Discipleship
in Baptist Life[1]
It has been
demonstrated that Christian discipleship developed from a master/disciple
relationship to one of imitation of increasing degrees of separation from the
object of imitation. It has further been demonstrated that the catechesis of
the early church was developed to be an atmosphere of progressive discipleship
that began with the individual’s response to the kerygma, led them through a
program of baptismal preparation, and then ushered new Christians into the
deeper understandings of the faith.
Baptists
have, in large part, abandoned the principles and practices of catechesis in
favor of short-term low-risk conversions. This trend is owed in large part to
the revivalist heritage of modern Baptists, which emphasized an emotional response
to the revival preacher rather than a slow, gradual process of what we could
comfortably call catechesis. Revivalism drastically shortened the preparatory
time for baptism from a period of years to mere minutes. Loyd Allen suggests
that the ultimate goal of Baptist revival conversions was “spiritual
conversion, the vertically oriented experience of human communion with
transcendence.”[2]
Allen makes the case that a fundamental transition in Baptist conversions from
the “revivalistic” to an “intellectual” experience. He locates this in the
twentieth century evolution of Baptist life, saying, “…the revival form
retreated from affective conversion as a precursor to spiritual conversion in
favor of an intellectual conversion approach.”[3] Steven
Harmon identifies the lasting impact of revivalism on Baptist life, especially
in worship, saying, “Revivalism has also left its imprint upon Baptist worship,
not only in the addition of an evangelistic invitation to a service of the word
but also in a different sort of twofold division of the service: the “music
service” or “song service” and the “preaching service.”[4]
This
transition should not be underemphasized. In the early spread of Baptists in
America through the revival and circuit preaching of evangelists, converts were
catechized by the spiritual formation they experienced in the context of a
local congregation. The transition from the spiritual formation catechesis of
discipleship, which in the great majority of cases led to a “testimony” of
conversion before the congregation, turned toward the intellectual assent of
basic propositional statements about various points of Christian theology. Once
this transition was complete, conversion was equivalent to the intellectual
assent to propositional statements about
Jesus Christ and catechesis was reduced to Christian education. Molly Marshall
relates her experience in this intellectual catechesis in a Southern Baptist
Church, saying,
“The catechesis was uniform and predictable. The minimum
was regular attendance at all the services (including Wednesday night prayer
services). When a revival came to town, one as not only to be there but to invite
whatever local sinners (usually family members of another denomination) he or
she could round up in order to “pack the pew.” Of course one was to attend
Sunday School with two tangible proofs of the seriousness of personal
discipleship: a Bible and an offering envelope “filled out,” where one recorded
on “the eight-point record system” the varied ways in which he or she had
attempted to come well prepared for Sunday’s marathon by attentiveness all week
long. Coming back on Sunday evening, the pupil supplemented Sunday morning’s
Bible study and “preaching service” with Training Union, a session in which we
learned about Baptist identity and Christian leadership skills such as speaking
and personal witness. The really
spiritual were unfailingly present, able to “give their parts” without
consulting the quarterly even once.”[5]
Marshall’s experience is, sadly,
typical for many in the SBC discipleship tradition. Much like the ancient
Church, the Baptists put a critical emphasis on baptism; however, rather than a
thorough catechesis in preparation for that baptism, Baptists substituted
various education and training programs that focused on Southern Baptist
traditions and evangelism.
Marshall
laments the outcomes of these traditions among Southern Baptists, saying, “What
we did not know was how to help [disciples] move from a borrowed faith to a
personal faith. We did not know how to engage their hard and forthright
questions that challenged the inculcated approach to life as a disciple of
Jesus Christ. They learned the first part of the formula of faith, how to begin
the Christian life, but not the struggle of the saints to mature as pilgrims of
faith.”[6]
This lack of a formative catechetical framework leads Marshall to conclude,
“Southern Baptists’ catechetical practices did not form many adult
Christians."[7]
It
is inaccurate to say that Southern Baptists did not practice a catechesis. The
strongly emotional conversion experience followed up by the discipleship
framework that emphasizes evangelism and missions forms a de facto catechesis, as Marshall mentioned above. However, compared
to the ancient church model of imitation and then the mentor-based period of
preparation for Baptism, modern American Baptists have inverted the idea of
catechesis. Instead of emphasizing commitment to Christ and holy living before baptism, Southern Baptists
emphasize a dramatic turning point that is immediate upon baptism and leads to
holy living on its own.[8]
The catechesis of
the Southern Baptist tradition is much more passive than what was examined
above. Propositional statements of truth according to SBC orthodoxy are
generally transmitted by cursory examinations of the Baptist Faith and Message.
