What are Baptist Distinctives?
The gospel had a profound effect on me at a Sonic Drive-Inn in Russellville, AL, after some Southern Baptist friends shared it simply and concisely with me. It wasn’t glamorous. A week or so after I went to Calvary Baptist Church and came to faith in Christ at their youth service. It would be another year before I considered baptism. Once I was ready, the associate pastor at the time told me that I would become a member of Calvary Baptist after my baptism. I was confused. Were these two things connected?
For one reason or another it wasn’t clearly explained to me. Perhaps it would’ve been clarified if I would’ve gone to the new believer’s class. However, I could not attend because I was at my father’s church Sunday mornings. I remember asking, “Do I have to become a member of Calvary if I am baptized?” The response was, “Yes!” I did it anyway, and that congregation helped me mature in Christlikeness. For that I am grateful, but it was never clear to me why Baptism was tied to membership.
At that time, I had no understanding of what a Baptist was. After all, I grew up in Pentecostalism, and the youth group had higher energy like Pentecostalism. The Sunday evening services on the other hand? Not so much. “If only the word ‘Baptist’ could come off the sign of Calvary Baptist Church,” I told my best friend Bryce. He was annoyed that I said that. In my eyes, being non-denominational was the solution of the universal Church’s division. Now I think pursuing catholicity (universality and wholeness) from within one’s own tradition is the work we should seek until Christ returns.
I didn’t learn what a Baptist was until later, and now as a convinced Baptist-catholic (A committed Baptist who seeks unity and learns from other orthodox traditions; not to be confused with Roman Catholicism.) I noticed a long-standing trend in most Baptist churches. An average Baptist church member cannot tell you what a Baptist is. They may say, “We vote,” while unable to define congregationalism. They may say, “we don’t baptize infants,” but are unable to define regenerate church membership and believer’s baptism. Many don’t even know that religious liberty is a Baptist distinctive (I admit it is the one I have paid least attention to).
What then are Baptist distinctives? Potlucks and The Great Commission? I am certainly not opposed to those, but not quite. I think the Center for Baptist Renewal sums them up well in their manifesto:
1.) The necessity of personal conversion
2.) A regenerate church
3.) Believers’ baptism
4.) Congregational governance
5.) Religious liberty
In the necessity of personal conversion, we wait for God to save rather than manipulate for decisions. In the necessity of a regenerate church, we are attempting to protect the witness of the gospel by practicing proper church membership, discipline, and only baptizing those who repent and believe in Christ. All of this is done by confessors of Jesus Christ who exercise the keys of the kingdom by binding (membership) and loosing (church discipline) (Matt. 16:19; 18:18-20; 1 Cor. 5:1-6) and partake of the covenant meal (The Lord’s Supper). Last, in religious liberty we are advocating for a “free church in a free state” where no ecclesiastical group or denomination is “favored by the state more than others” (BFM XVI: Religious Liberty). The New Hampshire Baptist Confession says,
We believe that civil government is of divine appointment, for the interests and good order of human society; and that magistrates are to be prayed for, conscientiously honored and obeyed; except only in things opposed to the will of our Lord Jesus Christ who is the only Lord of the conscience, and the Prince of the kings of the earth (Of Civil Government).
Perhaps I will get around to further expounding each and how they’ve affected my faith the closer I’ve practiced them, but for now I thought it would be helpful to list them and define what they’re aiming at. I long to see Baptists understand and practice their distinctives more closely. Understanding and practicing them more closely doesn’t mean pursuing catholicity is impossible. It means we can be what we are while benefitting from what other traditions are. But we must know who we are. This is a short attempt to clarify that.
