Baptist delegation named for international Baptist-Pentecostal conversations

Earlier today I posted a link to Curtis Freeman's reflections on Pentecost, Baptists, Pentecostals, Trinitarian faith, and the unity of the church in the Religious Herald. Later today the Baptist World Alliance issued a press release announcing the appointment of the BWA delegation to international conversations with representative Pentecostals that begin in Quito, Ecuador later this year:

Callam names BWA team for dialogue with Pentecostals

Created on Thursday, 24 May 2012

Baptist World Alliance (BWA)--General Secretary Neville Callam has named the team that is to represent the BWA in the international Baptist-Pentecostal dialogue that begins in Quito, Ecuador, in August.

In March of this year, the Executive Committee of the BWA gave authorization to Callam to "gather a small team of competent theologians and church leaders reflecting the cultural diversity of the world Baptist family to undertake an international theological dialogue with Pentecostals."

Team members have been drawn from the six regions of the BWA:  Henry Mugabe from Zimbabwe (Africa); Miyon Chung from South Korea (Asia); Burchell Taylor from Jamaica (Caribbean); Nigel Wright from the United Kingdom (Europe); Richard Serrano of Venezuela (Latin America); and William Brackney from Canada and David Goatley from the United States (North America).

Mugabe is a visiting professor of theology at the Richmond Theological Seminary  in the United States and is former president of the Baptist Theological Seminary of Harare; Chung is professor at the Torch Trinity Graduate School of Theology, is vice chair of the BWA Mission, Evangelism and Theological Reflection (METR) Advisory Committee, and a member of the BWA Commission on Doctrine and Christian Unity; Taylor is pastor of the Bethel Baptist Church in St. Andrew, teaches several courses at the United Theological College of the West Indies, and is a vice president of the BWA, among other BWA appointments.

Wright is principal of Spurgeon's College; Serrano is president of the Baptist Theological Seminary in Venezuela; Brackney is director of the Acadia Center for Baptist and Anabaptist Studies at Acadia Divinity College, a member of the BWA Commission on Christian Ethics and the Commission on Doctrine and Christian Unity, among other BWA appointments; and Goatley is executive secretary-treasurer of the Lott Carey Foreign Mission Convention and, among other BWA appointments, sits on the General Council and is chair of the METR Advisory Committee.

Callam said that the "BWA is highly respectful of the leaders of all Christian World Communions and the families of churches they serve."   The BWA, he explained, "expects that the dialogue with the Pentecostals will offer an opportunity both to formulate clear statements on doctrinal agreements that Baptists share with Pentecostals," and to "engage constructively around the issues on which we are not yet agreed."

This is the seventh theological dialogue in which the BWA will be engaged. The first was with the World Alliance of Reformed Churches from 1973-1977 followed by talks with the Roman Catholic Church from 1984-1988; the Lutheran World Federation from 1986-1990; the Mennonite World Conference from 1989-1992; the Anglican Communion between 2000 and 2005; and the Roman Catholic Church (Second Round) from 2006-2010.

This first round of the Baptist-Pentecostal Dialogue continues through to 2015.

© Baptist World Alliance
May 24, 2012

Curtis Freeman on Pentecost and Baptist-Pentecostal dialogue

Curtis Freeman

Earlier this month the Religious Herald, a Baptist-related news journal that originated as the newspaper published by and for Baptists in Virginia but now provides news, analysis, and resources for Baptists in the broader mid-Atlantic region, published an opinion column by Curtis Freeman on Baptist-Pentecostal relations in connection with the liturgical feast of Pentecost and in anticipation of the beginning of formal ecumenical conversations between the Baptist World Alliance and representative international Pentecostals later this year. Freeman, Research Professor of Theology at Duke University Divinity School and director of the Baptist House of Studies there, was a member of a BWA delegation to exploratory conversations with Pentecostals last December that recommended the initiation of a formal dialogue. An excerpt from the article follows:

I can’t speak for Pentecostals, but some of us Baptists are so Jesus-centered in our theology and worship that we hardly know what to make of the Holy Spirit. If the Pentecostals can help us to get more Spirit-focused and, as a consequence, more Trinitarian, then it is would be well worth the time and effort. And given the growing number of Pentecostal, Charismatic and Renewalist Christians worldwide, these conversations are crucial for the unity of the Church (John 17:21) and greater participation in the mission of God (Matthew 28:19-20). (read full article)


Update: see also Baptist delegation named for international Baptist-Pentecostal conversations.


