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Baptists in the White House by
Glen Harold Stassen Four U.S. presidents have come from Baptist families in the South. A fifth came from the North. When you compare them, paying attention to their faith and how it correlated with their presidencies, an intriguing pattern emerges. Let us look at the presidents in chronological order. Abraham Lincoln never joined a church, but many agree he was our most theologically profound president ever, and it is clear that he was shaped by Baptist beliefs and practices in a Baptist family. The best study of Lincoln’s religion1 emphasizes his profound sense of God’s dynamic involvement in the events of present history, along with his profound sense that God is not on "our" side but on the side of justice and mercy, and that the nation’s disunity and the Civil War were God’s judgment on us all and a call for our repentance by both sides. The self-righteousness and repressed and denied guilt and shame of abolitionists as well as slaveholders had issued into a sacrifice of bloodshed that was disclosing our own sin and calling us to a new life together. Lincoln expressed this theological understanding of our nation’s struggles profoundly in his Gettysburg Address and his Second Inaugural Address. His parents were God-fearing Baptists strongly influenced by the frontier revivals that began many of the churches in Kentucky. Those revivals, like the Holy Spirit and the risen Jesus, moved right through denominational walls as if they were no barriers at all. Shaped by frontier revival Christianity, Lincoln himself worshiped in churches of several denominations, always looking for biblical faithfulness and theological depth. He was raised in a Kentucky Baptist family that saw the Bible as the revelation of the way of life that God wills for all of us. Later, he said, "I attended . . . school . . . in Indiana where we had no reading books or grammars, and all our reading was done from the Bible."Lincoln's knowledge of the Bible "far exceeded the content-grasp of most present-day clergymen." No president had "ever woven its thoughts and its rhythms into the warp and woof of his state papers as he did." In his response to "The Loyal Colored People of Baltimore" when they had gifted him with a Bible, he said: In regard to this Great Book, I have but to say, it is the best gift God has given to man. All the good the Saviour gave to the world was communicated through this book. But for it we could not know right from wrong. All things most desirable for man's welfare, here and hereafter, are to be found portrayed in it.2 Richard Pierard and Robert Linder, in their highly insightful Civil Religion and the Presidency,3 write that as a young man, Lincoln read the freethinkers Thomas Paine and Constantin de Volney and became a universalist who still believed in God, and in signs, dreams and portents, and never denied the truth of the Bible, but seldom spoke of Jesus. His faith grew and deepened as he matured, however, and especially as he faced deep tragedy and profound responsibility. Finally, Lincoln faced not only the grief of the Civil War, and the problems brought on by his mentally unstable wife Mary, but then also the death in 1862 of his twelve-year-old son, Willie. He was torn by deep personal grief. A spiritual awakening which drove him closer to personal faith in Christ brought him out of the pit of despair. No one knows precisely what went on in Lincoln's inner being during the agonizing winter of 1861–62, but many noticed that he was seen more frequently with a Bible in his hand and that he spent more time in prayer. From this time on, Lincoln regularly attended the New York Avenue Presbyterian Church on Sundays—often even going to the Wednesday evening prayer meeting—until his untimely death three years later.4 Lincoln called the United States "the almost chosen people." He made clear that the God of Israel and of the Puritans "had work for America to perform that would benefit the entire world." But we must seek and find God's will for our nation; it is never to be identified with what we do; God has far more in mind than we do, and God tests us and judges us for our failings. God intends justice, and for us that means democratic government under God, a new birth of freedom, government of the people, by the people, for the people, liberty and justice for all. It means freeing the slaves. It means the majority can be wrong, so democracy requires a "majority held in restraint by constitutional checks and limitations ..."5 Warren Harding Warren Harding of Ohio is the only Baptist president whose roots were not southern, the only one whose ethics were not tempered by the personal relationship with blacks and the societal struggle with segregation and discrimination, and the only one who sought to withdraw from the struggle for justice and lapse into what he called "normalcy"—a vacation from heroic calls for justice and war’s sacrifices and chose instead to bathe himself in material self-indulgence, isolationism, and smug self-satisfaction. His regime is remembered for the Teapot Dome Scandal (government officials enjoying getting rich by bribes from oil interests), and a trail of scandal after scandal caused by low moral standards and pursuit of personal wealth Harry Truman Like Lincoln, Truman came from a Kentucky Baptist family that migrated to another state—in his case, to Missouri not long before his birth. His parents and both sets of grandparents "were Baptists, the Trumans vehemently so."6 In Truman’s faith, we can see several key themes that explain many of his characteristics and policies as president Biblical grounding: Before he started school, Harry’s mother taught him to read with the large-print family Bible as his textbook. He could read nothing else, his eyesight was so bad. He read the Bible through twice by the time he was twelve. During his teenage years he attended Benton Boulevard Baptist Church in Kansas City, where he was converted, and baptized in the Little Blue River.7 He had "a remarkably broad familiarity with the Bible, citing texts and stories from it with a range and aptness unusual among modern statesmen . . . . He says [in his diary]: ‘The Sermon on the Mount is the greatest of all things in the Bible, a way of life, and maybe someday men will get to understand it as the real way of life.’ At the same time, his greatest temperamental affinity seems to be for the late prophets of the Old Testament and the social justice preached by them—especially Amos. The King James Bible is to him ‘the finest and most stately brand of English there is."8 Doing what is right: He described his father this way: "He was not a talker. He was a doer. He lived what he believed, and taught the rest of us to do the same thing."9 His mother impressed upon him that he should be good and do his best. And in a courtship letter to Bessie, he wrote: "I am by religion like everything else. I think there's more in acting than in talking." His devoutly-Baptist grandmother had taught him the same: "Her philosophy was simple. You knew right from wrong and you did right, and you always did your best. That's all there was to it."10 His press secretary goaded Truman, saying he would rather be right than president. Truman replied: "I'd rather be anything than president."11 He frequently repeated Mark Twain's epigram, "Always do right. This will gratify some people and astonish the rest."12 This emphasis on being doers of the Word and not hearers (or talkers) only (James 1:22-25) is a part of Baptist tradition. Baptists descend not from Martin Luther, who insisted on faith alone; but from Anabaptists, who answered Luther that "faith by itself, if it has no deeds, is dead" (James 2:17); and from Puritans, who insisted on living a life of obedience to the Lord. Truman's Baptist identity is evidenced more in his ethics than in his church attendance. Yet, he participated in church more faithfully than some recent presidents. "He wrote in his diary that he habitually went to the First Baptist Church in Washington, D.C. because [the pastor, Edward Pruden] treated him as just another member of the congregation and not as a celebrity."13 Prayer and sense of duty from God in the job he has been given: In his diary, in May of his first year as president, Truman wrote that things were going so well that he hardly knew what to think. "‘I can't understand it–except to attribute it to God. He guides me, I think.’ It is clear again and again in his diary that prayer was important to him, shaping him and guiding him in these challenging White House days."14 Honesty: "The most memorable trait of Harry Truman’s mother was her outspokenness."15 Throughout the historical studies of Truman, again and again, you read of how everyone around him was impressed by his honesty with them and with the people, and how it raised the morale inside his administration higher than any recent one. As Dean Acheson wrote his son in the Navy: Truman "was straightforward, decisive, simple, entirely honest."16 Furthermore, from his beginnings in Missouri to the high position of the presidency, he never used his position to make money He never became wealthy, always having to struggle to make ends meet. Moreover, he stayed absolutely faithful to his wife, consistently avoiding situations that could even look questionable. Populism and democracy: Democracy and identification with the common person are themes in Baptist life. Baptist polity is democratic, without bishops or hierarchy, and we read the Bible for ourselves and pray our own homespun prayers. Truman’s frontier Baptist upbringing was more workers and farmers than the Presbyterian and Episcopalian upper class of his wife Bessie’s churches. It showed in his politics. Andrew Jackson, the Tennessee populist president, was his hero. When he was a young man, he went to hear the great populist speaker, William Jennings Bryan, and with his father he attended the Democratic National Convention that renominated Bryan. "Bryan remained an idol for Harry, as the voice of the common man."17 In his first two speeches in the Senate in 1937, he attacked the greed of large corporations and their unfairness to common people. He recalled "how Jesse James, in order to rob the Rock Island Railroad, had had to get up early in the morning and risk his life to make off with $3,000. Yet, by means of holding companies, modern-day financiers had stolen $70 million from the same railroad." He proclaimed: "We worship money instead of honor. . . . We worship Mammon; and until we go back to ancient fundamentals and return to the Giver of the Tables of law and his teachings, these conditions are going to remain with us. . . . It is a pity that Wall Street . . . has not produced some statesmen . . . who could see the dangers of bigness and of the concentration of the control of wealth."18 In his surprise-of-the-century defeat of Thomas Dewey for the presidency in 1948, he made hundreds of energetic speeches all over the country championing the common people over against what he called the elitist greed of Dewey and his friends who had no feel for the needs of the people. Truman’s legislative programs throughout his eight years as president called for doing right for the common people. He called for progress in civil rights; justice for veterans, including black veterans, and for workers; for improvement in labor laws and anti-trust laws. Intriguingly for our recent history, each of his State of the Union messages called for a national