Category: Baptist Stuff

Thanks to Andy Goodliff for flagging up the new title by John Colwell due to be published by Paternoster in December. John is one of our most original and constructively provocative Baptist theologians. His previous books on ethics, the sacraments and systematic theology through the Church Year are amongst the most valued volumes of those who've read them. Knowing the man, makes them even more trusted as the genuine wrestlings with faith and truth that they are.

This will be a book that combines biography, theology and pastoral reflection. John talks honestly of his experience of bi-polar illness, and does so as a man of faith seeking to make his human condition somehow capable of meaning within that faith. So the book will be theology lived, and tested in the valleys of deep darkness as well as the green pastures and occasional still waters. As one who teaches systematic theology, or dogmatics, or Christian doctrine, I am only too aware of how much theologising is so technically executed, so dependent on discourse as esoteric as any mystery religion, so inaccessibly beyond all but those who want to play the intellectual power games of the academy. So I'm always keen to find texts that have clear rootedness in and connections to the lived experience of people of faith. Only then do theology and biography enter a fruitful conversation to their mutual benefit.

One of my own research interests is the connection between Christian faith experience, church as community and people whose sense of self is different because of varied conditions that affect mental health.

Here is the information about the book with some significant endorsements.

Review

This book is a gift to anyone who has been touched by
the darkness of bi-polar illness. Colwells willingness to write
honestly about his illness will be an aid for those struggling with the
condition, but even more important is his use of the psalms and
attention to Jesus way of dereliction to locate how such illness is not
pointless. This is a book that needed to be written. But only someone
like John Colwell could write it. –Stanley Hauerwas, Duke Divinity
School, USA

It
is a well-known fact that the Church doesnt do depression. Melancholy
just doesnt sit comfortably with our sanguine view of spiritual
progress. Thank God, however, that John Colwell has the guts to attend
to this erroneous state of affairs and offer us a spirituality that
embraces the wintry as well as the sunny seasons of our lives. –Ian
Stackhouse, Team Leader, Guildford Baptist Church, England

If
the best theology is attentive to Scripture, focused on Christ, and
meaningful for human life in all its messiness, then there are few
better examples than this new book by John Colwell. –Steve Holmes,
Lecturer in Theology, University of St Andrews, Scotland

Product Description

In this powerful book
on the experience of desolation John Colwell focuses on Psalm 22, read
in the light of his own struggle with bi-polar disorder and the
Christian belief that God the Son suffered in his humanity, to offer
existential-theological reflections on the experience of
God-forsakenness.

The author writes, My concern in writing this book
and in reading this psalm is to reflect on the felt experience of
God-forsakenness, my own and that of Christ in the light of this psalm;
to explore the theological and spiritual significance of this felt
experience for myself, for Christ, for Christians generally. If this
exploration proves to be helpful to me or to others then obviously I am
glad, but I am not writing this book to be helpful but rather to be
truthful (and perhaps hopeful). This is a personal journey of
reflection with a psalm which I invite you, the reader, to share if you
will.

I continue to think about Baptist identity. Not agonise. Not worry. But think, evaluate, indulge in self criticism without indulging in self-denigration. So below I offer the final few paragraphs of my recent paper on Baptist Identity. It isn't the last word on anything, but it is a first word that needs speaking, and hearing, and then more thinking. But at some time the thinking has to become the intellectual and spiritual energy source for theological reconstruction and renewed denominational confidence. And of course I don't mean resurgent and divisive denominationalism – I mean owning and generously sharing our own identity, while encountering and humbly receiving the gift, presence and fellowship of other Christians, all equally faithful to their denominational identities. In that encounter of diversity something of the richly co-ordinated grace of God waits for us to discover – and be discovered. 

"Christian denominational identity of
any kind, implies a particular theological style, a principled standpoint
derived from past and present experience, and reflection on, and reinforcement
of that theological style. The same is true of Baptist identity. Historic
tradition judiciously re-appropriated, and contemporary practice of our living
communities reconnected with core Baptist convictions, will only happen if,
looking forward, we can answer the question – not who were we? – nor who are we? But who is God calling us now to be, in faithfulness to a Baptist understanding
of the Gospel?

  To answer that question,

·       
requires a willingness to explore and live faithfully within those historic
Baptist traditions of radical discipleship that shaped and formed us

·       
means being energised by Baptist
convictions which will be inevitably but creatively disruptive of other evangelical
ecclesiologies rooted in other than radical free church congregational principles

·       
implies ongoing affirmation of the sole and absolute
authority of Christ the head of the Church, and of each local church, and that as a distinctive Baptist witness radically lived out in local
ecclesial community

·       
is to hear and answer Christ's call to a discipleship of
sacrifice, peace-making, reconciliation and imaginative following after Christ,
by those whose baptism is their promise in response to God’s promise, and their dying
with Christ a prerequisite of rising to newness of life.

·       
To answer that question then – who is God calling us
to be in faithfulness to a Baptist understanding of the Gospel – to answer that
question in these ways, is to have begun to repossess that without which we are
existentially disadvantaged – our identity as Baptists.

 But to do this will involve risk –
of being misunderstood, of being thought old fashioned, of not paying attention
and not listening to the wider constituency. The risk of denominational
regression into narrowly conceived peculiarities no longer popularly owned, the
risk of being accused of pushing a Baptist agenda at a time when the need for
the Gospel  was never greater – as if
Baptist identity and Gospel faithfulness were mutually obstructive rather than
spiritually integral.