Update #2: Associated Baptist Press also published Freeman's opinion commentary on May 25: http://www.abpnews.com/opinion/commentaries/item/7452-pentecostal-power

Ecumenical news miscellany

Dr Pantelis Kalaitzidis presenting
WCC advance copies of the new WCC
book series to the Ecumenical Patriarch.
© Nikos Magginas/ Volos Academy
for Theological Studies

Two useful sources for keeping up with developments of significance for the quest for Christian unity are the news service of the World Council of Churches and Ecumenical News International. The latter news service is supported by the World Council of Churches, Lutheran World Federation, World Communion of Reformed Churches, Conference of European Churches, World Association for Christian Communication, and World Student Christian Federation. Links to a stories from these sources on a couple of recent notable ecumenical developments follow.

The World Council of Churches has issued a press release announcing the launch of the new WCC-sponsored book series Doxa and Praxis: Exploring Orthodox Theology in partnership with Volos Academy for Theological Studies in Greece. Editorial consultants for the series include Metropolitan John Zizioulas of Pergamon, best known outside the Orthodox world for his influential book Being as Communion: Studies in Personhood and the Church (St. Vladimir's Seminary Press, 1997).

Ecumenical News International reports the formation of a new Protestant united church in France. The Reformed Church of France and the Evangelical Lutheran Church of France have merged to form the United Protestant Church of France, effective following the meetings of the respective churches' synods May 17-20. the first national synod of the new united church will meet in 2013 in Lyons.

Charles Spurgeon, Baptist peacemaker

Charles Haddon Spurgeon

British Baptist minister Charles H. Spurgeon (1834-1892) is revered by many Baptists of conservative inclinations because of Spurgeon's staunch opposition to what he perceived to be liberal trends in the Baptist Union of Great Britain in the late nineteenth century. Fewer are aware of Spurgeon's equally staunch opposition to what he called "Periodical War Madness" in an essay of that title published in The Sword and Trowel in April 1878. Michael G. Long's anthology Christian Peace and Nonviolence: A Documentary History (Orbis Books, 2011), the subject of a previous blog post, introduced its inclusion of Spurgeon's essay: "Spurgeon was not a theological liberal, nor would anyone ever have mistaken him for a progressive biblical exegete. His biblical ethics, however, led him to denounce war, imperialism, and racial discrimination in no uncertain terms" (p. 130).

As the following excerpt from the essay as published in the Christian Peace and Nonviolence anthology shows, for Spurgeon Christian peacemaking must address not only the policies of nation-states but also the way individuals relate to one another in word and deed:

We should persuade all lovers of peace to labor perseveringly to spread the spirit of love and gentleness, which is indeed the spirit of Christ, and to give a practical bearing to what else may become mere theory. The fighting spirit must be battled with in all its forms, and the genius of gentleness must be cultivated. Cruelty to animals, the lust for destroying living things, the desire for revenge, the indulgence of anger--all these we must war against by manifesting and inculcating pity, compassion, forgiveness, kindness, and goodness in the fear of the Lord. Children must be trained with meekness and not with passion, and our dealings with our fellowmen must manifest our readiness to suffer wrong rather than to inflict it upon others. Nor is this all: the truth as to war must be more and more insisted on: the loss of time, labor, treasure, and life must be shown, and the satanic crimes to which it leads must be laid bare. It is the sum of all villainies, and ought to be stripped of its flaunting colors, and to have its bloody horrors revealed; its music should be hushed, that men may hear the moans and groans, the cries and shrieks of dying men and ravished women. War brings out the devil in man, wakes up the hellish legion within his fallen nature, and binds his better faculties hand and foot. Its natural tendency is to hurl nations back into barbarism, and retard the growth of everything holy and good....It ought not to be smiled upon as a brilliant spectacle, nor talked of with a light heart; it is a fitter theme for tears and intercessions. To see a soldier a Christian is a joy; to see a Christian a soldier is another matter (p. 132).