health insurance program, including support for mental health, child care, and hospital construction. One of his greatest accomplishments was the Marshall Plan, which successfully aided a Europe whose economy was devastated by war, and many of whose people were starving, to recover economically and to become a strong magnet for democracy. Doing what is right on civil rights: During the Civil War, both sets of his grandparents, the Trumans and the Youngs, sympathized with the South.19 On five different occasions, Union troops confiscated the Youngs’ livestock, silver, and other movable property, and finally burned their home and forced them off their land to Kansas City.20 "The Trumans were luckier. At the beginning of the war, they took their few slaves to Kansas and set them free." Robert E. Lee was a hero for Harry Truman. "Privately, like the country people whose votes he was courting, he still used the word ‘nigger’ and enjoyed the kind of racial jokes commonly exchanged over drinks in Senate hideaways." But in public, he consistently spoke respectfully of blacks and of equal rights. In 1940, he spoke to the National Colored Democratic Association, advocating raising educational opportunities for Negro Americans and equality before the law as the Negro’s right. "When we are honest enough to recognize each other’s rights and are good enough to respect them, we will come to a more Christian settlement of our difficulties."21 In the Senate, he voted to abolish the poll tax that was designed to discourage blacks from voting, which got him the anger of most of his fellow southern Senators. His record of seeking to do right for African-Americans as well as working people was the biggest key to his surprise selection as vice presidential candidate when President Franklin Roosevelt was not expected to live through the next term. Truman integrated the Armed Services, and his annual messages to Congress "called for a federal law against ‘the crime of lynching, against which I cannot speak too strongly’; protection of the right to vote everywhere in the country, a law against the poll taxes . . . , the establishment of a Fair Employment Practices Commission with authority to stop discrimination by employers and labor unions alike, an end to discrimination in interstate travel. . . ."22 Army Values: Focusing only on Truman’s Baptist values presents an incomplete picture. In the army in World War 1, he was made a Captain. He led his troops remarkably well, performing with courage and efficiency, bringing them back safely, earning high morale and lifelong loyalty from them. "He discovered he could lead men and that he liked that better than anything he had ever done before. He found he had courage–that he was no longer the boy with thick glasses who ran from fights–and, furthermore, that he could inspire courage in others."23 His army experience shaped the rest of his life, including his unbaptistic practice of occasionally taking a drink, playing poker, and cussing–always in the company of the kind of comradeship that had meant so much to him in the army. Jimmy Carter Jimmy Carter is well remembered for his faithful Baptist life. Pierard and Linder report that "the Plains Baptist Church became the core of young Jimmy’s daily life. It steeped him in the Bible and, along with his family, gave him a sense of love, assurance, warmth, and security. At age eleven, he professed faith in Christ, was baptized, and joined the church. Before long, he had become a Sunday school teacher."24 He continued teaching Sunday School while a student at the Naval Academy in Annapolis, on board ship in the Navy, and throughout his adult life—including while he was president—in the same First Baptist Church where Harry Truman had been a member. During Carter’s campaign for president, David Awbrey, a newspaper reporter who had theological training and was skeptical of Carter’s alleged Christian faith questioned him extensively "His replies revealed that he had immersed himself in the Bible, had read many major Christian thinkers and was conversant with theology, and had himself known those ‘dark nights of the soul’ which galvanized faith. ‘By the end of the trip,’ Awbrey wrote later, ‘I was convinced that Jimmy Carter was one of the most sincere, true-believing Christians I had ever met." 25 During his presidency, he witnessed to several international leaders, including Vice Premier Deng Xiaoping of China, who agreed to permit Bibles to be distributed, more religious freedom to be granted, and to consider admitting Christian missionaries."26 In his early adult life back in South Georgia, Carter faced the injustice of segregation squarely and "spoke out courageously for civil rights when hard decisions faced the community"27 In 1965, Plains Baptist Church voted on whether blacks would be allowed to worship if they came to church. Carter and his family took their stand, voting yes when no one else in the church did.28 While he was governor of Georgia, he advanced the cause of civil rights, and hung a portrait of fellow Baptist Martin Luther King Jr., in the capitol building while the Klan protested outside and a racially mixed choir sang "We Shall Overcome" inside.29 Michael Allen wrote in his dissertation on President Carter’s advocacy of human rights30 that Carter’s commitment to human rights grew out of his faith. In South Georgia, he realized that following Jesus required a death to self and service to others, particularly others who were being segregated and discriminated against. The old racially-imposed wall blocking the gospel from its meaning for service and social justice was torn down for him. Being a Christian who had experienced firsthand the importance of civil rights meant he should advocate a U.S. policy of human rights for all others and an opposition to dictatorship. Being a Christian who had learned from the realism of Reinhold Niebuhr meant that he could not make human rights the only touchstone of U.S. foreign policy; there were also realistic considerations of balance of power, national security, and economic interests. Many did not understand the complexity of these counterbalancing concerns. Some called his advocacy of human rights in foreign policy unrealistic idealism. Others scored it for being inconsistent, as he did include power and security considerations in policy determinations. But the result was a lasting push for human rights around the world, and the beginnings of democracy in many nations. Also, being a Christian who believed strongly in the Baptist heritage of religious liberty and separation of church and state, he could not advocate state actions to establish religion–to the disappointment of some who wanted teachers, employed by the state, to introduce prayers into the schools. As has since become clear in his post-presidential work, Carter took biblical teaching on peacemaking seriously. He is famous for the Camp David accords, which brought peace between Egypt and Israel and the opening for further peace initiatives between Israel and other Arab states. His was the first presidency in fifty years in which no American troops were sent into combat. Bill Clinton We lack the perspective of time and historical research for anything like an objective assessment of Bill Clinton as president. All I can write of is the evidence of his Baptist faith. Christianity Today asked their editor-at-large, Philip Yancey, to write about Clinton's faith. He began by saying he had a hard task because many politically active Republican evangelicals have so attacked Clinton's policies on abortion and homosexuals in the military that many feel betrayed when he tries to describe the nature of Clinton's faith. But he researched the evidence and talked with many evangelicals who know Clinton. Here is what he concluded, in Christianity Today: His stepfather regularly got drunk and beat his wife; and once was arrested for firing a gun into the wall of his house. Partly to escape this domestic chaos, Bill began attending the Park Place Baptist Church when he was eight years old. Every Sunday morning young Bill Clinton would put on a suit and walk a mile down the sidewalks of Hot Springs to church, clutching his leather Bible. At age ten, he made a public profession of faith and was baptized. A year later, Clinton asked a Sunday School teacher to drive him fifty miles to Little Rock to attend a Billy Graham crusade. He admired the evangelist for resisting pressure to segregate his crusade, and from then on Clinton set aside nickels and dimes to send to Graham. School teachers thought Bill himself might grow up to be an evangelist. As he attended Georgetown, Yale, and Oxford universities, Clinton's religious fervor cooled. In a stunning upset in 1980, he lost his bid for reelection as governor. Clinton felt depressed and aimless. Problems in the marriage surfaced, and rumors about Bill’s alleged extramarital affairs began to spread. In 1980, two events occurred that Clinton now cites as markers pointing the way back. First, his daughter, Chelsea, was born. Second, he took a pilgrimage to Israel led by the Reverend W. O. Vaught. The minister became a kind of father figure for Clinton, and soon afterward Clinton joined Vaught’s church, started singing in its choir, and for the first time in his life began serious Bible study. C. S. Lewis’s book Mere Christianity also played an important role in Clinton’s spiritual renewal. In person, Bill Clinton talks freely and convincingly about his faith. I have not met a single Christian leader who, after meeting with Clinton, comes away questioning his sincerity. One Christian college president is ‘absolutely convinced of his deep and sincere faith,’ and says the president knows his Bible. Edward G. Dobson, pastor of Calvary Church in Grand Rapids, has impeccable credentials with the Religious Right: he graduated from Bob Jones University, worked for Jerry Falwell, and served as editor of Fundamentalist Journal. Here is his response: "Does Clinton know the Scriptures? Is he affected emotionally by things like prayer? Does he go to church every week, carry his Bible, claim to have a relationship with Christ? The answer to all these questions is yes. I believe he’s more deeply spiritual than any President we’ve had in recent years."31 Those who have witnessed his own discussions of his faith, and have written articles about it, all report his belief "that at the heart of Christian piety is the knowledge that we are all sinners, all in need of forgiveness, all presented with the possibility of starting over again. To speak as a Christian, he reiterated, is to speak as a self-confessed sinner."32 Clinton speaks as a self-confessed sinner who has experienced forgiveness and the possibility of starting over again and is deeply grateful for the gospel of grace and repentance, and new birth. Conclusion We have looked only at how the faith of the presidents correlated with their presidencies. A fuller picture would have required attention to their weaknesses, but my purpose has not been to assess their presidencies, only to see faith correlating with policy. Intriguingly, in all four of the Southern-influenced presidents we see the following Baptist themes: 1. The Bible.—Lincoln and Truman both learned to read from the Bible; Carter taught it every Sunday; Clinton impresses even the most conservative Christians by his knowledge of it; all had deep experiences of turning in response to the biblical message. 2. Repentance.