Baptists and the Political Trap

It is difficult to deny that, previous to the founding of the United States of America, Baptist people had very little political involvement and in most cases refused political involvement. No wonder. The experience of Baptist people and governments had never been positive. Whether it was
·         The pre-Catholic secular Roman government or
·         The burgeoning Catholic system to
·         The multi-headed Protestant monster
Baptists have always gotten a sour taste from government persecution, leaving them to contemplate the place of government in the world of the Christian. Their conclusion was the now famous (some would say infamous) doctrine of separation of church and state.[1] 

It is not as though historical Baptists have never had opportunity to be a government sanctioned church. Indeed, the Netherlands considered it at one time and it was again considered in the early days of our nations founding. After Baptists strongly lobbied for religious freedom, the Constitutional Convention considered making Baptist the state church. In both cases the Baptists declined. In the case of our country's founding, they had lobbied for liberty of conscience. These early Baptists understood that government and faith were terrible bedfellows. 

But then came our constitution and religious liberty. For the first time in human history a government was created by the people and for the people. And for the first time in Christian history Baptists became involved in that government. At first it seemed like a godsend. Not only could Baptists worship according to the dictates of their conscience, they could get involved in the political process to ensure they would always possess this liberty. 

Baptists, the very people who crafted the concept of separation of church and state, began to ignore to the doctrine in favor of using the political process to ensure what politics has always striven to rob men of. Baptists, along with every form of American Protestantism, embraced instead the doctrine of Christian patriotism. That doctrine has been the demise of Baptists.

•  Just as the Waldenses compromised for the sake of their safety and are no longer a vibrant Christian faith
•  Just as the Baptists in England compromised their doctrines to seem more respectable to the Protestant government and lost the savor of their salt
•  Even so have American Baptists so stepped into the trap American politics that we are likely never to escape

Indeed many see no need to escape. 
First, we yoked with the Protestant Fundamentalists who were not Baptists, to fight modernism. 
Today few but Baptists accept the Fundamentalist title, but those who embrace it the strongest are far more Protestant Fundamentalist (in ecclesiology) than they are Baptists. The average Baptist is so unlearned doctrinally that he is unable to discern the difference between a Fundamentalist using the Baptist name and a true Baptist in faith and practice. 

Then we joined hands with Mormons and anyone else who would in the Moral Majority
A misguided and quasi-Baptist preacher led Americans of all persuasions, whether they were Catholics, Protestants, Mormons, or Baptists to extend to one another the right hand of fellowship so long as we each held to "Judeo-Christian" ethics.  Moral Majority has disbanded but many have never let go of the un-Baptist principles of the movement or the unscriptural associations that were formed.  It's a trap, a snare. And I fear that few will even attempt to flee its deathly influence.

Historic Baptists distrusted human governments and devices. They understood the danger of desiring a king like all the other nations. They poured themselves instead into: 

Knowing The Lord

Learning His Word and 

Evangelizing the lost

And left the kingdoms of this world to themselves.[2]

May God grant that some Baptist would see the trap before it us sprung and warn others to flee it.

Marvin McKenzie

In the field

---

[1] That modern Baptists are losing touch with this important doctrine is evidenced by the fact that one leading Independent Baptist pastor once tweaked the doctrine from separation of church and state to separation from sin.
[2] I am not suggesting that Christians in America may not participate in the political process. I am merely attempting to point out that, whenever we do, we set ourselves up to be trapped by it.

The Missions Church

I got started as an independent Baptist in a missions church. The first Sunday I attended church, shortly after I became a believer, was the second Sunday of the church's existence. Cornerstone Baptist Church, all approximately ten people in it, was a missions church sent out of Bible Baptist Church in Selah, WA. I quickly learned that independent Baptists practice this principle of "churches make churches." In other words, the authority to begin a new church is not in a man, but in the local church. To preserve the integrity of doctrine, a church authorizes a man to

• Plant a church
• Evangelize a community and
• Baptize those who are converted
   

I also learned that most young preachers want to free their fledgling missions church from her sending authority as quickly as possible. I used to think that was because we were aggressive servants of the Lord. I have come to believe it is more because our sin nature does not like authority over us. Any authority; even the authority of a sending church. We view it as a sort of necessary evil. We would condemn a man for planting a church without this sending church, exclaiming his "church" as no real church at all. But we will shed our own selves from the shackles of this mother church at the first possible moment.