Theology is implicitly taught through the singing of congregational hymns and
the participation in worship and the local congregation’s educational
ministries.[9] Even
for a tradition that is non-creedal and wants not tradition but the Bible,
catechesis is inevitable. The problem, as Marshall pointed out, is that few of
these disciples ever reach adulthood in the Christian faith.
What is necessary
for Baptist discipleship is a return to the more personal spiritual practices
of other branches of the Christian family tree. Baptists would benefit greatly
from a re-interpretation of discipleship beyond the intellectual assent to
certain doctrinal propositions and to begin moving toward an incarnational
discipleship model. Westerhoff clearly demonstrates the contrast between these
two styles, saying “evangelization is understood as a personal journey that
calls for creativity, flexibility, and adaptability. It is not an institutional
program that is identical for everyone. It is a person, with a personal story
and life history, who is being evangelized. Evangelization, therefore, is a
process that needs to be made relevant to each person. For another thing,
evangelization is a process that takes place in a community of faith, a
community that is continually being renewed and reformed.”[10]
Baptists would do well to recognize the personal, relational language of this
process; instead of making disciples through modern educational efforts the
Church might regain its ancient imitative catechesis.
Finding
Help in Baptist Catholicity
As
was examined above, the Second Vatican Council (Vatican II) brought the
language of catechesis back into the minds of many Catholic leaders and clergy.
An unintended consequence of that development was that spiritual formation
entered once again into the discussion of discipleship among Protestants, too. Marshall
points out that in the years since Vatican II, “Not only did Protestants pay
more attention to the common pre-Reformation heritage of the whole church…they
began to read contemporary Catholic teachers of prayer and spiritual
formation.”[11]
Such exposure to Catholic sources led Baptists both to dialogue and to reinforce
bright lines of theological difference even as Baptists sought to learn from
the Roman Catholic Church.[12]
Since
Vatican II, Baptists have sought a renewed practice of spiritual formation,
spurred on in some instances by the painful ecclesial controversy within the
Southern Baptist Convention since 1979. This new Baptist Catholicity, or, as
many call it, the new ecumenism, “is emerging primarily in the area of
spirituality.”[13]
Marshall continues, “We are rediscovering the richness of vision in those
antecedents to Baptist life…Further, the nearly two-decade long intra-Baptist
controversy has prompted careful review of our confessional as well as
devotional heritage.”[14]
Seven
Harmon has written a scholarly attempt to map the trend toward Baptist
catholicity, a text that demonstrate that “Baptists and Roman Catholics have
even more in common than contemporary ecumenism leads us to believe,
particularly when it comes to hammering out the “catholic” nature of our
Christianity.”[15]
The idea of Harmon’s work, and the work of others striving for a Baptist
catholicity, is not to merge the Baptist stream of faith with that of our Roman
Catholic neighbors, but to find a common ground upon which a broader coalition
of Christ’s church might stand for the good of the Church and the world.
One
obvious dividing issue between Baptists and Roman Catholics (and other
traditions, as well) is that of the use of creeds. Whereas Baptists are creedal
only insofar as they adhere to “no creed but the Bible,” other traditions find
both spiritual and ecclesial strength in the common creeds of the basics of
Christianity. Harmon notes that instead of seeing the Creed as a restrictive,
non-inspired restraint on the priesthood of the believer, Baptist should see
the Creed as “the Christian ‘pledge of allegiance’ for they [the creeds]
declare the story to which Christians committed themselves in baptism.”[16]
O’Connell narrows the focus of the usefulness of creeds as “dynamic and
evolving relationships between the content and practices of faith, between
embodied memories and future promises, between the verbal convictions of faith
and nonverbal commitments to it, and between contemplation of God’s action in the
past and action with God in the present.”[17]
The creeds, along with the biblical, historical, and theological resources
associated with them, are not oppressive, static masters that lord over the
believers; rather they are touchstones to which Baptists may turn and re-turn
as they journey along the pilgrimage of faith.
