Being "Born Again" is Enough: A Response to Brantly Millegan

Regardless of any cooperation between Baptists and Roman Catholics in social ministries and relief efforts there exists a gulf between the two traditions theologically. We share much in terms of Christian orthodoxy, yet our traditions are still miles apart in many crucial theological areas.

One such area is a theology of salvation and specifically how salvation relates to baptism. Brantly Millegan has recently posted an article that accuses “evangelicals” of missing the basic point of Jesus’ words “you must be born again.” He writes, “For most evangelicals, to be “born again” means only to have had a conversion experience in which one gives one’s life to Christ. That interpretation certainly goes far beyond what the verses [John chapter 3] actually say.” He continues, “While the term “born again” is vague enough to possibly mean simply a conversion experience, being “born of water and the Spirit” is obviously not, at least not exclusively – I’ve never seen anyone get wet from saying the sinner's prayer.” His sarcasm notwithstanding, Mr. Millegan is demonstrating an absolute misunderstanding of Baptist theology and the theology of Protestant Christianity.

Before I clear this up, I’ll allow Mr. Millegan to conclude: “To be “born again” means to baptized. This is not only the current Catholic interpretation of this text but also the interpretation given by the early Church Fathers – indeed all orthodox Christians prior to the 16th century Protestant Reformation…. if Jesus is talking about baptism and not simply a conversion experience – although any adult who is baptized must have put their faith in Christ – then Jesus is teaching something that evangelicals frequently deny, but that the Catholic Church has always maintained: that baptism is necessary for salvation.”

I do not have the time or the energy to re-engage the centuries-old debate between Catholics and Protestants concerning the theology of baptism. Rather, I want to clarify what is apparently Mr. Millegan’s fundamental assumption: that evangelical Christians see being “born again” as a personal salvation experience related to the “sinner’s prayer” and as having no relationship to baptism.

First, we have to address two troublesome words, “many” and “evangelicals.” I have commented before that using weasel words such a “many” and “some” and “frequently” are inappropriate especially when writing about things as important as what people believe about God. Further, the term “evangelical” has become so stretched by general media and even by those who would claim is as a self-descriptor that it is vacuous and nigh useless. Which evangelical groups see baptism as unnecessary? Please, demonstrate which theological traditions within Protestantism (of which evangelicalism is certainly a subset regardless of its boundaries) hold baptism in such low regard as to declare it unnecessary.

Second, saying that being born again could mean “simply a conversion experience” betrays Mr. Millegan’s central point. The presupposition of a conversion experience, a moment in which he would later assume means that an adult has “put their faith in Christ,” is more than something extra or reducible to “simply” trusting Jesus for salvation. The conversion experience that precedes baptism even in Mr. Millegan’s argument is the moment of faith. It is presupposed in baptism and is the foundational moment in the Christian’s faith life.

Third, what is really going on here is a difference of theologies between Roman Catholics and Baptists (and most Protestants, but I will only speak to my own tradition of Baptist life). When Mr. Millegan concludes that “baptism is necessary for salvation” he demonstrates the traditional Catholic understanding of baptism as a means of grace, a sacrament that imparts some measure of God’s salvation upon the one being baptized. Truly, in Roman Catholic theology to be unbaptized is to be unsaved.

Baptists do not see baptism as a sacrament that is an actual mechanism of God’s grace. Instead we understand baptism to be an ordinance, an outward sign of an inward grace, an act carried out in obedience to the Lord in whom we have personally believed and trusted in our conversion experience. We do not hold that the baptismal waters or the words said in them are a means of God’s grace. Baptism is a sacred act performed by those who have “simply” had a conversion experience in the presence of others who have shared that experience and who commit to disciple the new believer within a community of Priests called the church.