I propose that this needs to be addressed and changed. Some ministries would be better off as missions ministries, possibly indefinitely. Depending upon circumstances, it could be that they should be missions ministries permanently.

Consider what would qualify a church as indigenous:
Some would say it is the ability to support their own pastor.
I have seen this qualification cited a number of times but often neglected by men who will organize as independent living off of mission support from dozens of churches.

Some would say it is having a pastor and deacons.
But pastors sometimes move. Sometimes they move after only a brief time. Deacons, the biblical mandate for deacons only happens when church is of sufficient size that the pastor can care for the daily ministry by himself. Deacons are never seen in the Bible as leaders but as servants. The very fact that someone suggests a church isn't well organized until they have deacons suggests they have an unbiblical view of the office.

I have personally suggested that a church is not ready to be organized until it has ten faithful and tithing families.

I took the idea from the Jewish practice for their synagogues. However I have also seen this practice manipulated by getting friends and family to move to the town in order to get the ten and get out from under the sending church. (Frequently they still want money from the sending church, just no subjection to it.)

I want to suggest a different tact, I want to suggest that,

A church is ready to be indigenous when it is capable of keeping the course over generations.

• When the church has members who are longstanding citizens of the area in which the church is planted and who are convinced and committed to the doctrine and practice the church planter was sent to propagate,
• When there is a plan in place and agreed upon by members of that church to keep the church on course at the untimely demise of the current pastor (whether by death, departure or depravity),
• When those who are spokesmen in the church when the pastor isn't looking are as committed to the doctrines and practice of the sending church as the church planter claims to be

then the sending church may well consider organizing the missions church as an indigenous work.

By the way I would also propose that organization should always be upon the suggestion of the sending church and not the church planter.

The sin nature of the church planter will always be to get free of authority and that should never be the motive of independence.

This plan could only work with a shift in the current practice of using a sending church as a formality rather than a functioning relationship. The sending church ought not to be a preacher's friend from Bible College days or some big and well known church in the fellowship, but a vital part of the church planter's spiritual life, the best case scenario would be the church where he was saved and baptized and brought up in the faith.

I know there are problems with this plan too; many of them the result of pastors of potential sending churches not being stable enough themselves to stay in one place and be mentors to younger men in the faith. However we would be stepping in the right direction if we began addressing these subjects with both the young would be church planter and the more mature potential sending church pastor.

Subculture or Counter Culture

Back in April of this year Elizabeth Vargas gave her expose' of what they called this "dangerous subculture" known as Independent Fundamental Baptists. The term subculture struck me as I meditate considerably on the issues of Christianity and culture. It does not seem to me that Christianity ought to fit into the realm of the culture in which it finds itself but it ought to create its own culture. Missionaries are quick to tell me that what I believe to be Christian culture is not but merely American Christian culture.

But the term subculture sounded shocking to me. Almost underground. Include independent Baptists in with the subcultures of
• Marijuana smoking free sexers
• Underground poet societies
• Goth
• Punk, etc.

But even more unnerving to me is the connotation that our "subculture" is somehow beneath what is the true culture of America.

This week I heard a man refer to the Ana Baptists not as a subculture but as a counter culture in their day. That speaks volumes to me. That is Biblical Christianity.
• It is not blended into the culture it finds itself
• It is not under and somehow subservient to the surrounding culture

Christianity is supposed to run counter to the culture in which it is found. It is to oppose, to check and to resist the cultures of this world.

Matthew 5:13-16 KJV
Ye are the salt of the earth: but if the salt have lost his savour, wherewith shall it be salted? it is thenceforth good for nothing, but to be cast out, and to be trodden under foot of men.
Ye are the light of the world. A city that is set on an hill cannot be hid.
Neither do men light a candle, and put it under a bushel, but on a candlestick; and it giveth light unto all that are in the house.
Let your light so shine before men, that they may see your good works, and glorify your Father which is in heaven.

Christian faith is not supposed to be a sub culture it is supposed to be another culture, a different culture. And that is perhaps our biggest problem today. We appear to be too much like a light under a bushel, we are there, we have light, but it is muffled under the basket of cultural worldliness.

Only when we become counter to the culture will we truly be a light on a hill.