American Baptist Churches USA Condemn National Crisis, Call for Baptist Identity Reclamation

America is imperiled, but Baptists can save it

The annual meeting of the National Leadership Council of the American Baptist Churches USA recently took place in Atlanta, centered around the theme, “Claim, Distinguish and Proclaim the Markers of American Baptists.” This gathering is significant given the current state of the nation.

There are moments in the life of a nation when silence becomes a decision. Similarly, there are moments in the life of the church when caution becomes cowardice. The speaker fears that both are approaching.

Both must be met with a robust reclamation of pure Baptist markers and their energetic proclamation and execution via a lifestyle that must be Christian first and American after, but only if the latter conforms with the former.

For generations, Americans have spoken “liberty and justice for all” with something close to reverence. Baptists especially should tremble before those words, because our own story is rooted in conscience, dissent and freedom from coercive power. We are heirs of women and men who understood that no king, parliament, president, court, party, bishop or preacher owns the human conscience.

Baptist identity, distinctives, tenets and markers matter now more than ever. It is not nostalgia or denominational vanity. To be Baptist, at our best, is to stand within a Spirit-led tradition that insisted upon fragile freedoms when those freedoms were unpopular, inconvenient or even dangerous.

Walter Shurden named them well: Soul freedom, the freedom of every person to relate to God without religious coercion; Bible freedom, the freedom and responsibility of believers to read Scripture under the Holy Spirit; church freedom, the freedom of local congregations under Christ; and religious freedom, the freedom of all people to practice any religion or no religion without the state’s domination.

Since Baptists were born almost 17 decades before America, and since no Founding Father was Baptist, it is mere coincidence — but a most significant one — that freedoms are not only Baptist treasures; they are essential to any American claim of liberty and justice for all.

When Americans who are Baptists are found faithful to their theological moorings, they would be champions of the First Amendment. Other Baptists in America may speak for themselves; but American Baptists (the “denomination”) hold — not without occasional internal challenge — to this position faithfully.

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