congregation in the New World. He also helped secure, from the British crown, a charter for the colony that was the first governing document in the Western world to enshrine thoroughgoing religious freedom.

The idea of religious freedom and civil respect for multiple faiths and those of no faith at all was far more radical in the 17th century than it might seem to modern ears.

“There’s one sense in which (early Baptists) participate in the breakup of the medieval conception of a Christian society, where to be born into a Christian state is to be automatically baptized into a Christian church—and deviation from that is both heresy and treason,” Leonard said.

Baptists’ emphasis on the church being made up only of adult believers who have made an unforced decision to follow Christ on their own—and on no civil authority interposing itself between the individual and God—led to a commitment to safeguarding religious freedom for all.

Additionally, it lent itself to separating the realm of civil authority from the realm of religious authority—the concept of church-state separation.

Encouraged the growth of democratic ideals

And, the historians said, the accompanying Baptist emphasis on individual and communal interpretation of Scripture required separation of civil and religious authority, and encouraged the growth of democratic ideals in the New World.

“If conscience is essential, then dissent is not far behind, because there are always those politically or religiously who want to dominate the landscape, be privileged and control voices,” Leonard said. “And so at least early Baptists saw (the concepts of) a believers’ church, conscience and dissent as very closely related—inseparable, because one must always be vigilant.”

Early Baptists not only secured religious freedom in the Rhode Island charter, but fought—alongside a coalition of Quakers, atheists, agnostics and other freethinkers—to enshrine it in the Bill of Rights.

Beyond that, “We participated in and contributed to the ‘democratization’—the rights of the common folk to read the Bible, choose their own leaders, etc.—of American religion and American society in general,” said Baylor University professor Doug Weaver.

“Baptists were actually practicing some democratic principles in Baptist polity and worship—individual conscience, democratic congregationalism and local-church independence, prophesying by lay members of the congregation—before the tidal wave of the (democratization) of American life after the American Revolution.”

But, Weaver and Leonard added, Baptists’ emphasis on individual freedom and autonomy often led their descendants to be found on both sides of major political and social issues, depending on how they read Scripture.

For instance, Baptists were prominent on both sides of the slavery debate in the United States in the 19th century, as well as the 20th-century debate over segregation.

“We have contributed to American society in ways that we clearly wish we hadn’t,” Weaver said. “We have demonstrated, as much as any other religious group, the ability to be captive to our culture. Southern values, for example, in the areas of slavery and Jim Crow segregation defined and shaped the biblicist readings of the Bible in ways we find painfully obvious today but in earlier decades were considered biblically and patriotically faithful.”

With additional reporting by Managing Editor Ken Camp

In 400 years, the Baptist movement has grown to 200,000 churches with more than 50 million members in countries around the world.

But even though Baptists globally continue to show statistical growth, the largest Baptist group in the United States—the Southern Baptist Convention—has reported declining membership, following a trend other U.S. denominations began reporting two decades earlier.

“Some have said this is the first membership decline ever. That is not true,” said Southern Baptist statistician Ed Stetzer of LifeWay Research. “However, I believe this time is different. I believe that, unless we have a significant intervention, we have peaked, at least in regards to membership.”

Citing percentages of growth since 1950, Stetzer observed: “Our year-to-year growth has been in a constant trended decline, not for one year, but for decades. This is … a 50-year trend.”

Researchers cite several cultural and religious factors that play into the decline. Philip Jenkins asserted in The Next Christendom: The Coming of Global Christianity that the Immigration Reform Act of 1965 was a major event overlooked by most researchers.

“As recently as 1970, Asian and Hispanic Americans accounted for only 8 percent of total births in the United States, but today, that figure has increased to more than 25 percent,” Jenkins wrote.

“One reason for this transformation is that Latinos are generally much younger than longer-established populations. The national census of 2000 showed that the median age for Hispanics was about 26, younger than that of any other ethnic group, and far lower than the median age for Anglo-whites, which stood at a venerable 38.5. By mid-century, 100 million Americans will claim Mexican origin.”

Slow to respond 

Rather than seize the demographic change as a missions opportunity, as a whole, Anglo Baptists have been slow to respond, some observers say.

To add further to the decline, while Baptists were not reaching the growth groups in the United States, their own birthrates were falling.

