Next week (June 14-15) “messengers”
to the Southern Baptist Convention will meet in St. Louis for the
denomination’s annual meeting. Each
year, news agencies that usually ignore the Convention for most of the year
will use the occasion to present several articles on the state of the
denomination or on controversial decisions made by the messengers (delegates,
but not exactly).
This year, those attending will
hear that for the ninth year the number of baptisms has been down. In 2015, Southern Baptist churches baptized
just over 295,000, a figure that is more than 10,000 fewer baptisms than the
year before. (Source: “Southern Baptists See 9th Year of Membership
Decline,” by Travis Loller, Associated Press, 7 June 2016)
For those who may not know,
Baptists practice “credo-baptism” or “believer’s baptism.” That is, they baptize those who have made some
type of “profession of faith,” a verbal
confession of trust in Christ as Savior and an intention to live as his
disciple. In 2014, a committee studying
declining baptisms found the only group experiencing an increase in baptisms
was those aged five and under. Critics question
whether such youngsters can make a truly thoughtful commitment. That question aside, the overall decline in
baptisms means Southern Baptists are reaching fewer adults with their
message. Most Baptists see this as a
failure to carry out the church’s Christ-given mission to evangelize the world.
Added to this is the fact fewer
Southern Baptists are attending church.
Years ago, when I was in seminary, research suggested that about half of
all Southern Baptists were in church each Sunday. Today that figure is closer to one-third.
While the number of Southern
Baptist churches increased by 254 in 2015, SBC Executive Board president Frank
Page, nevertheless, believes the overall decline in baptisms and attendance to
be a cause for alarm. Loller quotes a
news release in which Page declared, “God help us! In a world that is desperate for the message
of Christ, we continue to be less diligent in sharing the Good News.”
For many pastors, laxity of church
members is the go-to explanation for churches not growing or programs failing.
The explanation is popular because it is often true. Churches are not immune to the Pareto
Principle; in fact, in some churches it is optimistic to suggest that 80% of
the work is done by 20% of the people.
All too often that 20% handles closer to 90% of the work. But since this is hardly new, it probably
doesn’t explain the current problem the Convention faces.
Not mentioned in the article is the
fact Baptists have faced a lot of bad press in recent years. Not all of that negative publicity is fair;
sadly, some is earned. Though at
opposite ends of the political spectrum Jimmy Carter and Billy Graham have long
enhanced the image of Baptist. More
recently, the late Fred Phelps, pastor of the notorious Westboro Baptist
Church, and the late Jerry Falwell helped sully the name “Baptist.” No
denomination has ownership of the name “Baptist” so it is used by many churches
with no denominational links. Although
by no means a purely Baptist phenomenon, many newer Baptist churches are
omitting the term when naming the church.
What would have once been “Evangel Baptist Church” is now “Good News
Fellowship.” Not a few older Baptists
believe this practice is disingenuous and may reflect shame at being Baptist. Ultimately the practice reminds us that many
no longer see “Baptist” as a worthy title.
Another reason given for the
problems Baptists and other evangelical churches are facing is the changing
world. The world is changing. No doubt.
I have friends who believe the change began when prayer and Bible
reading were banned from public school about 1962. That was a change, but only for those who
knew it as a way of life. Throughout my
days in public school, I had only one teacher who began her classes with
prayer. In this case, she led the class
in the Lord’s Prayer. As a seventh-grader
who attended a fundamentalist church, I thought it was a proper thing to
do. Looking back, I’m not so sure. One of our school’s few Jewish students sat in
front of me; it was years later when I first gave thought to how he might have
felt having to listen to a Christian prayer each day in our class. Today, I suppose I’d tell both the ACLU and
the Moral Majority that it’s unlikely school prayers every converted any
student and just as unlikely any Christian gave up the faith because classes
begin without prayer.
Things have changed since the
decision to ban prayer and Bible reading in school, but the real question is
whether that decision was the cause of the change or a symptom of change
already taking place.
Christendom—that situation in which
Christianity had legal and cultural hegemony—began to wane well before the
Supreme Court declared same-sex marriage to be legal. True, the Puritans in pre-Revolution
Massachusetts maintained an illusion of Christendom with laws demanding church
attendance and fines imposed on parents who did not teach their children the
Bible and the catechism, but elsewhere in the colonies there were settlers who
had never seen a Bible and could not have quoted a single phrase from the
Apostles’ Creed. Thomas Jefferson
admired the moral teachings of Jesus but rejected the orthodox view of him as
Son of God and Savior. Tom Paine’s
rationalism was appealing to many Americans in the new republic.
While the “Second Great Awakening”
invigorated Methodists and Baptists, eventually making them the largest
Protestant denominations in nineteenth century America, not everyone was
sympathetic. Elizabeth Cady Stanton’s
father conspired to deprogram the future feminist when she came home from boarding
school, after hearing Charles Finney, anxious about her soul; no daughter of
his was going to sully the family reputation by being a revival convert. He was so successful she would eventually
declare that Christianity had nothing to offer women.
Decades later, in 1880s Montana, a
local school board tried to stop a young teacher (who would eventually gain
national fame as evangelist Alma White) from using her classroom to teach the
Bible and hymns. Though the community
was so supportive it replaced the board with members who were sympathetic to
her efforts, the fact the original board felt using the school as a forum for
evangelism to be inappropriate suggests the desire to clearly separate church
and state (or church and school) is no new notion.
Few cultural changes really occur
overnight. Returning to the 1950s would
be no cure to what may be ailing the Convention, that impossible dream would
only mask symptoms, giving a illusion that nothing was wrong. While the famous evangelistic push known as “a
million more in 54” would bring many to Christ, it also fostered the
Convention’s penchant to trust programs to solve problems. Creating one more program is inevitably
easier than doing the hard work of self-analysis that mat be needed before the
denomination can recover its momentum.
In the first article in an
Associated Press series on divisions in American life, Divided America: Evangelicals Feel Alienated, Anxious (AP 9 June
2016), Rachel Zoll reports on her
discussion with Southern Baptist leader Russell Moore. Moore speaks nostalgically of his childhood
in Mississippi. He said, “…any parent whose children weren't baptized by age 12
or 13 would face widespread disapproval.”
The hard work of self-analysis
might mean acknowledging that many of these baptisms were mere rites of
passage, a step taken due to cultural pressure rather than one reflecting
genuine commitment. Moore must know that
some Baptists believe children aged 12 to 13 are too young to be baptized. Others would recommend a longer period
between any “profession of faith” and baptism.
Of course, churches know baptizing anyone is a risk. The baptized might ultimately betray their
commitment by either being merely nominal Christians or by a lifestyle that
defames the very name Christian.
The hard work of self-analysis will
mean working hard to differentiate Biblical principles from cultural
traditions. In The Place Accorded of Old: Questions About Women in Ministry, I’ve
argued that opposition to women in ministry is more a reflection of culture
than a truly Biblical position.
It’s likely there are other such
intrusions of the culture into Baptist life; viewpoints sanctioned by churches
but not really reflecting a Christian worldview. One of these “baptized” positions may include
“the right to keep and bear arms;” while I actually support the traditional
view of the second amendment, I would by no means suggest Jesus wants me to own
an AK-47. Years ago, I heard an
African-American pastor, an ardent Evangelical, plead with a group of white
pastors to understand that guns were destroying the community where he
preached. Sadly, a few of his fellow
Baptists would question his commitment to the faith because of his position.
The solution to the Convention’s
problems will not be found in doing what we have always done—just with more
enthusiasm.