—All four came to a dark night of the soul in their adult lives when they experienced a profound deepening of their faith, a second new birth. 3. Justice.—God intends justice, and for us that means democratic government under God, a new birth of freedom, government of the people, by the people, for the people, liberty and justice for all. 4. Race Relations.—All four had their ethics tempered by personal relationships with blacks and by societal struggle with segregation and discrimination, and they led the nation toward civil rights. 5. Human Rights.—Loyalty to the people, not just the established powers; to human rights for all; to justice for the underdogs. 6. Family.—All stayed married to their wives, working through the problems that arose; and raised admirable children, whom they loved and by whom they were loved. Endnotes Glen Harold Stassen is Lewis B. Smedes Professor of Christian Ethics, Fuller Theological Seminary, Pasadena, California. 1. William J. Wolf, The Almost Chosen People, subsequently revised and republished as Lincoln's Religion (Boston: Pilgrim Press, 1970). 2. Ibid., 39, 113, 131, for this quote and the previous quotes. 3. (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 1988), 92 and 96f. 4. Pierard and Linder, 96f. 5. Ibid., 101-02, quoting Lincoln's First inaugural Address. 6. Alonzo L. Hamby, Man of the People: A Life of Harry S. Truman (New York and Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1995), 7. 7. Hamby, 21 and Robert H. Ferrell, Harry S. Truman: A Life (Columbia and London: University of Missouri Press, 1994), 49. 8. Edmund Fuller and David Green, God in the White House: The Faiths of American Presidents (New York: Crown Publishers, 1968), 209. 9. Fuller and Green, 207. 10. David McCullough, Truman (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1992), 571. 11. Ferrell, 183. 12. Hamby, 12. 13. Fuller and Green, 209. 14. McCullough, 390; and 352, 353, 360, 450; Fuller and Green, 208. 15. Ferrell, 6. 16. McCullough, 351. 17. Ibid., 63. 18. Ibid., 231ff. 19. Hamby, 5. 20. Ibid. 21. McCullough, 247-48. 22. Ibid., 587. 23. Ibid., 142f.; see also Hamby, 23. 24. Ibid., 233. 25. Pierard and Linder, 232. 26. Ibid., 240. 27. lbid., 234. 28. James T. Baker, A Southern Baptist in the White House (Philadelphia: Westminster, 1977),112. 29. Pierard and Linder, 237. 30. Michael Allen, "The Human Rights Policy of Jimmy Carter: Foundations for Understanding." Ph.D. diss. (Louisville: Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, 1984). 31. Philip Yancey, "The Riddle of Bill Clinton's Faith," Christianity Today 38 (April 25, 1994): 26-27. 32. James Nuechterlein, "A President in Process," First Things (February 1994), 6. Baptists and Their Theology by
Fisher Humphreys It is appropriate, as they approach the four-hundredth anniversary of the founding of their denomination, for Baptists to review their theological legacy. In this article, our review will be of three-quarters of that history. But is there anything to review? In an important book, Baptist theologian James William McClendon Jr. has argued that small-b Baptists, a group that includes the Baptists, have produced little theology. He defines theology as the discovery, understanding, and transformation of the convictions of a convictional community, including the discovery and critical revision of their relation to one another and to whatever else there is.1 Baptists have not done much of this kind of work, McClendon says, because through much of their history they have been involved in a struggle for survival, and when they have been secure they have allowed the agenda for their theology to be set by other groups such as the eighteenth-century Reformed theologians whose major concerns were expressed in the Calvinist/Arminian controversies and the twentieth-century Fundamentalists whose major concerns were expressed in controversies with modernists about the Bible. The issues in these controversies, McClendon says, did not arise naturally from Baptists’ own identity with its origins in the radical wing of the Reformation but were borrowed by Baptists from outside their own life. A student who is required to attain a mastery of some of the influential Baptist writers of the seventeenth-nineteenth centuries might be forgiven for thinking that there is somewhat more Baptist theology than McClendon has allowed. On the other hand, McClendon is correct to say that many of the issues on the Baptist theological agenda have been set by groups and movements outside of Baptist life, and many Baptist theologians have felt obliged to address issues raised outside of Baptist life as well as to address issues that have arisen within Baptist life. Since it is not necessarily a bad thing to address issues that originate outside one’s own group, perhaps McClendon’s initial observation might be rephrased to say that Baptist life has generated only a small percentage of the issues that Baptist theologians have felt it wise to address. Much Baptist theology has been folk theology rather than academic theology. By folk theology is meant the theology that a community of Christian people, in this case Baptist people, hold and by which they live. By academic theology is meant the theology that is held by persons whose social place in an intellectual elite is at least as important to their work as their place within a faith community, in this case the Baptist community, if indeed they have such a place. In general, folk theology is highly internalized but not necessarily articulated, and academic theology is highly articulated but not necessarily internalized. Academic theology was transformed dramatically by the Enlightenment and the modernity that it generated. Its principal new component is described by B. L. Hebblethwaite: "Criticism is the chief mark of modern Christian theology."2 Even before the ascendancy of methodologically critical thinking, however, academic theology differed from folk theology in various ways. For example, attention to method is routine in academic theology but rare in folk theology. The effort to construct a system is routine in academic theology but rare in folk theology. The language of folk theology tends to be first-order language similar to the language of prayer, worship, witness, and exhortation, while the language of academic theology is usually second-order language, language in which the first order language is scrutinized. Most Baptist theology has been folk theology, and most of the story of Baptist theology is a story of understandings of God and of God’s relations to the world that is expressed in first-order language with a minimal interest in method and system. It is the language of confessions and sermons, and its books are written mostly by pastors. Apparently there were no Baptist theologians whose principal work was done in an institution of higher education until the nineteenth century; in America, it seems that John Dagg was the first Baptist theologian who spent most of his working life in universities. This is not to say, of course, that folk theology is thoughtless or superficial. These are hardly the qualities that come to mind in the case of John Dagg, for example. It is simply to say that for two centuries–half of the time that Baptist churches have existed–Baptist theology has been done by persons whose center of gravity was to be found in the life of the churches rather than in the life of universities. There is one set of theological issues that has surfaced in each of the four centuries of Baptist history, namely, the issues related to Calvinism and Arminianism. The relative importance of this conversation has varied from generation to generation, but the conversation has never been fully silenced. McClendon may be right to regret that this conversation, which Baptists have adopted from non-Baptist sources, has been so prominent, but at the moment there seems to be no reason to suppose that the conversation will be either resolved or transcended in the near future. Part of our concern in this article will be to describe the shape of that conversation as well as to describe the shape of other conversations with less staying power than this one. The Seventeenth CenturyThe first two Baptist theologians were John Smyth (ca. 1554–1612), who was trained in theology in a university (Cambridge), and Thomas Helwys (ca. 1550–1616), who was not. Three of their principal concerns were believer’s baptism, sectarian withdrawal from society, and religious liberty. When Smyth and his church adopted the practice of believer’s baptism, they were responding to two impulses at once. One was the restorationist impulse, the impulse to order contemporary church life as closely as possible to the life of New Testament churches. Once Smyth and his church became convinced that only believers were baptized in New Testament churches, they were determined to imitate that practice. The other impulse was to achieve a believers’ church. The Separatist churches in England had left the Church of England to achieve a more pure church, but their practice of baptizing their own children meant that their congregations continued to have members who had not made a public profession of their faith. Christians have a deep need to be part of an intentional faith community, and that was achieved on the day that Smyth baptized himself and the other members of his church. While more moderate Puritans were concentrating upon the doctrine of salvation and, in particular, the morphology of the soul’s conversation, it was the writings of men . . . such as the Baptist followers of Thomas Helwys and the older Separatists who kept the question of the nature of the true Church alive and in print in England.3 This act represented a dramatic departure from what was being done by other English churches. However, believer’s baptism was already being practiced by the Mennonites whom Smyth and his friends knew in Amsterdam. Smyth was soon to request membership in the Mennonite community, but Thomas Helwys and some others in the church refused to do this. Why did these early Baptists not simply become Mennonites? The answer concerns a second issue of great concern to the first Baptists, namely, how churches ought to relate to society at large. Like all separatist Puritan groups, the Baptists had withdrawn from the Church of England; because this was an illegal act, they tended not to be engaged as a group with society at large. However, in principle they had no reason not to be so engaged. The Mennonites did. For reasons of principle they excluded civil magistrates from membership in their churches. This was one of the reasons that Helwys and other members of the church did not want to align themselves with the Mennonites. In 1611, the year that the Authorized Version of the Bible was published, Helwys and his church of about ten members decided to return to England. Before they left they published "A Declaration of Faith of English People Remaining at Amsterdam" with twenty-seven articles. Article 24 states:
The decision of the early Baptists to be engaged with larger society has had important consequences in Baptist life ever since. Baptists first engaged society over the issue of religious freedom, and that priority has continued until the present. Perhaps the most memorable words in this regard are to be found in the inscription which Helwys wrote in the copy of his book The Mystery of Iniquity which he sent to King James:
Helwys lived faithfully what he had expressed eloquently; for in 1612, he was arrested and imprisoned in Newgate Prison, and by 1616 he had died.