Baptist researcher Curt Watke, executive director of the Intercultural Institute for Contextual Ministry, points to the aging of the Baptist population and the related decline in Anglo birthrate as cultural factors affecting growth in white Baptist churches.

Another factor, discussed widely among bloggers, suggests Baptists under 40 are disengaging themselves from denominational life and finding other affiliations more fulfilling.

Last year, former SBC President Frank Page received much notice and some criticism for saying, “If we don’t start paying attention to the realities … by the year 2030, we will be proud to have 20,000 rather than 44,000 Southern Baptist churches.”

Current evidence suggests decline will be long-term without spiritual intervention. Programmatic approaches have failed. According to a recent report in USA Today, the Southern Baptist North American Mission Board spent $343,700 on a strategy called ‘What Now’ before pulling the plug.

“Another campaign, called ‘Who Cares,’ also fizzled,” the newspaper reported. NAMB leaders hope their new evangelism effort, God’s Plan for Sharing, or GPS, fares better.

A bright global future 

But while future growth among Baptists in the United States is questionable, globally the future looks bright.

According to Baptist World Alliance figures, with Southern Baptist Convention statistics added for the United States, Baptists around the world have grown in number by 49 percent from 1990 to 2008. Baptists in Africa led all others in growth, increasing by 327 percent in that period.

Jenkins predicts the center of the Christian population will shift from North America and Europe to the Southern Hemisphere.

His assertions are being validated by Baptist growth in developing nations, particularly in Africa.

According to Jenkins, the Christianity of the future will incorporate some of the customs and practices of the regional population but will be biblically conservative, taking literally much that Westerners ignore.

“The denominations that are triumphing all across the global South are stalwartly traditional or even reactionary by the standards of the economically advanced nations. The churches that have made most dramatic progress in the global South have either been Roman Catholic, of a traditional and fideistic kind, or radical Protestant sects, evangelical or Pentecostal,” Jenkins said.

“These newer churches preach deep personal faith and communal orthodoxy, mysticism and Puritanism, all founded on clear scriptural authority. They preach messages that, to a Westerner, appear simplistically charismatic, visionary and apocalyptic.

“In this thought-world, prophecy is an everyday reality, while faith-healing, exorcism and dream-visions are all basic components of religious sensibility. For better or worse, the dominant churches of the future could have much in common with those of medieval or early modern European times. On present evidence, a Southernized Christian future should be distinctly conservative.”

Looking to the future 

As Baptists plan their 400th anniversary celebrations, Bob Dale, author and recently retired associate executive director of the Baptist General Association of Virginia, suggests they think ahead to the kind of celebration they want to have a generation from now.

Casting an eye to the future, Dale asks:

•Will Baptists learn to become true partners of indigenous leaders—globally and in the United States?  Will they develop humility enough to learn from Third World churches?

•Can Baptists change their win-lose Western mindset to a more Eastern challenge-response cooperative mindset?

 •Will Baptists in the West move beyond culture prejudices and see Baptist cousins in developing nations as equals?

•Will Baptists learn to read the Bible from its original Eastern roots rather than through the prisms of Western assumptions?

•Will Baptists learn to relate to world religions in a global world?

•Will state conventions and associations become less absorbed with regional issues and more focused on world-change, looking for the global dimensions of local concerns?

•How soon will Baptists in the United States consider it shortsighted and foolish to speak only one language and be familiar with only one culture?

•Can Baptist find ways to minister from the bigger cultural middle and let go of those on the narrower fringes who persist in fighting?

•What if Baptists in the United States continue to focus on their needs and persist in the attitude: “As for me and my house, we will serve me and my house?”

 

Baptists who celebrate the 400th birthday of their denomination in 2009 miss the mark by about 1600 years, some Baptists insist.

Since Jesus founded his church during his earthly ministry and promised “the gates of hell shall not prevail against it,” Landmark Baptists believe that means an unbroken line of church succession dating back to Christ’s lifetime. And since John the Baptist immersed Jesus, the church Christ formed was a Baptist church, some add.

“Landmarkers believe that Jesus meant literally that his church would continue in an unbroken lineage until he returned,” said John Penn, church history instructor at Missionary Baptist Seminary in Little Rock, Ark.

