Baptists and Episcopalians

I’ve been thinking about the changes in the Church (which may well have been held at bay [no pun intended], at least temporarily by the election in the Diocese of California). I have begun to think about what has been happening in the Episcopal Church and the Anglican Communion in light of what has happened in the last generation in the Southern Baptist Convention.

Now, as I sometimes say, I grew up breathing Southern Baptist air. I grew up in East Tennessee, where the Southern Baptists so outnumbered everyone else that I had to move away and discover in references on American religion General Baptists, American Baptists, and even Two Seed in the Spirit Predestinarian Baptists (yes, while small, they do exist). So I was not about to ignore the movements in the Southern Baptist Convention beginning in the 1980’s. A small, committed, organized group of clergy who were committed to seeing Scripture as “verbally inspired, inerrant, and infallible,” began to work to take control of the Southern Baptist Convention, and of those institutions supported by the member churches. Gradually, through skill and planning, and good (and entirely legal) use of the political structures of the Convention, they began to build majorities on the various committees of the Joint Program. (For reference, all Southern Baptist churches are congregational. They meet in Convention, and together support the Joint Program and its various activities.)

They first began to concentrate on the colleges and seminaries. Gradually, one by one, membership changes on Boards of Trustees moved them steadily toward a more Biblicist position. Those Boards then moved those seminaries toward a more Biblicist academic culture. Now, some undergraduate schools, having large student bodies, dependable tuition income, and independent endowments, were able to stand for academic freedom and prevent radical change and loss of control. Baylor comes to mind. However, the seminaries were not able to do so. New statements of faith were formulated by Boards, faculty were required to sign them and to conform, and those who refused were fired. But success in this effort was terribly important: the seminaries would shape the new clergy, who would then maintain the Biblicist position and perspective in individual churches and in the Convention.

This was a more radical change than many thought at first. Frankly, many, many Southern Baptists in the pew were (and are) likewise committed to a belief in the literal interpretation and inerrancy of Scripture. Many who entered Southern Baptist seminaries were from that background.

But the Southern Baptist heritage was broader than that. The official position had long been that while most Southern Baptists were indeed evangelical and conservative, and many were literalists, only God could see into the heart and only God could judge an individual’s faith. With that latitude, Southern Baptist seminaries had always pursued the best Biblical scholarship and theological education. Now, students who were literalists were neither excluded nor condemned; and many graduated with those sentiments intact. But they had been exposed to that scholarship and understood it; and they did not automatically condemn those who disagreed with them. If there was one thing Southern Baptists prized, it was freedom of belief, and their own freedom from “Baptist orthodoxy.”

All of that has ended, of course, as the last several editions of the “Baptist Faith and Message” have become not only Biblically more conservative and literalist, but also more a confession, a required statement of belief demanding conformity. In my own field of chaplaincy that has led many chaplains who had been Southern Baptist to seek the Spirit, and their professional endorsement, in other Baptist bodies, such as the Cooperative Baptist Fellowship and the Alliance of Baptists. I understand from them that this has been true as well of some congregational clergy. That which Southern Baptists had fought hardest against seems to have become the fact on the ground: a Baptist orthodoxy described in a confessional document.

To some extent all this sounds familiar. The move of American culture to a more conservative position began a generation ago, with the election of Ronald Reagan as President. The movement expressed its presence and its energy in the Contract with America, put forward by Congressional representatives. It became consolidated in Karl Rove’s expectations of conformity from K Street lobbyists. It hasn’t simply sprung up overnight.

It hasn’t in the Episcopal Church, either. Even after the changes in canons in 1976 that allowed women access to all ordained ministries of the Church, some bishops will not consider ordaining them. Even after the acceptance of the current Prayer Book in 1979, the Society for the Book of Common Prayer has continued to function. Even though the initial splinter churches to leave the Episcopal Church fared poorly, organizations like Forward in Faith offered them a voice. The Anglican Mission in America is not itself new anymore. And while these preceded the American Anglican Council, and are separate, they have been in conversation, finding common cause and possibilities of joint effort. Now, none of this has been secret, the notorious Chapman memo notwithstanding. We have simply not been paying attention. Or, and this is perhaps more likely, our willingness to include everyone called us to let this happen with little response – the very inclusiveness that some now hold against the majority in the Church.

Now, I don’t think the same thing can happen in the Episcopal Church that happened in the Southern Baptist Convention. We are not so purely democratic and majoritarian as the Convention, however we may sometimes be perceived. Our fear is less of orthodoxy and more of the tyranny of the majority. Nor are we congregationalist, however some of us may act. We have the Book of Common Prayer and the acts of General Convention to guide and to express our faith.

But we need to recognize that this is not a new phenomenon. It has been building, within our sight, for some time. We should not be shocked to see it now.