Concerning these three issues–believer’s baptism, sectarianism, and religious freedom–the first Baptists were in conflict with groups outside themselves, so that we might say that their theology was apologetic in character, and much of their energy in the seventeenth century was devoted to defending these three ideas. Initially, they were in conflict with outsiders concerning Calvinism as well, but in about a quarter of a century this great matter became one of polemics rather than apologetics, that is, an intra-Baptist matter. Given that a Calvinistic understanding of salvation dominated the separatist Puritans from whom the first Baptists arose and that Arminianism was popular at the court of King James, a king who was very unfriendly to the separatists, it is surprising that the earliest Baptists were Arminians. On the other hand, in Holland, Calvinism dominated the established church, and the dissenting Waterlander Mennonites were Arminians, which makes the stance of the early Baptists more understandable. In Holland, the Baptists presumably were aware of the theology of the Remonstrants, the followers of James Arminius, whose "Five Arminian Articles" were published in 1610 and elicited from the established church in Holland a five-point response by a famous Synod held in Dordrecht in 1618–19. In "A Short Declaration" in 1611, Helwys adopted the Arminian language concerning predestination: "GOD before the Foundation off the World hath Predestinated that all that beleeve in him shall-be saved . . . and al that beleeve not shalbee damned . . . all which he knewe before."6 From this followed other Arminian views such as that it is possible for Christians to forfeit their salvation. So the first Baptists were Arminians and were aware that this, like their practice of believer’s baptism, set them apart from separatist Puritans. However, sometime in the 1630s some members of separatist Puritan churches in London became convinced of the appropriateness of believer’s baptism and accepted it themselves. Unlike the first Baptists, however, these brought their Calvinism with them into Baptist life, thereby initiating a polarity in Baptist theology that has continued until today. In general, the Calvinistic Baptists grew more rapidly during the seventeenth century than did the Arminian Baptists, in part because Calvinism "was more widely acceptable to the majority of earnest Christians of the day than Arminianism."7 In the second half of the seventeenth century, Baptists debated questions related to open membership and open communion. William Kiffin (1616–1701) of London held the majority view that membership should be restricted to baptized believers and communion should be offered only to members, and John Bunyan (1628–88) of Bedford argued for open membership and open communion. Bunyan wrote: "I do not deny, but acknowledge, that baptism is God’s ordinance; yet I have denied, that baptism was ever ordained of God to be a wall of division between the holy and the holy."8 Even though the majority of Baptist churches have adopted Kiffin’s position, this difference, like the debate about Calvinism, has continued to occur in Baptist life. The Particular Baptists issued their first confession of faith in London in 1644, two years after the civil war had begun and two years before the Westminster Confession was adopted. In 1652, the First London Confession was revised to clarify that Baptists were distinct from Quakers. In 1677, the Particular Baptists issued a second confession in London, this one modeled on the Westminster Confession in order to display the affinities that they shared with the Puritans of Westminster. In 1678, the General Baptists issued "The Orthodox Creed" for the purpose of uniting Protestants against contemporary Christological errors; the document is special because it was worded in ways that would appeal to Calvinists. In 1688–89, the Glorious Revolution occurred and in 1689, Parliament passed the Act of Toleration which was a first step toward the full religious liberty for which Baptists had argued for decades. In the 1690s, Baptists in England engaged in a controversy concerning music in church. The first Baptists had resisted singing as yet another example of a fixed form for worship, the very thing they had left the Church of England to escape. Throughout the seventeenth century, various Baptist churches adopted music of various forms–performed by singers rather than congregations or choirs, singing of Psalms but not hymns, with and without any instrumental accompaniment. The controversy was a theological one, and it was provoked when Benjamin Keach (1640–1704) of London introduced the singing of English hymns into the regular worship services of his church. Not until the eighteenth century were Baptists prepared to sing hymns by non-Baptists, the hymns of Isaac Watts being especially attractive to them, and not until they came under the influence of the Wesleyan revivals did the General Baptists introduce congregational singing of any kind, even Psalms, into their worship services.9 In America, Roger Williams (1603–83) founded in Providence the first Baptist church in America in 1638 and made a dramatic case for religious liberty not only in his writing but by granting comprehensive religious freedom to the inhabitants of the colony of Rhode Island whose patent he secured from Parliament in 1644. John Clarke, the Baptist pastor in Newport, wrote in the charter for Rhode Island: The Eighteenth Century Given the Act of Toleration, it might be expected that Baptists would have flourished in England in the eighteenth century, but it was not to be. As James Leo Garrett has said,11 for much of the century the Particular Baptists moved toward a Calvinism so rigid that it was opposed to evangelism and missions, precisely at a time when the revival movement led by John and Charles Wesley and George Whitefield was helping other groups of Christians to realize the importance of evangelism and missions, and the General Baptists moved toward unorthodox expressions of the Christian faith that resulted in the loss of their Baptist identity altogether. Yet, the story is not altogether bleak, for by the end of the century the Particular Baptists had given the church William Carey (1761–1834), a pioneer of the modern missionary movement, and Andrew Fuller (1754–1815), a pastor who defended and supported the missionary vision. These men were Calvinists who introduced practices that many had thought were incompatible with Calvinism. Moreover, the General Baptists had experienced a renewal under the leadership of Dan Taylor (1738–1816) who owed much to the Wesleyan revivals. Taylor organized a New Connexion of General Baptists which retrieved doctrinal orthodoxy for and introduced revivalistic evangelism to the General Baptists. The eighteenth century produced Baptists’ first systematic theologian, the learned John Gill (1697–1771), who was pastor of a London church for more than half a century and who was awarded the degree of doctor of divinity by the University of Aberdeen for his work in the Hebrew language. The conventional interpretation of Gill is that he was a hyper-Calvinist, meaning that he not only taught double predestination but that he also drew from that doctrine the conclusion that the evangelistic offering of Christ to the unconverted was inappropriate. Leon McBeth adopted this interpretation of Gill when he wrote that Gill "was so jealous to maintain the sovereignty of God that he refused ‘to offer Christ’ to unregenerate sinners and taught others to make the same refusal."12 On the other hand, Timothy George, among others, has called for a reassessment of Gill’s work. He points out that Gill’s objection to a preacher’s "offering Christ" to the unconverted arose from Gill’s belief that only the Holy Spirit can offer Christ, and he quotes Gill as encouraging young ministers to "preach the gospel of salvation to all men, and declare, that whosoever believes shall be saved: for this they are commissioned to do." Still, George concedes that Gill may have been so preoccupied with defending the gospel from dangers on the left that he did little to stay the erosion on the right, that is, hyper-Calvinism. George summarizes his evaluation of Gill as follows:
Because of Gill’s immense learning and influence, it is important to identify his position, and it is likely that experts in his work will continue to debate that position. However that issue is resolved, or whether it is resolved, it is clear that some eighteenth-century Baptists accepted the view that a genuine commitment to Calvinism entailed a refusal to evangelize and that the refutation, or perhaps better, the transcending, of that view was indispensable to the health of Baptists. The struggle between these two points of view was conducted by followers of Gill and followers of Andrew Fuller, the pastor in Kettering whose views were summarized in his book The Gospel Worthy of All Acceptation.14 In America in the eighteenth century, Baptists continued their commitment to religious liberty by working for it in the colonies, by supporting the Revolution, and by working for it in the newly established United States. A leader in this work was Isaac Backus (1724–1806), whose Appeal to the Public for Religious Liberty against the Oppression of the Present Day (1773) presented the case for the separation of church and state. The first association of Baptist churches in the New World was formed in Philadelphia in 1707; the association energetically spread the Baptist message through the colonies and to the frontiers. In 1764, the association sponsored the College of Rhode Island (Brown University), the first Baptist university in America. Equally important to Baptists in the eighteenth century in America was the Great Awakening of which Baptists were primary beneficiaries. In 1700, there were twenty-four Baptist churches in America and fewer than a thousand members; by 1800, Baptists had become the largest denomination in the nation.15 Not only did Baptist evangelism result in many conversions, but more than a hundred Congregationalist churches became Baptist churches. This dramatic numerical growth meant that by the beginning of the nineteenth century, the center of gravity in Baptist