The nonviolent way of Jesus documented

As Book Review Editor for the journal Perspectives in Religious Studies, I receive books in religious and theological studies submitted to the journal by publishers and then secure reviewers for them with appropriate expertise from among the membership of the National Association of Baptist Professors of Religion, the professional organization that sponsors the journal. Frequently I receive books that I believe ought to be commended to a broader readership beyond scholars of religion and theology, and occasionally I receive a book that I feel compelled to purchase myself after passing the review copy along to a reviewer. Christian Peace and Nonviolence: A Documentary History (Maryknoll, N.Y.: Orbis Books, 2011), edited by Michael G. Long, is one of those books on both counts. I ordered it from Amazon after finding a reviewer for it, and I urge followers of Ecclesial Theology to read it and recommend it to others.

Long, Associate Professor of Religion and Peace and Conflict Studies at Elizabethtown College in Elizabethtown, Pennsylvania, has anthologized 116 sources from the Hebrew and Christian Scriptures through the twenty-first century that document nonviolence and peacemaking as convictions and practices that belong to historical continuity with the formative Christian tradition rather than constituting occasional exceptions to a Christian "just war" tradition.This Baptist theologian took note of the significant number of voices from the larger Free Church tradition selected for this anthology, including not only Mennonites but several Baptists proper--among them a declaration issued by Pennsylvania Mennonites and German Baptists in 1775 and a 2004 statement on "Confessing Christ in a World of Violence" co-issued by Baptists Glen Stassen and Richard Pierard with others, along with selections from the writings of Charles Spurgeon, Howard Thurman, Harry Emerson Fosdick, Muriel Lester, and Martin Luther King, Jr. The opening paragraph of a selection from Miroslav Volf, who received his Christian formation in the larger Free Church tradition, summarizes well the overarching case made by this volume:

In this essay I want to contest the claim that the Christian faith, as one of the major world religions, predominantly fosters violence, and to argue, instead, that it should be seen as a contributor to more peaceful social environments. I will not argue that the Christian faith was not and is not often employed to foster violence. Obviously, such an argument cannot be plausibly made; not only have Christians committed atrocities and other lesser forms of violence but they have also drawn on religious beliefs to justify them. Neither will I argue that the Christian faith has been historically less associated with violence than other major religions; I am not at all sure that this is the case. Rather, I will argue that at least when it comes to Christianity, the cure against religiously induced or legitimated violence is not less religion, but, in a carefully qualified sense, more religion. Put differently, the more we reduce Christian faith to vague religiosity or conceive of it as exclusively a private affair of individuals, the worse off we will be; and inversely, the more we nurture it as an ongoing tradition that by its intrinsic content shapes behavior and by the domain of its regulative reach touches the public sphere, the better off we will be. "Thick" practice of the Christian faith will help reduce violence and shape a culture of peace (pp. 298-99).

No one should reject nonviolence as a Christian commitment without first reading, marking, and inwardly digesting these documents--which are also must reading for anyone who dares to follow Jesus' nonviolent way.

Jonas Vestlund reviews Ecumenism Means You, Too (in Swedish)

Jonas Vestlund of Sweden has posted a review of my book Ecumenism Means You, Too: Ordinary Christians and the Quest for Christian Unity (Cascade Books, 2010) on a blog maintained by the Avrika Baptistgrupp, a group of Baptists affiliated with the Baptist Union of Sweden (click on hyperlink for the review). While some pages on the site of the Avrika Baptistgrupp are available in English, the review is in Swedish--a language I don't read. Using Google Chrome's auto-translator yielded some mildly amusing constructions, but the essence of the review was discernible.