 Risk. At which stage we are called
to row towards the waterfall, taking the necessary risks. As that maybe Baptist
John Bunyan said, “I have loved to hear my Lord spoken of, and wherever I have
seen the print of his shoe in the earth, there I have coveted to set my foot.”
Baptist discipleship is simply and only that – being faithful to who Christ has
called us to be, and to follow faithfully after Him, through the waters of
baptism and into newness of life."

Seven Spiritual Values Embedded in
Baptist Identity.

 ·       
Sole
Headship of Christ as final authority in faith and practice, as revealed in Scripture

·       
Baptismal
confession of faith by believers in context of worshipping community

·       
Covenant
faithfulness to Christ within a living community of believers

·       
Gathered
community as the Body of Christ, competent under God to discern together
the mind of Christ

        ·       Mission as bearing witness to the world
through the lived practices of the Gospel in the

          power of the risen Christ.

·       
Principled
separation from State control and State privilege

·       
Religious
freedom and tolerance as the rationale for our own claimed freedom to
witness to Christ.

Baptist identity is elusive. Ways of being Baptist are so diverse that, to avoid partiality and unfair narrowness, it would be more useful to talk of Baptist identities. But I still would want to argue that all of the above provide a cluster of spiritual values which, when taken together, are integral to Baptist identity. Or am I missing something – or claiming too much?

Off to the Fellowship of British Baptists, a kind of Baptist summit meeting that includes representatives from the BUGB, Baptist Missionary Society, the Baptist Union of Wales and the Baptist Union of Scotland. This year we are in Birmingham. It's always a good couple of days of discussion, reflection, shared hopes and concerns, prayer, friendship, laughter, and the kind of occasion that's all too rare in lives too thirled to diaries, deadlines and to do lists.

Amongst the things we'll discuss is Baptist identity – who Baptists are, why Baptists matter and who cares anyway? Well I do for one. Not because I'm a denominational dinosaur in a post-modern, post-christian, irreversibly pluralist, unabashedly consumerist and unrepentantly fluid world. But because I happen to think that important spiritual values and theological commitments are entrusted to those whose ways of following Christ are different from mine, and mine from theirs. This isn't about denominational narrowness, but about Christian diversity; nor is the concern for a strong sense of denominational identity a way of claiming Baptists are right and others are wrong. It's a concern that we each be faithful to those truths that are part of our history and witness, thereby conserving the essential diversity of the Body of Christ, which I think is a large part of what it means to speak of the church catholic.

I do think that in the conversations that take place between the different members of the family of God, the Baptist voice brings its own insights, its own story, its own witness to what it has meant to follow faithfully after Christ. Of course meaningful conversations only happen when listening takes frequent precedence over speaking, and when the stories of those others are heard by us with humility of mind and a receptive heart, and welcomed as the gifts they are. In other words I don't think my strongly held convictions as a Baptist require me to silence or out-argue the convictions of others in order for them to retain their spiritual and theological purchase on my own life and witness. Being secure in your own denominational identity doesn't depend on questioning or diminishing the identity of others. At least not as I've tried to live out my faith.

Anyway, I've been asked to lead off the discussion on Baptist identity. I've done a wee informal paper and given it a title based on that poem of Mary Oliver I quoted a couple of weeks ago:

Might do a couple of posts on it later once it's thought through a bit more carefully and had the benefit of conversation, disagreement and the friendly correctives that always improve the way we say the things we feel strongly.

This huge contribution to Baptist theology and history is just published. I've just ordered my copy. Obviously this is of more interest to Baptist readers of this blog – but indulge me. This is a landmark volume and it will be reviewed on the College blog in due course. here's the blurb as issued by the Baptist World Alliance Theological Commission:

James Leo Garrett, Jr., is writing a twelve-chapter, four-century
history of Baptist theology, which is to be published by Mercer
University Press, Macon, GA, and is designed to appear in advance
of the Baptist quadricentennial in 2009. A coordinated and comprehensive
history of Baptist theology from 1609 to the present, with an
initial chapter on pre-1609 influences, it is to provide an integrated
interpretation of Baptist confessions of faith, major Baptist
theologians, and Baptist theological movements and controversies.

The volume is to focus on
Baptist doctrine and will not encompass Baptist ethics, Baptist
spirituality, or Baptist apologetics. Although it tends to be
organized chronologically, it is not a narrative history but rather
an interpretation of theology in various historical contexts.
It gives major attention to England and the United States but
also includes the Baptist theology of other nations. Although
it is centered on distinctive Baptist theology, it also exhibits
both theological beliefs held in common with most other Christian
denominations (for example, the Trinity and the person of Christ)
and the heavy influence of certain other confessional traditions
upon Baptists (for example, the Reformed). The book does not defend
a single thesis per se but does constitute a massive argument
that there has been and is a Baptist theological tradition. It
does not attempt to treat authors having rather limited influence
or to interpret the beliefs of rank-and-file church members.

The volume is designed to
serve as a textbook for courses in Baptist theology or the Baptist
heritage in Baptist colleges, universities, seminaries, and divinity
schools. It is likewise intended to be read by pastors, educators,
and informed lay persons and to be purchased by institutional
libraries and by local church libraries.

Garrett is distinguished
professor of theology, emeritus, at Southwestern Baptist Theological
Seminary, having taught also in Southern Baptist Theological Seminary,
Baylor University, and Hong Kong Baptist Theological Seminary.