Voices: The truth of ‘like faith and order’

My childhood stretches back into the 1970s. I belonged to a little country Baptist church that experienced wonderful growth. Several times each month, I heard my pastor present people for membership who came from a “church of like faith and order.” Those coming to join our faith family were confessing they believed the way we believed. It was good.

My seminary training built on my upbringing.

I took philosophy of religion from Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary at a branch campus in Houston while living in San Antonio.

This was the last class of a very long day. The sun was not up when I left the house to head out to class, and the sun was down before I got in my car to drive home. Much of the classroom interaction remains a blur.

Though I was weary walking into class and dreading a two-and-a-half-hour drive home as I walked out, one thought from that class continues to guide me as I evaluate truth claims and my understanding of Scripture: If a claim is true, it will always be true.

Placed in the most difficult, challenging, even outlandish scenario, if your claim holds fast, it is true.

Testing truth claims

Reading articles in the Baptist Standard, I read both Ryan Gilbert’s “Voices: Why some conservative churches are feeling less at home in the BGCT” and the letter to the editor offered by Steve Cain responding to Gilbert’s article.

Several lines in the response triggered my “truth tester” learned in that late evening seminary class.

Cain wrote: “Our convention’s focus should be on how we make room for faithful disagreement within cooperation.

“In our community we can read the Scriptures and come to different positions and still work together. That’s the core of who we are.”

I applied what I learned in my philosophy of religion class to these statements. How well do they guide us as a convention when pressed and shaken?

The ideas I wanted to push and test are: “Our convention’s focus should be more disagreement,” and “As Texas Baptists, our core is we don’t believe the same, and that works well for us.”

Scenarios

Consider these scenarios applied to the statements above.

Scenario One:

The combined churches that are the Baptist General Convention of Texas should emphasize creating more disagreement on issues relating to the structure, formation, practice, and preaching in the local church. Time, money, and people resources should be dedicated to expanding the ways in which churches can increase differing views.

This we would do if our focus is as stated above.

Scenario Two:

If my church reads the Scriptures and determines baptism is efficacious toward salvation and we begin to practice infant baptism by sprinkling, that would be in perfect alignment with the Texas Baptist core—what gives shape and defines a Texas Baptist.

Perhaps we reject a physical baptism completely and insist a faithful, Spirit-led understanding of baptism is a spiritual reality evidenced by ecstatic tongues.

This must be an acceptable, even celebrated, permutation of Baptist expression if the core of who we are is that we continue to work together even if we have different positions.

Of course these are absurd scenarios. That is the point. The approach that seeks to expand room for disagreement as the means by which we gain clarity and strength fails the truth test.

The wonderfully comfortable words of inclusivity and faithful disagreement within cooperation, do not pass the truth test and, as such, are not a foundation for anything lasting.

Another curious claim

The following sentence also grabbed my mind and crumbled under the application of logic.

Cain wrote: “Soul competency means we recognize each believer is accountable before God and cannot have another believer’s interpretation imposed upon their conscience.”

The word “impose” carries a sense of forced compliance requiring regular policing or monitoring. Truth be told, if I could make someone believe the gospel and truly repent, I would.

Is persuasive preaching fueled by deep resolve and conviction to be conflated with imposition?

If being a Texas Baptist means we recoil from proclaiming our interpretation of the Scriptures and that we strive to not be persuasive in presenting a defense for that which we believe, then I wonder if we should stop preaching all together.

Both faith statements

I read the “Missions, Values and Beliefs” page on the Texas Baptists website.

The “Our Beliefs” section caught my attention: “The 1963 Baptist Faith and Message has been adopted by messengers of the BGCT annual meeting. Some BGCT churches use other confessions of faith, including the 2000 Baptist Faith and Message. Neither confession of faith is a requirement for inclusion in the BGCT.”

A hard, and perhaps unfair, understanding of the last line could be: “Believe what you want to believe; we’ll include you as a Baptist.”

Why has the BGCT adopted one Baptist Faith and Message and not the other? We all know why, because the Baptist Faith and Message 2000 is complementarian.

If having different positions is truly at the core of Texas Baptists, why are not both the 1963 and 2000 faith statements adopted? Or any of the other confessions churches follow?

If “our convention’s focus should be on how we make room for faithful disagreement,” as Cain claims, then we should adopt the Baptist Faith and Message 2000 as well. This has not been done because the complementarian and egalitarian understandings conflict at a deep and substantive level.

Like faith and order

Read this clearly: I am not addressing any particular interpretation or practice. Rather, my position is diversity in the foundational precepts of a church is not a strength but a fracture.

And, yes, who a church deems biblically qualified to be the spiritual under-shepherd of the local church is a matter of high importance. The church is central to the purpose of God and the workings of the gospel.

Will a convinced egalitarian church want to send out church planters who are convinced complementarian? How regularly will a convinced complementarian congregation gather for times of teaching and training under a convinced egalitarian pastor?

A truism is this: Churches that believe and practice the same can get along and serve well together. Even “nondenominational” churches naturally network with those of “like faith and order.”

Going back to that often-repeated phrase from my childhood, “like faith and order,” I think our “order” is conflicted, and this is not making things stronger or providing clarity as a convention.

Mathew St. John is the pastor of First Baptist Church in Anson. The views expressed in this opinion article are those of the author.