Landmark Baptists hold to their belief in church succession out of commitment to the veracity of Scripture and the claims of Christ, said Philip Bryan, president emeritus of Baptist Missionary Association Seminary in Jacksonville.

“The traditional Landmark Baptist position on the origin and continuation of the Lord’s church is essentially one of doctrine and theology rather than history,” Bryan said.

Baptists in perpetuity 

Landmarkers believe in the perpetuity of the church Christ instituted—“that there has never been a day since Christ founded his church when there was no scriptural church on earth, and that the church shall continue in existence until he comes again,” he explained.

J.R. Graves spread Landmark Baptist teaching throughout the South and Southwest in the 1850s as editor of the Tennessee Baptist.

J.M. Pendleton perpetuated it for many generations through his Church Manual, a book still in print and sold by LifeWay Christian Stores.

In the mid-20th century, Joe T. Odle of Mississippi taught the same principles in his Church Members Handbook, a popular booklet published by Broadman Press and used in Baptist Training Union classes throughout the South.

“No man this side of Christ can be named as the founder of Baptists. Nor can any date this side of his personal ministry, nor any place outside of Palestine, be set for their beginning,” Odle wrote.

J. R. Graves

Many Landmark Baptists hold to the “Trail of Blood” teaching popularized by J.M. Carroll—the belief that persecution was the mark of the true church throughout Christian history. W.H. Whitsitt was forced to resign from Southern Baptist Theological Seminary in 1899 for daring to contradict unbroken succession.

In addition to an unbroken line of succession back to New Testament times, Landmark Baptists also believe in the primacy of the local church as the only biblical missionary-sending body and in closed communion—limiting the Lord’s Supper just to Baptists or even to members of a specific Baptist congregation.

Landmarkers believe the true church that has existed since the time of Christ has not always borne the “Baptist” label, but it has exhibited certain distinguishing marks testifying to its validity. And for much of church history, one of those marks has been persecution.

The distinctive of persecution 

“After the union of church and state, it is contrary to the teaching of Christ that any so-called church that enforced his teaching by persecution—that is, by physical punishment, jailings and beatings—could be considered his true church,” Penn said.

“Landmarkers prefer to trace true succession through those groups who were persecuted than by those who inflicted physical suffering and death. … These groups were not called Baptists, but they bore the burden of preaching the truth.”

Some of the dissenting Christians who were persecuted by the state church held “some strange or even heretical views,” Penn acknowledged.

“However, it is also to be observed that they had their books burned, their houses pillaged, their Bibles confiscated and their children taken from them. Yet, in spite of this, they maintained a true witness,” he said. “These dissenters kept the faith and passed it on to us.”

Some Landmark Baptist historians note that while modern Baptists certainly do not hold identical views to Novatians, Waldenses and other ancient Christian groups who rejected infant baptism, they also differ significantly from early English Baptists, who did not practice baptism by immersion until about 1641.

“Assuming the validity of the Baptist belief that baptism by immersion is an absolute necessity for scriptural baptism, the accounts of the baptisms of John Smyth, the earliest Particular Baptists prior to the 1640s and even of Roger Williams disqualify such people from originating or continuing Baptist churches,” Bryan said.

Gaps in the historical records require believers in any theory of Baptist origins to make a leap of faith, he insisted.

“We cannot show conclusively how modern Baptists sprang from the people who are usually believed to be the founders of the Baptist movement,” he said.

“Those people were about 1,600 years late.”

DURHAM, N.C. (ABP)—While much writing about Baptist history in the 20th century focused on what distinguishes Baptists from other Christians, a group of contemporary scholars believes the Baptist movement now needs to reconnect to its ecumenical roots.

Most modern Baptist historians mark the birth of the Baptist movement at 1609. A minority and often controversial counterview argues the church established by Christ and the apostles has existed in one form or another in unbroken succession since the New Testament apart from a corrupted Roman Catholic Church.

A small number of scholars put forth a third view. While not insisting on direct links between the Anabaptists and Baptist traditions as the Successionists do, they believe a kinship existed between early Baptists and Anabaptist communities that has been neglected and caused Baptists to marginalize themselves from the larger free-church family.