Mr. Millegan doesn’t understand that baptism is necessary for Baptists, just not in the way he means it. Every person who believes in Jesus for salvation should be baptized, not out of necessity but out of obedience and imitation. The good news is that were someone to die on the way to the baptistery, no Baptist would hesitate to proclaim their salvation if the deceased had put their faith in Jesus Christ.

Finally, I understand Mr. Millegan’s sarcastic lampooning of those who overuse the “sinner’s prayer.” I, too, detest the boilerplate salvation strategies that my spiritual relatives have developed. What I cannot agree on, though, is Mr. Millegan’s complete misunderstanding of Protestant theology. Baptists, at least, believe in salvation by faith alone, through Christ alone. We do not diminish the “simple” conversion experience and over-emphasize the symbol of death, burial, and resurrection that is baptism. We are a people who come together in the common bond of having been born again through the Spirit of God, marked with the waters of baptism, and remembering our Lord through the Supper.

Even after 500 years we are still miles apart theologically, and for good reason. I pray that this relatively insignificant misunderstanding will motivate Baptists to teach and re-teach the theology of our tradition, to dwell in the Scriptures, and to preach sermons that call men, women, boys, and girls to have “simply” a conversion experience. That’s enough for us to do.

On 9/11 and the Necessity of a Personal Encounter with the Risen Lord

This morning the public schools in Clinton, MS heard the reading of President Obama’s declaration that today is “Patriot Day.” Faculty and students alike heard the emphasis on remembrance, memorial, and solidarity as Americans that many of us are familiar with in these years after the events of 9/11. I was nearly brought to tears as my principal read the declaration and as memories of my own experiences on that day came flooding back to my mind.

My students, though, were unaffected.

I teach 8^th-11^th grades. Most of my students were born between 1997 and 1999. They have very little recollection of the events of 2001 if they have any at all. They were unmoved by the powerful statement that my Principal read, and had no response whatsoever when I asked them about their emotions as they think about what today means in our society.

When I asked one group of students how they felt about our brief time of remembrance they reported that they had no emotional connection to the actual events of 9/11, and that they considered it in the same category as the attack on Pearl Harbor. They had no real first-hand experience with the events of the attack and therefore had no reason to be emotionally affected or even intellectually interested in our remembrance.

I understand my students’ perspective. They feel about 9/11 like I feel about Pearl Harbor: I understand that it was a trauma and a grotesque attack on our people but I do not have any real emotional connection to that event. My students care about the 9/11 attack, but they do not and cannot have a real connection to the emotions that I feel when I remember that day.

My students’ (in)experience with 9/11 has led me to think about our Baptist emphasis on personal salvation and how that should affect our local church ministries. Now that we are 12 years removed from the actual events of 9/11 more and more people understand that day in a disconnected, academic way. They understand the facts of the event and perhaps the motivations behind them, but they have no emotional connection with the horrors I experienced. In a similar way, those in our congregations who have not personally experienced the Risen Lord through the work of the Holy Spirit struggle to understand the regeneration of those who have.

Our distance in time and experience render our connection and commitment to a cause or movement weaker and weaker. The further removed we are from the founder of a movement or from a specific event, the less conviction we have. This is the very reason Baptists have emphasized and must continue to emphasize a personal conversion experience with Jesus Christ.

Baptists have emphasized a personal profession of faith in Jesus Christ from the earliest days of the Baptist movement. Bill Leonard comments, “For the early Baptists, all who claimed membership in Christ's Church were required to testify to an experience of grace through faith. Baptists are one of the first Reformation- based groups to require a "profession of faith" as a prerequisite to baptism and church membership. From the believers' church, Baptists derived their emphasis on believers' baptism, congregational polity, and freedom of conscience, ecclesial and political dissent, and religious liberty. Indeed, all other distinguishing marks of Baptist identity grow out of their early commitment to a regenerate church membership.”[1]