life in the world shifted from Great Britain to North America. The awakening divided Baptists into Regulars who resisted it and Separates who embraced it. The energetic evangelism of the Separates led them to moderate their Calvinistic theological heritage: The revivalist gravitates almost inevitably toward the idea that "whosoever will may come." This pull, coupled with the necessarily concomitant stress on personal religious experience in "conversion," tends to make the human initiative primary. Revivalism thus tends to lean theologically in an Arminian or even Pelagian direction with the implicit suggestion that people save themselves through choice.16 It is not only the case that beliefs shape practices; practices also shape beliefs. The Nineteenth CenturyThe Calvinist-Arminian issue continued to occupy Baptists throughout the nineteenth century, but two other issues concerned them as well. One was the question of how Baptists should relate to non-Baptists, and the other was the question of how Baptists should respond to the growing influence of liberal Protestantism. The question of relationships with non-Baptists was most urgent in the Southern United States. At the heart of the Landmark movement led by J. R. Graves (1820–93) and others was a conviction that Baptists are the only true church in a New Testament sense and that it was a compromise of that fact for Baptists to enter into relationships with non-Baptists. A subsidiary concern in the Landmark movement was that Baptists not compromise the integrity of their congregations by creating ecclesial structures that were unknown during the New Testament era and that almost certainly would rob the congregations of their rightful authorities and responsibilities. The Landmark movement had in common with the earliest Baptists a deep concern for ecclesiology, but it proceeded without any awareness of the deep commitment of the earliest Baptists to the importance of each congregation’s entering into close relations with other congregations. The Landmark movement called Baptist churches to associate with each other as little as possible, and it called them to avoid contact with non-Baptist churches entirely. It is ironic, then, that the Landmark movement may have contributed to the fact that many Baptist groups came together to form the Baptist World Alliance (1905) rather than to affiliate with the then-emerging Federal (later National) Council of Churches. Baptists both in North America and Great Britain responded to liberal Protestantism, and their responses in both places were varied. In Britain, two pastors, John Clifford (1836–1923) and Charles Haddon Spurgeon (1834–92), were to be found on opposite sides of the issue, with Spurgeon leading his London church, then perhaps the largest Protestant congregation in the world, out of the Baptist Union in 1887. Spurgeon and Clifford were personal friends, but Spurgeon was a Calvinist who emphasized evangelism and Clifford was an Arminian who emphasized social work. In 1891, four years after Spurgeon left the Baptist Union, the General Baptists and the Particular Baptists were united for the first time; Spurgeon died the following year. Among Baptists in North America, the crisis with liberal Protestantism was not to occur until the twentieth century. It is natural to assume that this was the case because liberal Protestantism did not gain adherents as quickly in North America as it did in Great Britain, but another possible explanation is that the intense commitment of North American Baptists to revivalistic forms of evangelism and to evangelistic missionary work on the America frontier as well as abroad was a cement strong enough to hold together Baptists who responded differently to the issues generated by liberal Protestantism. Baptist institutions of higher education flourished in North America in the nineteenth century and provided opportunities for the discipline of systematic theology to flourish. Of many fine men who practiced the discipline during this period, John L. Dagg and James P. Boyce in the South and A. H. Strong and William Newton Clarke in the North will be mentioned. John L. Dagg (1794–1884) was a Virginian who overcame extraordinary problems–a limited education, near-blindness, and being crippled–to become a great pastor in Philadelphia and elsewhere and then an educator both in Alabama and as president at Mercer University in Georgia. He was a convinced Calvinist of an evangelical kind who wrote a winsome English prose. Apparently his Manual of Theology (1857) was the first systematic theology by a Baptist in America. James P. Boyce (1827–88) was educated at Brown University under Francis Wayland, whose evangelical sermons contributed to Boyce’s conversion, and at Princeton Theological Seminary under Charles Hodge who led Boyce to appreciate Calvinistic theology. Boyce became a pastor, then a university professor, and finally the founder and first president of the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, where he taught theology from 1859 until his death in 1888. Throughout his ministry Boyce insisted on the importance of theological education for all ministers. In a preface, he described his Abstract of Systematic Theology, published the year before his death, as follows: "This volume is published the rather as a practical text book, for the study of the system of doctrine taught in the Word of God, than as a contribution to theological science." Like Boyce, A. H. Strong (1836–1921) was both a seminary president and a professor of theology; he taught for more than forty years at Rochester Theological Seminary. His Systematic Theology is the most comprehensive by a Baptist author ever published; it first appeared in 1876 and went through eight editions and more than thirty printings. Among its other distinctions are that it includes numerous quotations from other writers. Strong’s was a mediating theology in which he retained his theological heritage while embracing as much as he thought wise of newer scientific, philosophical, historical, and theological ideas. He generally avoided polemics, but near the end of his life he became concerned about the deleterious effects of liberalism on missions work and wrote a polemical book about the subject. William Newton Clarke (1841–1912) embraced theological liberalism, and his Outline of Christian Theology (1898) was the first systematic theology by a liberal Protestant and the most widely influential. Among the attractions of this book are its brevity and its author’s determination to translate technical theological terms into ordinary language. ConclusionThe story of Baptists and their theology is in many ways an attractive one. To the larger society, Baptists have contributed their awareness that full religious liberty for all citizens entails a separation of church and state, and to the larger church in the world Baptists have contributed the practice of believer’s baptism as a way of achieving an intentional faith community, the believers’ church. The first three centuries of Baptist theology left seven questions for the later centuries. • What is a true church? • How ought a true church to relate to the wider society? •How ought a true church to relate to the world-view of the wider society when that world-view methodically omits any references to God in its descriptions of reality? • How ought a true church to worship God? • How ought a true church to relate to other churches? • How do you implement a separation of church and state in order to provide maximal religious liberty for all citizens? •Has God, who presumably has the sovereign power to do so, determined all things, or has God rather created a world that includes freedom and contingency with which God then works providentially and redemptively? EndnotesFisher Humphreys is professor of divinity, Beeson Divinity School, Samford University, Birmingham, Alabama. 1. James William McClendon Jr., Systematic Theology: Ethics (Nashville: Abingdon Press, 1986), 23. 2. B. L. Hebblethwaite, The Problems of Theology (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1980), 17–18. 3. B. R. White, The English Separatist Tradition (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1971), 168. 4. In William L. Lumpkin, Baptist Confessions of Faith (Chicago: Judson Press, 1959), 122–23. 5. Baptist History and Heritage 8, no.1 (January 1973): cover. 6. Lumpkin, 118. 7. Barrington E. [sic] White, "The English Particular Baptists and the Great Rebellion, 1640–1660" in Baptist History and Heritage 9, no. 1 (January 1974): 17. 8. Quoted by Harry L. Poe in "John Bunyan" in Timothy George and David S. Dockery, ed., Baptist Theologians (Nashville: Broadman Press, 1990), 39. 9. Floyd Patterson, "Music, Baptist" in Encyclopedia of Southern Baptists 2:932–34. 10. Quoted in Sidney E. Mead, The Lively Experiment: The Shaping of Christianity in America (New York: Harper & Row, Publishers, 1963), ii. 11. James Leo Garrett, "Theology, History of Baptist" Encyclopedia of Southern Baptists 2:1412–13. 12. Leon McBeth, The Baptist Heritage (Nashville: Broadman Press, 1987), 39. 13. Timothy George, "John Gill" in Baptist Theologians, 93–94. 14. James E. Tull, Shapers of Baptist Thought (Valley Forge: Judson Press, 1972), 85–92. 15. McBeth, 200. 16. Mead, 123. This article is reprinted from Baptist History and Heritage 35, no. 1 (Winter 2000), 7-19. Copyright © 2000, Southern Baptist Historical Society. Other articles in this issue on "Baptist Theology in the 20th Century":Editorial: Merrill M. Hawkins Jr. An Executive Note: "The Society’s Name: Asset or Liability? Charles W. Deweese "Baptists and Neo-Evangelical Theology," Glenn T. Miller "Baptist Contributions to Liberalism," E. Glenn Hinson
"Baptists and Liberation Theology in South America," Pablo Moreno