In a 1997 article, Curtis Freeman, now research professor and director of the Baptist House of Studies at Duke Divinity School, said the Baptist movement grew out of a conviction that the true church is a believer’s church, free to worship by the gospel of Jesus Christ and not conferred by power of the state.

Over time, he argued, those ideals were influenced by philosophers like John Locke and American notions of populism and revivalism, to produce a corrupted and individualist Baptist identity where “every tub must sit on its own bottom.”

“Anabaptist” was a term applied to various movements that emerged in Europe in the 16th century period called the Radical Reformation. From the Greek prefix “ana,” which means “again,” and the word “baptize,” it means “re-baptizers.” Viewed as heretics, the term was applied originally to the Anabaptists as a term of contempt, an epithet today comparable to “sect” or “cult.”

Descendants of those who survived persecution today populate groups including the Amish, Mennonites, Church of the Brethren and some German Baptists.

There is no question the earliest Baptists interacted with Anabaptists in Holland— when John Smyth’s group left England for Amsterdam, they met in a bake house owned by a member of a Waterlander Mennonite congregation—but historians disagree over the extent of cross-pollination between the groups.

Smyth’s self-baptism—viewed at the time as scandalous—suggested he was not convinced the Anabaptists represented a true church. He later began to question the validity of his own rebaptism, however, and was waiting to join the Mennonites when he died in 1612. Repenting of their baptism, Smyth and 31 church members asked to merge with the Mennonite congregation.

Ten members, including Thomas Helwys, a layman who helped finance the group’s move from England, believed their believer’s baptism was valid. They split from Smyth’s church and later returned to England, where facing an oppressive environment they became stalwart advocates for religious liberty and the separation of church and state.

William Estep, a longtime professor at Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary who died in 2000, said it is impossible to understand Baptist origins without studying Anabaptists. Estep claimed the earliest Baptists “were dependent on the Mennonites for the determinative features of what was to become known as Baptist faith and practice.”

Glen Stassen, the Lewis B. Smedes Professor of Christian Ethics at Fuller Theological Seminary, contends a book by Menno Simons so shaped early Baptist confessions of faith that Baptists today ought to accept the Mennonite founder as a significant “parent.”

Freeman said recent books have questioned whether the Helwys congregation survived and if it did how much it influenced the mainstream of Baptist life. Most scholars today accept a “polygenetic” view of both Anabaptist and Baptist traditions, meaning they probably grew from multiple streams instead of a single source, he said.

In collecting essays for a 1999 book titled Baptist Roots, Freeman and two co-authors included chapters from the 15th and 16th centuries by Anabaptist founders to provide a sense of the “connectedness with the larger free-church tradition.”

They distinguished “Baptist” from “baptist” with the small “b” denoting “spiritual and theological kindred” with an extended denominational family.

Next Big Idea Conference set. Baylor University will host the Next Big Idea Conference Feb. 9-11. The conference will explore faith-based community ministries that are fully engaged with local and global concerns. Featured speakers include Kay Warren of Saddleback Church, Lynne Hybels of Willow Creek Community Church, Rick Rusaw and Eric Swanson of the Externally Focused Church and Rick McKinley of Imago Dei Community Church and co-creator of Advent Conspiracy. Joining them in more than a dozen workshops will be several Baylor professors. The event is cosponsored by Baylor’s Truett Theological Seminary, the Baylor School of Social Work and The Leadership Network. For a full list of workshops and to register, go to www.baylor.edu/bigidea or call (254) 710-3854.

 
Full house at Breckenridge. Breckenridge Village of Tyler reached two milestones recently—full occupancy and one year operating in the black financially. Forty-four developmentally disabled adults called Breckenridge Village “home” as of November. “Reaching full occupancy is a goal we … have had our sights on for a long time,” Executive Director Charles Dodson said. “Retiring our capital debt last year proved to be what BVT needed to turn the corner on how we could sustain our ministry.” Breckenridge, a ministry of Baptist Child & Family Services, is the only Baptist facility in Texas providing around-the-clock, year-around residential care for developmentally disabled adults.