Harmon
understands the resistance that will be felt by many Baptists to the
implementation of anything resembling creedalism. However, by an insightful
analysis of the connectedness between fourth century Patristic theology and
modern Baptist confessions, Harmon concludes that an explicit integration of
Patristic theology into future Baptist statements of faith will reinvigorate
Baptist identity as well as serve to clarify the nature and use of creeds in
Baptist life.[18]
An more thorough appreciation of Christian history, especially that of the
Patristic era, will serve modern Baptists by helping congregations see
themselves as part of the larger Christian story and as having a meaningful
contribution to the emerging ecumenical movement among both Catholics and
Protestants.
The inclination
toward Baptist catholicity is not simply to be trendy or even to reclaim a
“paleo-orthodoxy.” Marshall warns against the trendiness of Baptist/Catholic
relationships, saying, “While the “otherness” of the Catholic tradition may
make it quite attractive, it is imperative to attend to the spirituality of our
own heritage as well.”[19] Harmon
proposes that an appropriation of the patristic tradition “will require a
Baptist re-envisioning of the nature and function of creeds” and that “a
contemporary Baptist confession must express what Baptists share with other
Christians as well as what makes Baptists unique.”[20]
Catholicity is a re-appropriation, a resoucement,
and a movement among Baptists to something more ancient and less provincial
than where their theology has resided in recent generations. It is not the
dilution of Baptist identity, but rather Baptist Catholicity is the clarifying
of Baptist theology in dialogue with other Christian traditions.[21]
Harmon’s analysis helps to re-integrate the spiritual life into the broader
life of the church, which O’Connell identifies as “the relationship among
creeds, congregational worship, and the formation of the community…the
emotional facets and wisdom of narrative traditions…and the “epistemological
humility” necessary for intra-ecclesial relationships.”[22]
Harmon is not
alone in recognizing a burgeoning interest in Baptist spiritual formation that
tends toward catholicity. Many Baptists are familiar with the work of Richard
Foster, who describes five different types of the spiritual life through an
analysis of major historical church traditions.[23]
This and Foster’s other works on Spiritual Formation are not explicitly
addressed to those seeking Baptist catholicity; however, Foster’s use of
Patristic and other pre-Reformation sources cannot help but expose readers to
what Harmon intends in the development of Baptist/Catholic dialogue.[24]
Brian McLaren also calls Christians into something new by honoring what has
come before us. He concludes his seminal work A New Kind of Christianity by saying that
“We don’t want to betray our heritage. We don’t want to
prove unfaithful to the faith that has nourished our souls and formed the
communities to which we belong. Yet we must realize what being faithful and
true to our spiritual forbears really requires. It’s not simply a matter of
repeating again and again what Luther and the other Reformers said (or going
back farther and repeating what the scholastics or eremetics or patristics
said). Rather, true fidelity means we must do what they did.”[25]
McLaren sees hope in the spiritual
practices of the ancient Church much like Foster: he encourages both the
individual and the corporate community to participate in spiritual practices
aimed at renewal.
Richard
Rohr, a Franciscan priest, has offered contemplative spiritual practices as a
source of discipleship.[26]
Although writing from a Catholic perspective, Rohr’s ideas are applicable and
accessible to Baptists and other Protestants. Rohr uses psychological
categories to address the modern spiritual needs of believers while masterfully
integrating ancient spiritual practices. His work represents a bridge to
Baptist spiritual formation from the “other” direction, that is, an accessible
spiritual practices guide from a Catholic source.
In
much the same way as Harmon attempts to make a way into Baptist catholicity, D.