"Baptists and Baptism–a British Perspective," Anthony R. Cross Book ReviewsErvin Fahlbusch et al, eds. The Encyclopedia of Christianity, vol. 1, A-D. Translated and edited in English by Geffrey W. Bromiley. Grand Rapids: William B. Eerdmans, 1999, 893 pp. Reviewed by Charles W. Deweese. Michael E. Williams, To God Be the Glory: A Centennial History of DBU. Arlington, Tex.: Summit Publishing Group, 1998. 228 pp. Reviewed by David G. Kitts. Jeff B. Pool, Against Returning to Egypt: Exposing and Resisting Creedalism in the Southern Baptist Covention. Macon, Ga.: Mercer University Press, 1998. 339 pp. Reviewed by Jerry Faught. Daniel W. Stowell, Rebuilding Zion: The Religious Reconstruction of the South, 1863-1877. New York and Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1998. 278 pp. Reviewed by Michael E. Williams Sr. Jeffrey D. Jones and Debra L. Sutton, We Are Baptists: Studies for Youth and We Are Baptists: Studies for Younger Elementary Children. Valley Forge, Pa.: Judson Press, 1999 and 2000, 111 pp and 87 pp. Reviewed by James E. Taulman. This issue can be ordered for $8.00 plus shipping and handling by calling 800-966-2278. The
Kingdom at Hand: The Social Gospel and the Personal Service Department of Woman’s
Missionary Union, Auxiliary to the Southern Baptist Convention by Carol Crawford Holcomb During an era when some Southern Baptist leaders were warning Baptists against the "subtle and ruinous dangers of social service," the leadership of Woman’s Missionary Union, Auxiliary to the Southern Baptist Convention (WMU) established a department called Personal Service and identified its mission specifically as "social service."1 WMU leaders desired to enlist the entire membership in "united efforts to meet the community needs for uplift."2 Their goal was to encourage local Baptist women to participate in social service as a form of mission activity. The committee that directed the program utilized social science methodology, embraced Progressive Era reforms, and called on Social Gospel ideas to carry out its work. Although the women did not appropriate a formal Social Gospel theology, their programs and writings bear the stamp of its social ethics. The Social Gospel, an ethical/theological movement of the late nineteenth century that emerged in response to the challenges of industrialization, urbanization, and immigration, emphasized the social teachings of Jesus, social and individual salvation, the immanence of God, and the perfectibility of humanity.3 The latter idea featured most prominently in Walter Rauschenbusch’s doctrine of the kingdom of God. Baptist women were aware of these Social Gospel ideas, and the ministries they established were informed by its tenets. Leadership and Organization of Personal ServiceFannie Exile Scudder Heck was the most visible progressive in the leadership of WMU.4 In addition to serving as WMU president, Heck led the North Carolina WMU as president for twenty-nine years, was chairman and founding member of the Associated Charities of Raleigh, vice president of the Wake County Betterment Association, president of Raleigh Women’s Club, member and second vice president of the Southern Sociological Congress, and founder of the North Carolina Conference for Social Service. Also, Heck promoted ecumenical exchange with Northern Baptists. In 1907, she presided over a joint meeting of Northern and Southern Baptist women at the Jamestown Exposition. She also delivered an address to Baptist women of the world at the Philadelphia gathering of the Baptist World Alliance.5 Fannie Heck is singularly responsible for establishing a department in WMU that focused attention on social service. The fields of social service and social work came of age at the turn of the twentieth century as reformers began to apply scientific methodologies to social problems. Fannie Heck incorporated the new social methods into her ministry goals. In her early years of service on the state WMU level, Heck referred to social work variously as "personal missions," "neighborhood missions," "household missions," or "personal service." As these terms indicate, Heck found the impetus for social work within the mandate for missions. At no time did she consider social ministry to be separate from mission work, or in competition with the goal of individual salvation. This attitude harmonizes with that of Social Gospel writers. As Stanley P. Caine noted, the Social Gospel was "built on the premise that social justice and Christianity were synonymous."6 Unlike many Southern Baptists who considered social work to be a secondary task of ministry, Heck consistently emphasized social service as an intrinsic element of the missionary enterprise. It was precisely this dedication to "social service" that gave rise to a new program in the Baptist Woman’s Missionary Union. In 1909, during her third term as national WMU president, Fannie Heck established the Personal Service Department and named Lulie Wharton chairperson. Wharton served in this capacity for fifteen years.7 Wharton and Heck guided the work of personal service through its fledgling years with the help of a personal service committee. The personal service committee encouraged local WMUs to establish their own personal service committees and to send detailed reports of their activities to national headquarters.8 State organizations began to form personal service committees in 1911. The national office soon prepared training pamphlets and a Handbook of Personal Service for local societies to follow. The Personal Service Handbook was a guide to help local churches and associations implement a social settlement. In connection with the guidebook, the personal service department cooperated with the WMU Missionary Training School in Louisville, Kentucky, in founding a model settlement house where women could get field experience in Baptist social work. In 1912, personal service was added to the Standard of Excellence for WMU, requiring societies to participate in personal service to meet a rating of "excellence" in WMU work.9 In 1913, WMU highlighted personal service as part of the twenty-fifth anniversary celebration of WMU. The Message of Personal ServiceLulie Wharton and the personal service committee took great pains to articulate the purpose for their department. "In laying the foundation for this department," they explained, "the aim has been to make it broad and comprehensive, to line up with the most progressive thought and movements of the day and to seek those methods most conducive to the carrying out of our purpose–to fight for prohibition, for observance of the Sabbath, for the sanctity of the home and the fight against crime, disease and poverty."10 The "progressive thought" of the day meant social science methods and themes drawn from the Social Gospel. Under the banner of the "fight against crime, disease, and poverty," personal service leaders included investigations of housing, sanitation, health, education, recreation, child labor, family conditions, industrial conditions, church and Sunday School membership and attendance, conduct of jails, orphanages, county homes, and other local institutions. Lulie Wharton stated that personal service was meant to apply the "religion of Jesus Christ" to the "social problems of the day" and also to be "in line" with the "new phase of modern thought," namely social service.11 The primary writers for personal service for most of the years from 1888 to 1930 were Fannie Heck, Lulie Wharton, Emma Leachman, and Maud Reynolds McLure. These women were largely responsible for the Handbook for Personal Service and for the training courses. But many other women contributed to the personal service column in Royal Service. Unfortunately, the columns and monthly studies rarely included a signature. It is difficult, therefore, to determine precisely how many women influenced or endorsed the more progressive policies of the department. The names of personal service committee members listed on personal service reports during Lulie Wharton’s tenure included Mrs. F. T. Grady, Mrs. A. J. Clark, Kathleen Mallory, Mrs. George Stevens, Susan Bancroft Tyler [Mrs. James Pollard], Mrs. James W. Kirkman, Mrs. W. H. Baylor, Mrs. Oscar G. Levy, Mrs. A. J. Fristoe. In 1924, Mrs. Peyton A. Eubank took over as chair of the personal service committee. There were three avenues through which WMU leadership encountered progressive social ideas which they attempted to incorporate into their personal service program: ecumenical ties, secular reform movements, and literature of Social Gospelers. Southern Baptist women established close working relationships with other evangelical women through women’s clubs, charity work, and shared missionary goals. One of the most powerful women in the life of WMU, Annie Armstrong, participated in interdenominational charity work in Baltimore and stayed abreast of the missionary activities of other denominations.12 Edith Campbell Crane, who followed Armstrong as corresponding secretary of WMU, served as a delegate to the 1910 World Missionary Conference in Edinburgh.13 Fannie Heck, participated consistently in interdenominational endeavors. WMU also celebrated women’s ecumenical endeavors in speeches and published articles. Leaders of WMU made a concerted effort to study the missionary and social service activities of other denominations. During the 1917 annual meeting, WMU adopted a resolution concerning personal service "that we study the policies and methods of kindred missionary and social service organizations, adapting those best suited to our aim of preventing and eradicating community evils."14 This statement is important because it affirms that Southern Baptist women intentionally adopted the programs of other missionary organizations. Southern Baptist female leadership exchanged ideas with Southern Methodist women more than with any other group outside their own denomination. John Patrick McDowell’s work, The Social Gospel in the South: The Woman’s Home Mission Movement in the Methodist Episcopal Church, South, 1886–1939, demonstrates that Southern Methodist women embraced the Social Gospel in its entirety.15 Lucinda Helm, the force behind the Methodist Woman’s Home Mission Society insisted: "A perfect religious hope must include not only eternal life for the individual, but the establishment of the Kingdom of God for humanity."16 This focus on the kingdom of God pervaded Methodist women’s home mission work. Baptist women borrowed both articles and practical social work methods from the Methodist women. For example, they incorporated Methodist teachings on race, adapted Methodist manuals on settlement work, and studied Methodist settlement houses in order to begin their own work. In 1894, Annie Armstrong wrote