Interested in Ecumenism Means You, Too? Order the book directly from Cascade Books or via Amazon.

Festblog for Fiddes (updated with "Festblogging" links)

Portrait of Paul S. Fiddes in Helwys Hall,
Regent's Park College, University of Oxford

Today (April 30, 2012) is the 65th birthday of Paul Fiddes, one of my favorite theologians and the most significant writing theologian identified as a Baptist on the contemporary theological scene. Fiddes is Professor of Systematic Theology in the University of Oxford and Principal Emeritus of Regent's Park College of the University of Oxford, where he has been a member of the faculty since 1977 and served as Principal from 1989 until 2007. A short list of representative publications appears on Professor Fiddes's profile page on the University of Oxford web site; a Wikipedia entry on Fiddes includes a fuller (but not complete) listing of publications along with information on his life, education, and theological career. A future issue of the Pacific Journal of Baptist Research will be devoted to the theology of Paul Fiddes.

One thing that deeply impresses me about Professor Fiddes is his appreciation for and commitment to serving the communion of his Christian nurture and calling. His international and ecumenical standing as a theologian means that he does not have to identify himself as a Baptist or even remain a Baptist, yet this ordained Baptist minister continues to make the Baptist tradition the explicit concrete ecclesial community of reference in his theological work and to serve the Baptist Union of Great Britain and the Baptist World Alliance in myriad ways.

Fiddes is must reading for Baptists as well as non-Baptists. Below is a list of his books with links to Amazon.com where available:

Tracks and Traces: Baptist Identity in Church and Theology (Studies in Baptist History and Thought, vol. 13; Paternoster, 2003)

The Promised End: Eschatology in Theology and Literature (Blackwell, 2000)

Participating in God: A Pastoral Doctrine of the Trinity (Darton, Longman, & Todd, 2000; Westminster John Knox, 2000)

Freedom and Limit: A Dialogue between Literature and Christian Doctrine (Macmillan, 1991; Mercer University Press, 1991)

The Trinity in Worship and Preaching (London Baptist Preachers' Association, 1991)

Past Event and Present Salvation: The Christian Idea of Atonement (Darton, Longman, & Todd, 1989)

The Creative Suffering of God (Clarendon Press, 1988)

A Leading Question: The Structure and Authority of Leadership in the Local Church (Baptist Publications, 1986)

Charismatic Renewal: A Baptist View (Baptist Publications, 1980)

Happy birthday, Professor Fiddes!

Update: "Festblogging" on the occasion of the 65th birthday of Paul Fiddes has gone global (the idea originated with British Baptist minister and former Fiddes student Andy Goodliff, who floated it to his social media contacts last Friday). Below are links to other Fiddes posts for the occasion; I'll update them periodically here:

Andygoodliff: Church, World and the Christian Life (Andy Goodliff)

Shored Fragments (Steve Holmes)

Sean the Baptist (in the UCA) (Sean Winter)

A Skinny Fairtrade Latte in the Foodcourt of Life: Everyday adventures of a Baptist minister (Catriona Gorton)

Baptist Bookworm (Simon Woodman)

Nah Then (Glen Marshall)

Distinct Reflections (Neil Brighton)

Svenka Baptisters Bekännelse 1861

High Heels, Short Skirts and Clerical Collars (Rowena Wilding)

Diary of Daftness (Louise Polhill)

Festblog for Fiddes

Portrait of Paul S. Fiddes in Helwys Hall,
Regent's Park College, University of Oxford

Today (April 30, 2012) is the 65th birthday of Paul Fiddes, one of my favorite theologians and the most significant writing theologian identified as a Baptist on the contemporary theological scene. Fiddes is Professor of Systematic Theology in the University of Oxford and Principal Emeritus of Regent's Park College of the University of Oxford, where he has been a member of the faculty since 1977 and served as Principal from 1989 until 2007. A short list of representative publications appears on Professor Fiddes's profile page on the University of Oxford web site; a Wikipedia entry on Fiddes includes a fuller (but not complete) listing of publications along with information on his life, education, and theological career. A future issue of the Pacific Journal of Baptist Research will be devoted to the theology of Paul Fiddes.