H. Williams examines the early church’s formative influence on the Reformation
and on Baptist groups in modern world.[27]
His work is an apologetic for the Tradition of the Church, which is often a
scandalizing word among Baptists. Williams’ work is a first step in achieving
what Harmon envisions as a fully formed Baptist community shaped by the
Tradition of the Church yet maintaining the distinct characteristics of the
Baptist faith. Williams highlights the relationship Baptists and Roman
Catholics could have through a re-appropriation of the ancient Church’s forms
and content, saying, “Today’s Protestants should take a lesson from their
ancestors. To be Protestant does not imply detachment from doctrinal theology,
liberation from ecclesiastical authority, or discarding the tradition(s) of the
past. Being Protestant is not synonymous with being anticatholic (sic) in the
sense of rejecting the faith as it developed prior to the Reformation. For that
matter, being Protestant is not the antithesis of being Roman Catholic…”[28]
Williams hopes that by demonstrating the need for an acknowledged and accepted
tradition among Protestants that Baptist catholicity with other branches of the
Christian family tree will be a step congregations will see and embrace.
Because
local congregations are the essential units in Baptist life, a local
congregation must be led to examine its own traditions and discipleship methods
in light of this trend toward catholicity.[29] No
matter how wise or convincing the aforementioned authors’ words are, little
will be accomplished in Baptist life until local congregations adopt new
commitments in their discipleship frameworks.
Molly Marshall is
again helpful here by identifying four types of discipleship that are practiced
among Baptists today: 1) Conversionist; 2) Charismatic; 3) Crusading or
Prophetic; and 4) Contemplative.[30] Marshall
does not pit one style against another out of necessity, but recognizes that
local congregations will develop a style that emphasizes one type over another.
She comments, “While these types coalesce at many points, for example, their
common concern for strengthening worship in the gathered community as the
foundational mode of spiritual formation, their disparate accents are needed
for a balanced discipleship.”[31]It
will be helpful to this project to examine two of these traditions,
specifically the Conversionist and the Contemplative modes of discipleship.
Marshall describes
the Conversionist type as what she and “most of us” grew up with. She traces
the development of this type of discipleship through the Lutheran language of
salvation as a transaction, through revivalism, and finally to the “Southern
Baptists’ highly individualistic preoccupation with [a conversion event] rather
than an ongoing conversion experience, the journey of faith.”[32]
Marshall identifies the strength of this type of “discipleship” as the demand
for repentance in faith to enable salvation.
The Contemplative
type of discipleship, according to Marshall, “is attracting more attention of
late because of Baptists’ deepened acquaintance with the Catholic tradition and
their own expressed need for a more reflective discipleship.”[33]
She continues, “Reclaiming their roots in the biblical spirituality of the
desert tradition, Baptists are learning afresh how one’s entire way of living
and being can be informed by the Word of God.”[34]
This contemplative style remains open to the spiritual practices of which Rohr
and Foster write while maintaining a Baptist framework for that discipleship. Marshall
concludes, saying, “the Contemplative type suggests that certain practices and
a posture of receptivity make space for the unfinished presence of God in our
lives.”[35]
Baptists who
experienced the limited discipleship of the Conversionist type, which is
certainly the experience of many in the American South, need a more thorough
grounding in the Christian tradition to maintain their spiritual formation. The
Contemplative types’ recent growth among Baptists may represent an attempt to
accomplish just that. More than spiritual practices, though, these Baptists
need a new framework upon which to build their identities as disciples of Jesus
Christ. Whether Conversionist or Contemplative, Baptists need to examine the
object of their faith and the manner in which they pursue their discipleship.
Marshall is correct, though, in describing this last type of discipleship that
seems to be growing in popularity among non SBC Baptists in the South. Perhaps
it is this method of discipleship that will help make a road into Baptist
catholicity that discipleship might be experienced as a life-long journey of
faith development.
[1] I
am a Baptist of Southern Baptist Convention heritage, Baptist General
Convention of Texas experience, and a Cooperative Baptist Fellowship future.
This section addresses the issues inherent in my personal SBC discipleship
experience viewed through the lens of having come through and out of that
heritage toward something new.
[2]
Allen, Loyd; “Being Born Agan – And Again, and Again,” Baptist History and Heritage 45 no. 3, p. 23-27.
[3]
Ibid. 34.
[4]
Harmon, 158.