a note to the secretary of the Sunday School Board, T. P. Bell, confirming an exchange of missionary publication material with the Methodist Episcopal Church, South.17 In 1912, Fannie Heck wrote a postcard to Lulie Wharton highlighting recent Methodist writings concerning race relations: I wonder if Dr. Pollard has seen the publications of the Southern Methodist Women along these lines. I think since our organizations so nearly parallel one another in work theirs would be interesting to him. Their recent publication or report of Commissions on work among colored women (a most difficult subject) has interested me.18 The February 1915 issue of Royal Service quotes directly from a Methodist Episcopal Church, South leaflet entitled "Plan for Co-operating with Negro Women." Seven suggestions for cooperation are reprinted in Royal Service. In general, the suggestions urged white women to foster "in the local white community higher ideals in regard to the relation between the races . . . by standing for full and equal justice in all departments of life."19 Ella Broadus Robertson (Mrs. A. T. Robertson) endorsed the writings of a Methodist woman in her 1923 editorial in Royal Service. "Mrs. Hammond’s recent pamphlet, ‘Southern Women and Racial Adjustment’ is so practical that every woman’s missionary society should own a copy," insisted Robertson. Hammond stated in the pamphlet that white women in the South have come to a place "where we are willing to work in broader ways for common justice to the negroes." Robertson insisted that greater work for African Americans was necessary and concluded, "For though we have often been kind to them, we have seldom been just."20 WMU leadership also benefitted from the experience of the Methodist women in applied ministry. Methodist women began social settlement ministries in southern cities around the turn of the twentieth century.21 They were the first denomination in the South to establish social settlements (programs designed to accomplish urban reform by establishing a permanent presence in underprivileged neighborhoods). Prior to the establishment of the Baptist settlement work at the WMU Training School, students learned methods of city missions at the Wesley House in Louisville.22 When the personal service committee began preparing a manual to help local women establish Baptist settlement houses in cities across the South, they turned to The City Mission Manual of the Methodist Episcopal Church, South. WMU basically adapted this manual for their needs and wrote an acknowledgment to the Methodists in their bibliography.23 This became the Handbook for Personal Service. The exchange of ideas was not limited to the national level, however. Local Baptist women studied the work of their Methodist sisters as well. For example, the superintendent of missions for the WMU of the Birmingham Baptist Association lamented in 1913 that she had not accomplished all she wished to because "to attend the meetings of our Executive Board, visit three societies, and take one visit to investigate the work which the Methodist women are doing at Avondale is the best I could do."24 The exchange of ideas pervaded the WMU organization. A second avenue through which WMU encountered Social Gospel ideas was their contact with social reformers in both the North and South. The work of Jane Addams at Hull House was of particular interest to WMU leadership–although they were consistently critical of her lack of emphasis on religion.25 Maud Reynolds McClure, principal of the WMU Training School, visited Hull House personally. McClure and Emma Leachman also investigated both Baptist and Presbyterian church work in Chicago and insisted that "these were much more to our liking."26 In spite of McClure and Leachman’s disappointment with Hull House’s secular approach, they borrowed Addams’s ideas for their social ministry including ideas for community farming and community rooms in their settlement houses.27 McLure spent the summer of 1912 studying at the New York School of Philanthropy to prepare for the opening of the model settlement house in Louisville, Kentucky. While there, she studied with reform-minded professors. The Southern Sociological Congress was yet another reform movement that provided personal service leaders access to Social Gospel ideas. In March of 1913, Fannie Heck was commissioned by the governor of North Carolina to attend the Southern Sociological Congress which was formed "to study and improve social, civic, and economic conditions in the South."28 In 1914, Heck was elected second vice president of the congress. Maud Reynolds McClure also attended the congress as a delegate from Kentucky and served on the Race Relations Committee in 1915. During these meetings, the women were exposed to the leaders of the Social Gospel and to some of the most progressive ideas of their day. The congress hosted such speakers as Samuel Zane Batten, Graham Taylor, Walter Rauschenbusch, and Charles Macfarland. The SSC also adopted a social platform similar to that of the Federal Council of Churches. In affirmation of the Southern Sociological Congress, Royal Service printed reports from the meetings and quoted their resolutions concerning such issues as child labor, poverty, inner city slums, health, literacy, and recreation.29 The editors of Royal Service did not hesitate to endorse a clear Social Gospel agenda with their choices of information from the Southern Sociological Congress. For example, four long paragraphs on the responsibility of the church to conserve public health quoted in a March 1916 issue of Royal Service were drawn from a speech made at the 1915 congress by Samuel Zane Batten, a Northern Baptist minister and strident Social Gospel advocate. Batten’s words are resplendent with the Social Gospel message.30 "First," says Batten, "the churches must teach people the wide scope of redemption and must make them know that health is a Christian duty."31 He continues with an admonition for the churches to go beyond the "results and deal with causes." Thus far we have been content to feed the hungry, to nurse the sick, to rescue the perishing, to lift up the fallen. It is all very well to rescue the outcast, but it is better to abolish the white slave traffic. It is well enough to take the sickly child out of the slums; but it is more sensible to abolish the slums. It is well enough to feed the hungry family; but it is more Christian to create an industrial order where every man can earn and eat his daily bread without scantiness and anxiety.32 Batten’s words, endorsed by WMU leaders, strike at the heart of a conservative social Christianity. Batten dared suggest that the "industrial order" is to blame for poverty and want. Batten’s position is clear. "It is well enough to build an orphanage," Batten implored, "but it is more religious to protect machinery and keep the fathers alive. The time has come for us to find the causes of poverty and sickness and deal with these. . . . There is something as foolish as it is un-Christian in nursing sick people and running a hospital when you can keep people well by abolishing bad housing and providing pure water."33 Editors of Royal Service printed Batten’s final point that was unequivocally Social Gospel: "We must realize that this work of preventing social evils is religious and spiritual work."34 The idea that it is within the scope of the gospel to combat social evils stands in contrast to the writings of Victor I. Masters of the Southern Baptist Home Mission Board who warned against equating social service with redemption, righteousness, or individual conversion. Masters is careful to keep the "gospel" strictly separate from the "good works" of social service. "The Home Mission Board and its missionaries," says Masters, "have done and are doing a work of social service which is of immense value. But they have shrunk from featuring this work as a chief thing, lest the weak and unwary should stumble and become entangled in the net of the false belief that man is justified by the works of the flesh rather than by faith in Christ."35 This literal rendering of sola fides prevented Masters and other Southern Baptists from embracing an integrated concept of social service as faith and is one of the theological distinctions between a conservative social Christianity and the Social Gospel. In the pages of Royal Service, particularly in 1915 and 1916, Southern Baptist women found a solid endorsement of the work of the Southern Sociological Congress and a quiet approval of the Social Gospel. Because of their connections with other groups of Protestant women and social reform organizations, Baptist women became familiar with the Social Gospel. In addition to these first two avenues, the pages of WMU publications reveal that its leadership encountered Social Gospel ideas directly through the primary source writings. Sometimes WMU writers merely alluded to the Social Gospel. For example, one very basic allusion that would have been familiar to the progressive-era reader was Charles Sheldon’s 1897 Social Gospel novel, In His Steps. The leadership of WMU indicated their familiarity with the novel in several instances. Fannie Heck gave a speech to the North Carolina WMU one year after the publication of the novel. Her written manuscript climaxes with the Sheldon’s famous refrain, "if in your place, ‘what would Jesus do?’"36 In other instances, Social Gospel writers are directly quoted and endorsed by WMU leaders. The 1915 personal service report to the annual meeting of the WMU opened with a quote from Graham Taylor, first chair of Christian Sociology in the United States, and founder of the Chicago Commons Settlement.37 The bibliography and recommended reading section of the February 1914 Royal Service listed Graham Taylor’s book, Religion in Social Action, in addition to recommending the reports of the 1913 and 1914 Southern Sociological Congresses. The mission program for August 1917 in Royal Service contained a two-page section taken directly from Josiah Strong’s book, The Challenge of the City. Mary Faison Dixon, who prepared the program, said that Strong was "a careful student of city problems and knows whereof he speaks."38 Personal service writers, like Methodist women, employed the phrase "kingdom