One thing that deeply impresses me about Professor Fiddes is his appreciation for and commitment to serving the communion of his Christian nurture and calling. His international and ecumenical standing as a theologian means that he does not have to identify himself as a Baptist or even remain a Baptist, yet this ordained Baptist minister continues to make the Baptist tradition the explicit concrete ecclesial community of reference in his theological work and to serve the Baptist Union of Great Britain and the Baptist World Alliance in myriad ways.

Fiddes is must reading for Baptists as well as non-Baptists. Below is a list of his books with links to Amazon.com where available:

Tracks and Traces: Baptist Identity in Church and Theology (Studies in Baptist History and Thought, vol. 13; Paternoster, 2003)

The Promised End: Eschatology in Theology and Literature (Blackwell, 2000)

Participating in God: A Pastoral Doctrine of the Trinity (Darton, Longman, & Todd, 2000; Westminster John Knox, 2000)

Freedom and Limit: A Dialogue between Literature and Christian Doctrine (Macmillan, 1991; Mercer University Press, 1991)

The Trinity in Worship and Preaching (London Baptist Preachers' Association, 1991)

Past Event and Present Salvation: The Christian Idea of Atonement (Darton, Longman, & Todd, 1989)

The Creative Suffering of God (Clarendon Press, 1988)

A Leading Question: The Structure and Authority of Leadership in the Local Church (Baptist Publications, 1986)

Charismatic Renewal: A Baptist View (Baptist Publications, 1980)

Happy birthday, Professor Fiddes!

Roberts-Thomson on Baptists and the ecumenical movement

While doing research for the chapter on the Baptist tradition I'm contributing to the forthcoming Oxford Handbook of Ecumenical Studies, I recently came across Edward Roberts-Thomson's book With Hands Outstretched: Baptists and the Ecumenical Movement (London: Marshall, Morgan & Scott, 1962). Roberts-Thomson (1909-1987), an Australian Baptist who after pastorates in Australia served as principal of New Zealand Baptist Theological College and the Baptist Theological College of New South Wales (Morling Baptist College) in Sydney, Australia, sought with his book to "widen the knowledge and understanding of his own denomination and at the same time to show those of other Christian communions the reasons why Baptists often seem intransigent and suspicious in the face of ecumenical developments" (from Ernest A. Payne's foreword to the book, p. 5). Before I return it to the library on today's inter-library loan due date, I'll pass along a few brief excerpts below.

All Baptists honour their great historian K. S. Latourette for his insight into the history of the Church. Speaking of the Ecumenical Movement, he reminds us that in regard to it we must learn the way of humbleness and teachableness. This is by no means easy. For if there is one sin above all others that characterises Baptists as a people it is that of pride in their Scriptural correctness (p. 20).

Chapter 3, "How Baptists Think of Ecumenicity," begins with a subsection titled "Baptist Catholicity" (a choice in terminology interesting to me in light of the title of one of my own books and the responses of some who have taken exception to it):

Catholicity is not a term Baptists like....Their doctrine of the Church stems from their conception that personal encounter with, and response to, the living Christ is the fundamental thing which makes for incorporation into the Church which is His Body....Thus, for Baptists, Catholicity is measured in terms not of denominational adherence but in terms of allegiance to Christ. For them ecumenism conveys the same idea. Both Catholicity and Ecumenicity are meaningless for them apart from Christ....But Baptists are guilty of misunderstanding their own history if they think this closes the issue for them. Therefore it is imperative that close attention should be given to early beliefs and practices as well as to modern developments amongst them in an endeavor to discover how fixed are the judgments given. When we search their own history we will find that it is not true to say that Baptists are purely "Sect" types, nor that they have been anti-ecumenical in their history. Where Baptists have become obsessed with the individual to the exclusion of the institution, and where they have closed their hearts and minds to fellowship with Christians of other traditions, they have been untrue to their own highest ideals (pp. 34-35).