 
Ethics scholarship established at HSU. An endowed scholarship to benefit Christian ethics students in the Logsdon School of Theology has been established at Hardin-Simmons University. The first missionary Journeyman group sent overseas by the Southern Baptist Convention’s Foreign Mission Board in 1965 created the scholarship in honor of Louis and Mary Vic Cobbs of Tyler. Louis Cobbs, a former campus minister and student ministry worker with the Baptist General Convention of Texas, was instrumental in creating the Journeyman program—a two-year missionary experience for college graduates—when he worked with the mission board. The missionary Journeyman class of 1965 has set a $25,000 goal for the scholarship fund. To date, more than $11,000 has been contributed. For more information, contact Russell Leavenworth in the Hardin-Simmons University development office, Box 1600, Abilene 79698.

 
CERI volunteers bring boots to Moldovan orphans. More than 60 volunteers with Children’s Emergency Relief International visited 67 orphanages and other institutions in Moldova, putting 12,478 pairs of boots on the feet of orphans and distributing 23,000 pairs of socks and other donated knitted items such as hats, scarves and sweaters. A medical team cared for more than 280 patients. Volunteers participated in Moldova Operation Knit Together through CERI, the overseas division of Baptist Child & Family Services.

 
DBU receives $1 million gift. Dallas Baptist University received a $1 million donation from John and Nita Ford toward construction of the Patty and Bo Pilgrim Chapel on campus. DBU will name the chapel’s foyer for the couple, who are members of Prestonwood Baptist Church in Plano.

• Christy Butler has resigned as children’s minister at First Church in Denton.

• Woody Cash to First Church in Ovilla as worship pastor.

• Gary Early has resigned as minister of youth at First Church in Maud.

• Charles Fake to Timbergrove Church in Houston as pastor.

• Ken Guthrie has resigned as minister of music and education at First Church in Redwater.

• Rod Hite to The Crossing Church in Mesquite as minister of music and worship.

• David Hudson to Baptist Temple in Victoria as pastor.

• Ken James to Timber Crest Church in Waco as interim pastor.

• Joseph Kirby to First Church in Alice as youth minister.

• Kurt Krodle to First Church in Arlington as minister to youth from First Church in Denton, where he was minister to students.

• Syl Moore to First Church in New Deal as pastor.

• Barbara Ragan has resigned as youth director at East Sherman Church in Sherman.

• Mark Ritchey to First Church in Maud as pastor from First Church in Nolansville.

• Sharon Russell has resigned at First Church in Wake Village as preschool and children’s minister.

• Zack Tunnell to Calvary Church in Cisco as pastor.

• Brad Watson to First Church in Wake Village as associate pastor for education and counseling from Trinity Church in Texarkana, Ark.

• J.B. Word has completed an intentional interim pastorate at First Church in Fort Davis and can be reached at (361) 739-7896.

NEW YORK (ABP) — Robert Handy, who studied under legendary Christian scholars like Paul Tillich before becoming a prominent Baptist historian in his own right, died at a retirement community in West Caldwell, N.J., Jan. 8. He was 90.

Handy was a professor of church history at Union Theological Seminary — the ecumenical Protestant graduate school in New York — from 1950 until 1986. During that time he taught generations of pastors, missionaries, chaplains and other ministers and published works on church history and American religion that scholars still consider standards in the field.

In a tribute to Handy’s scholarship published after he retired, Altered Landscapes: Christianity in America 1935-1985, former students, colleagues and friends lauded the historian’s career.

"Every one of them… knows his or her indebtedness to the lifelong scholarly career of Robert Handy," the book’s editors wrote, praising "his strict adherence to the technical canons of historical inquiry, his sensitivity to the practical needs of Christian people, his signal labors on behalf of a sophisticated understanding of American church history, and his appreciation for the conceptual ties of history with many other disciplines."

He was particularly known for his work on church-state relations in the United States, and attempts by some U.S. Christians in the 19th century to impose their vision of a “Christian” America.

Handy was born Jan. 30, 1918, in Rockville, Conn. He graduated from Brown University in 1940 with a bachelor’s degree in European history and earned a divinity degree from Colgate-Rochester Divinity School in 1943. He was ordained a Baptist minister that year.

While serving as pastor of an Illinois congregation, he began taking history classes at the University of Chicago Divinity School as a way of combining his interests in local-church ministry and history. After a stint as an Army chaplain, he returned to Chicago, where he earned his doctorate in 1949.

