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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.