In the same chapter is a subsection titled "John Smyth Leads the Way":

John Smyth's Confession of Faith breathes the true spirit of Baptists in relation to divisions within the Church. He was far in advance of most in his day, and of very many Baptists even in this twentieth century.John Smyth declared that "all repenting and believing Christians are brethren in the communion of the outward visible Church, wherever they may live, or by what name they can be named, be they Roman Catholics, Lutherans, Zwinglians, Calvinists, Brownists, Anabaptists, or other pious Christians, who in truth, and by godly zeal, strive for repentance and faith, although they are implicated in great ignorance and weakness. Nevertheless, we greet them altogether with a holy kiss, deploring with our whole hear that we, who strive for one faith, one Spirit, one Lord, one God, one Body, one Baptism, should be so divided and severed into so many sects and splittings, and that for so less considerable reason." Would Baptists today repudiate this early plea for unity? (pp. 35-36).

Later in the book Roberts-Thomson notes Southern Baptist M. E. Dodd's vitriolic opposition to any involvement of the Baptist World Alliance in ecumenical affairs voiced from the floor of the 1947 BWA Congress, observing:

Thus was brought into the open what has since become apparent to all who look closely at the Baptist reactions to ecumenicity throughout the world. That is, that the Baptist world, ecumenically, can be divided into two groups: those who are of the Southern Baptist point of view, or are closely influenced by it, and those who are not (p. 94).

While one can easily point to exceptions to Roberts-Thomson's generalization in the final excerpt, it seems to me that in general it holds true, and that what was true in 1947 has only been exacerbated in recent years. It also seems to this theologian who identifies with the Cooperative Baptist Fellowship but was ordained as a Southern Baptist minister that not everything many in my circles perceive as problematic in the current configuration of the Southern Baptist Convention can be attributed to the outcome of "the controversy" of 1979 and subsequent years, for much that was problematic was with us long before then.

What Does It Mean to "Do This"?

This year's Pro Ecclesia Annual Conference for Clergy and Laity sponsored by the Center for Catholic and Evangelical Theology, to be held June 11-13, 2012 on the campus of Loyola University in Baltimore, Maryland, will focus on the theme "What Does It Mean to 'Do This'?" I'll be unable to attend, but the theme and speakers should be of interest to many readers of Ecclesial Theology. A substantially discount registration fee is available for students; full registration information appears on the conference page on the CCET site. An explanation of the conference theme and a list of speakers from the conference page follows below:

One of the clearest commands of Christ came at the Last Supper, when he said: “Do this in remembrance of me.” But just what are we to do, how are we to do it, and what does it mean? The last century saw deep changes in the eucharistic practices of many churches and a perceptible narrowing of differences among many of the church in both the liturgy and the theology of the Supper. Where do we stand today? The 2012 Pro Ecclesia conference will take up such questions, with particular attention to the ecumenical and pastoral implications of the Eucharist. Typical themes to be addressed will be:

• Where are we today theologically on the two most central divisive issues in eucharistic theology – sacrifice and presence?
• How should preaching relate to the Eucharist in a way that fosters it as the sacrament of unity?
• Can we find new ways to think about forms of communion short of full fellowship that avert the stale deadlock of recent years?
• Why have differences over ordained ministry proved such an obstacle to fuller eucharistic fellowship?
• Have ecumenical discussions of the Supper made progress since BEM 30 years ago?
• Where have the liturgical changes of the last century left the Eucharist?

The Speakers:

• Peter Bouteneff, St. Vladimir’s Theological Seminary
• George Hunsinger, Princeton Theological Seminary
• Bruce Marshall, Southern Methodist University
• Martha Moore-Keish, Columbia Theological Seminary
• Francesca Aran Murphy, University of Notre Dame
• Frank Senn, Immanuel Lutheran Church, Evanston, IL
• Telford Work, Westmont College
• Banquet Speaker: R. R. Reno