Union Seminary appointed him to a three-year contract the next year. He taught classes while assisting Tillich and another renowned Christian scholar, John McNeill, in research for their foundational works on church history.

"Little did I know that the three years would stretch into twelve times that number to the time of retirement," he later wrote.

Handy also authored the official history of Union Seminary in 1987 as part of the school’s sesquicentennial celebration.

"We know that as a historian he loves the truth of history," the editors of the tribute to Handy’s career wrote. "He loves as well the people who make history. Indeed, among those scholars whom we know, we know of none who better joins the love of truth to the truth of love."

FALLS CHURCH, Va. (ABP) — A three-member medical team from Hungarian Baptist Aid is in Egypt, helping both Palestinians and Israelis affected by the current Gaza crisis.

Baptist World Aid, the relief-and-development arm of the Baptist World Alliance, gave an initial grant of $10,000 for medical treatment of people who have fled the fighting, in its 13th day as of press time Jan. 8. Other planned relief projects include counseling and relief programs in the heavily bombed Israeli city of Sderot, said BWAid Director Paul Montacute.

The BWAid Rescue24 team, operated by Hungarian Baptist Aid, arrived in Cairo Dec. 31. The team expects to relocate to the Egyptian city of El Arish, about 25 miles from the Gaza border.

After receiving permission from Egyptian authorities Jan. 1, the team visited Palestinians recovering in Cairo's Nasser Hospital.

"I played on the street when suddenly bombs began to fall," said 13-year-old Attala Abid, who has a severely injured leg. He was one of 79 injured Palestinians who managed to get through the Egyptian-Palestinian border at Rafah as of Jan. 1.

The doctors, who are also qualified as anesthesiologists, took part in a skull operation. In addition to meeting medical needs of Palestinians, the group also is looking to give Israeli children opportunities to dwell in Hungary as guests of the organization.

Church World Service, a cooperative ministry of 35 Protestant, Orthodox and Anglican communions affiliated with the World Council of Churches, launched an emergency response including humanitarian relief, protection for refugees displaced by attacks and an appeal for donations from the United States.

The group also mobilized its Speak Out advocacy program to urge members of Congress to seek an immediate cease-fire, address the humanitarian situation and renew talks aimed at achieving a "durable peace" between Israel and Palestine.

Roy Medley, general secretary of American Baptist Churches USA, a Church World Service member, called on both sides in the conflict to "break this cycle of ongoing violence" and urged the United States "to join with other nations in a new mediating role in the search for a just and lasting peace in the area."

"The issues that continually roil this region are complex and they shall never be resolved through armed force," Medley said. "The welfare of each is linked to the welfare of the other…. Only sustained diplomatic efforts which acknowledge the human rights of the other can provide the possibility of peace."

BMS World Mission — British Baptists' global-missions arm — gave $10,000 to local partner Bethlehem Bible College, which is caring for some students from Gaza who had to leave their homes due to difficulty even prior to the current humanitarian crisis.

Gordon McBain, BMS World Mission regional secretary for the Middle East and North Africa, described the situation in Gaza and the south of Israel as "dreadful" and called on Christians to pray for an end to the violence.

"I believe that as Christians there is much that we can do to help alleviate the suffering that has become an everyday event," he said.

Last year BMS World Mission formalized partnerships with Baptist groups in both Israel and Palestine. "These are groups who are trying to bring about change through peaceful methods rather than through bombs and tanks," McBain said. "Christians there are using the power of prayer, dialogue and social care to change things for the better."

Bader Mansour, secretary of the Association of Baptist Churches in Israel, said Palestinian Arab citizens of Israel want to show grief and solidarity with fellow Palestinians suffering in Gaza, while also abiding by the law. Most Israelis strongly support the attack on Gaza.

"It is very hard being an Arab in Israel these days with the polarization and the very different attitude of Arabs and Jews toward the war," Mansour said. "Please pray for the light of Christ to shine on the Palestinians and Israelis. Both need Christ badly."

Donations to the Gaza crisis relief effort may be made to the Baptist World Aid Emergency Response Fund.

–Bob Allen is senior writer for Associated Baptist Press.