The personal experience with Jesus was and is the ground of all of Baptist life. From it comes an understanding of church membership, church polity, and certainly the traditional Baptist distinctive beliefs: Priesthood of the Believer, Soul Competency, Autonomy of the Local Congregation, and Religious Liberty. Believer’s baptism likewise became “the outward and visible sign of a believer’s church” which was predicated in every case by a personal conversion experience.[2]

Without demanding that every member of a Baptist congregation have a personal faith encounter with Jesus Christ the Baptist project cannot stand. We begin to rely on the traditions, habits, and motivations of our ancestors rather than on the compulsion of God’s love for the world made manifest in Jesus’ life, death, and resurrection. We are “unashamed particularists, demanding conversion of all who would claim salvation in this life and the next though Jesus Christ.”[3] This is the very essence of the Baptist identity, and is the motivation behind our various evangelistic emphases and revivalism.

Baptists have many versions of salvation theology, but underlying each is the fundamental theological and philosophical demand that every person who calls himself or herself a Baptist has had a personal experience with Jesus Christ. Whether a particular congregation’s identity is Calvinistic or Arminian, each demands that salvation be the doorway to regenerate church membership.[4]

  

This is certainly an inefficient way to organize the church. It would be much easier if we had hereditary membership based on the salvific experiences of parents or ancestors. Or perhaps we could have an attendance-based theology or a giving-based membership; if you show up once per month or give 10% of your income to the congregation than your salvation is assured!

Instead, Baptists commit to the never-ending work of evangelism. With each new birth, new immigration, or new social shift the Great Commission compels us outward again, proclaiming that Jesus Christ, the only Son of God, has died for our sins and defeated death on our behalf. The work of catechesis - the work of teaching and forming people in godliness before and after their conversion - is a continuous and mandatory work of any Baptist congregation because we believe so firmly that every soul should meet and know Jesus Christ as Lord.

If we believe that people must be born again by grace through faith, then we must treat the congregation as a community constantly being re-born and re-shaped because people within the congregation change and thus the church changes. We cannot rely on the momentum of habit to prolong and preserve the mission and ministry of the church; we must continually re-tell, re-assess, and re-envision who we are and what we do for all those who are newly-born in our community.

We must do the work of telling the stories of our congregation so that new believers and new members can commit to the work God is doing in our midst with the knowledge of what God has done before. We must see the congregation as a Body - one that grows, stretches, changes, is wounded, and heals. We must, as Baptists, demand regeneration in our brothers and sisters. We must promote godliness within our churches and within our communities. And everything, everything we do must be based upon our own experience with the risen Lord.

My students will never understand the emotions I feel on 9/11, and they should not. I pray that they never experience anything as horrible as that day, though they probably will. Demanding that they act or feel or believe anything in particular toward a day they cannot remember is as fruitless as demanding that our congregations demonstrate passion in worship, zeal in evangelism, persistence in prayer, or conviction in their choices we do not first reveal to them the God whose love triumphs even the grave.

Consider an oft-skipped verse of “It Is Well With My Soul"

            My sin, oh the bliss of this glorious thought,

            My sin, not in part, but the whole,

            Is nailed to the Cross, and I bear it no more!

            Praise the Lord, praise the Lord, oh my soul!

If we have no experience with such bliss, this is just a song. But if we have tasted the glory of that thought, then we sing even more powerfully and passionately. May we lead one another to that moment and then onward on this Way, knowing why we sing and just what we’ve been saved from.

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[1] Leonard, Bill, “Salvation and Sawdust: The Rise and Fall of a Baptist Conversion Liturgy.” Baptist History and Heritage 45 no 3 (2010), 8.

[2] Leonard, Bill, “Changing a Theology: Baptists, Salvation, and Globalism Then and Now.” Perspectives in Religious Studies 31 no 3 (Fall 2004), 252.

[3] Ibid, 253.

[4] For an interesting overview of Baptist salvation and spirituality, see E. Glenn Hinson, “Baptist Approaches to Spirituality.” Baptist History and Heritage 37 no 2 (Spring 2002), 6-31.