[5]
Marshall, Molly T., “The Changing Face of Baptist Discipleship,” Review and Expositor, 95 no. 1, 59-73.
[6]
Ibid, 60.
[7]
Ibid. Marshall’s experience is similar to my own, and that of Steven Harmon who
generalizes Baptist catechesis through worship as “not a service of word and
table but rather a service of the word, which nonetheless is capable of a
multifaceted telling of the Christian story in itself” (157).
[8]
There is plenty to investigate in this idea, but these theological starting
points are beyond the scope of this project.
[9]
For more on the catechesis of a congregation’s liturgy, see E. Bryon Anderson,
“Liturgical Catechesis: Congregational Practice as Formation,” Religious Education 92 no. 3 (1997), p.
349-362.
[10]
Westerhoff, 162. Please remember that for Westerhoff, “evangelization” is a
component of catechesis. He says, “Evangelization is the participation in and
practice of the Christian life of faith, an intentional process within a
community of faith that influences the transformation of a person’s faith,
character, and consciousness…” (161).
[11]
Marshall, 62.
[12]
For a contemporary assessment of the Baptist/Catholic dialogue surrounding the
calling of Vatican II, see James Leo Garrett, “Polemic, Conversion, and/or
Dialogue: Baptist Postures Toward the Roman Catholic Church,” Review and Expositor, 60 no. 3 (1963),
p. 319-342.
[13]
Marshall, 62.
[14]
Ibid.
[15]
See Harmon, Steven R. Towards Baptist Catholicity. Eugene, Oreg.: Wipf
& Stock, 2006. 270 pages and O’Connell, Maureen H., “Towards a Baptist (and
Roman Catholic) Catholicity,” Pro
Ecclesia, 18 no. 4, p. 381-385.
[16]
Harmon, 164.
[17]
O’Connell, 382.
[18]
See Harmon, 81-87.
[19]
Marshall, 62.
[20]
Wilkins, 82.
[21]
Harmon finds connections, often ironically, between the modern experience of
Baptists and the Patristic modes of worship and church polity. This would
certainly serve to be the starting point for a more thorough examination of
Patristic writing, which, Harmon believes, will lead to a greater catholicity
among otherwise historically and ecumenically ignorant Baptists.
[22]
O’Connell referencing Harmon, 383.
[23]
His five categories are: 1)the prayer-filled life; 2) the virtuous life; 3) the
Spirit-empowered life; 4) the compassionate life; and 5) the Word-centered
life. See his Streams of Living Water,
New York: Harper-Collins, 2001. Marshall comments on Foster’s use of these
categories as a guide to reading spiritual classics that such artifice “seems
rather arbitrary at points and difficult to interface for contemporary
disciples.” See Marshall, 67.
[24]
See Foster, Richard J., Celebration of Discipline,
San Francisco: Harper San Francisco, 1998; Freedom
of Simplicity, New York: Harper-Collins, 2005; Prayer: Finding the Heart’s True Home, New York: Harper-Collins,
2002.
[25]
McLaren, Brian D., A New Kind of
Christianity, New York: Harper-Collins, 2010, 258.
[26]
See Rohr, Richard, Falling Upward,
San Francisco: Jossey-Bass, 2011; Everything
Belongs: The Gift of Contemplative Prayer, New York: Crossroad, 2003; The Naked Now, New York: Crossroad,
2009.
[27]
See Williams, D. H., Evangelicals and
Tradition, Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2005 and Retrieving the Tradition & Renewing Evangelicalism, Grand
Rapids: Eerdmans, 1999.
[28]
Williams, Retrieving the Tradition,
174.
[29]
It can easily be argued from Baptist principles that the individual believer is
the essential unit within a Baptist church; however, I am assuming that
discipleship happens within the context of the discipleship community, that is,
the local congregation.
[30]
Marshall, 68.
[31]
Marshall, 69.
[32]
Marshall, 68. See also Bill Leonard’s “Getting Saved in America: Conversion
Event in a Pluralistic Culture,” Review
and Expositor 82 (Winter 1985): 111-27.
[33]
Marshall, 69.
[34]
Ibid.
[35]
Marshall, 69-70.
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