of God," which was a central theme in Rauschenbusch’s understanding of the Social Gospel. Some of the women used the term in a vague biblical sense, but others viewed the kingdom of God, like Rauschenbusch, as something which "is here on earth; that quietly pervades all humanity; that is always working toward the perfect life of God."39 In 1915, the personal service page of Royal Service featured a picture of a church connected to community institutions. The writer of the article comments: "What greater force in the coming of the Kingdom of God can there be than the church which he has established?"40 Mary Livermore of Tennessee encouraged Southern Baptist women to cooperate with the secular movements for reform so that "their splendid humanitarian service" might help to "bring in the Kingdom of God in our midst."41 The Handbook of Personal Service insisted that "until the whole church is thus enlisted for the whole world, the kingdom of God cannot wholly come in any part of the earth."42 These statements expressed WMU’s acceptance of the Social Gospel premise that human participation could usher in the kingdom. Rauschenbusch believed that Christ could, through the church, transform the entire world, "making it righteous, making it habitable, making it merciful, making it brotherly."43 Shailer Mathews defined the Social Gospel as the "application of the teaching of Jesus and the total message of Christian salvation to society, the economic life, and social institutions, . . . as well as individuals."44 Likewise, Fannie Heck’s pamphlet "Pageant of the Golden Rule" depicted a dream of a perfected society in which the "Golden Rule" had been applied to institutions as well as individuals.45 Her vision, and these references to the kingdom, assumed two Social Gospel principles: human progress and the perfectibility of society through application of the social ethics of Jesus. Personal Service and SoteriologyThe influence of other denominational groups, reform movements, and the writings of Social Gospel theologians influenced Baptist women’s understanding of salvation. WMU writers often blended concepts of corporate and individual salvation. For example, writers often quoted a Social Gospel leader, or an anonymous "social thinker" of the day who advocated the Social Gospel, then added a disclaimer for individual salvation. In a 1913 pamphlet, the personal service committee presented their answer to the basic question: What is the Personal Service work of Woman’s Missionary Union? The committee responded: It [personal service] is social service whose high ideal is not alone the lifting of mankind to better living conditions, to Christian business standards, especially regarding women and children employees, to proper and adequate opportunities for play, to social and cultural advantages, to educational privileges, but salvation for the life beyond through faith in Jesus Christ.46 The phrase "not alone" suggests that both the element of human need in the present life and spiritual well-being in the afterlife are included in the goal of personal service. The Handbook of Personal Service began with an emphasis on individual salvation: "The end and object of the Personal Service Department is to bring men and women to a personal acknowledgment of Christ as their saviour." The writers continued, however, with an explanation of precisely what they meant by salvation that moves nearer to the wholistic emphasis of Social Gospel theologians:47 "A full salvation includes the betterment of the physical conditions, the development of the mental powers, the culture of the moral sense."48 The effort to bring people to "salvation" meant more than a personal confession. Full salvation, to this personal service writer, included both a changed spiritual condition and a changed physical condition. Leading Social Gospel writer Washington Gladden urged Christians to move beyond issues of private morality and individual salvation, insisting that "the redemption of the social order is, then, the problem now before us."49 Gladden believed that "the conviction of social sin [was] the beginning of social redemption."50 In the 1913 report to the annual meeting of WMU, the Personal Service Committee cautiously raised the issue of social salvation: "When a man loves God he is saved; when he loves his neighbor society is saved," says one of the leading social teachers of the day. These two great needs–the need for personal salvation and the need for personal service in the interests of society–are embodied in the intention and design of religion.51 The committee report did not expound on the implications of social salvation but rather indicated that society was an element that religion must not neglect. It could be the writers simply did not realize the theological import of the "social teacher’s" words. Regardless, the hearers of the report were presented the message that salvation could apply to society. Some writers acknowledged the tensions between an individualistic theology and the Social Gospel. In Our Mission Fields one writer discussed salvation in the context of urban problems. "We are told," wrote the WMU columnist, "by that deep student of our country’s conditions, Dr. Josiah Strong, that ‘already one-fourth of the people of the United States live in the cities, and three-fourths of the wealth is there.’"52 Something had to be done to bring salvation to the multitudes in the cities. In typical Southern Baptist fashion, she first affirmed individual salvation: "The saved city would be just a community of people in right relation to God through faith in the Saviour; and nothing else, we know, can ever take the place of that truth." But to this truth, she insisted, must be added an awareness of the social dimensions of sin. But in seeking the salvation of the individual we need to take account of some of the forces that draw him away from the influence of righteousness, and to see how our own Christian life may help negatively by removing these forces as well as by supplying the positive force of a saving knowledge of Christ.53 In other words, social forces can inhibit or support individual salvation. Furthermore, the writer explained that there were two ways to view those forces: Whether we look upon these facts as diseases of our national life that must be cured, or as symptoms of a deeper seated disease which is called sin, we shall all agree that extreme poverty, hard industrial conditions, the ever present saloon, increasing crime and other features of city life, are things to be reckoned with.54 Either poverty and industrial conditions were national diseases, or they were the result of sin. Her words were diplomatic and persuasive. Regardless of your conception of social problems, she stated, "we shall all agree" that they must be "reckoned with." Taken together her argument implies that individual salvation is very important, but social forces require a different sort of reckoning, a different sort of redemption. Occasionally writers of Personal Service emphasized their commitment to personal conversion without abandoning their Social Gospel sources. In the very first report on Personal Service in the official WMU magazine, then called Our Mission Fields, the writer introduced the "most recent department of the work of Woman’s Missionary Union"–Personal Service. This new department is the latest tool to help teach "the whole Gospel to the whole world." Then, the writer inserted a disclaimer. WMU would not, assured the writer, stumble into an "overemphasis on social service." Ironically, she used the words of Shailer Mathews to voice her caution: Dean Shailer Mathews, president of the Federal Council of Churches in America, issues a warning against the substitution of social service for spirituality in the church. He says: "picnics are not the equivalents of prayer-meetings and Sunday-school baseball leagues have not yet developed into revivals."55 The writer thus voiced caution about social service while legitimizing the teachings of Shailer Mathews and the Federal Council of Churches. This would immediately take her Baptist critics off guard. She could have chosen any number of Southern Baptist leaders to issue a word of warning about social service, but she chose a Social Gospel leader.56 Perhaps the author of this column was unaware of the irony of her quotation. Regardless, her choice of references demonstrated her trust in and familiarity with Social Gospel writers. The lasting influence of Social Gospel ethics on Baptist women is revealed in their commitment to social work. Leaders of Personal Service consistently defended social work and its methods through allusion to biblical materials and by linking it with salvation. They did not hesitate to call the ministry they envisioned "social service" even though there were strong sentiments against it among some Baptists. As late as 1920, a committee of Virginia Baptists pronounced that "[r]ight Gospel preaching will send nine-tenths of these special social service organizations to the scrap heap."57 Nevertheless, the Personal Service Handbook stated: "The Founder of Christianity was the greatest social worker the world has ever known."58 In another instance they insisted that personal service was "social service with the gospel as its motive and conversion as its aim."59 In an annual report the committee asserted: "We cannot express the aim of this new department in better terms than to say it is social service upheld by grace."60 Although personal service writers approached the subject of social salvation with "fear and trembling," they challenged claims that the church’s responsibility to society ended with individual, spiritual regeneration. Fannie Heck, for one, was convinced that the gospel demanded personal involvement in social service. Rather than viewing social ministry as an optional, derivative element of religious conversion, Heck believed a social ethic was inherent in genuine Christian spirituality. She argued that one of the dangers of missionary organizations was that in their success, the work of ministry became secondhand. She feared women would be content to "have someone else do our work while we languish and die for want of spiritual exercise."61 By "spiritual exercise" Heck was certainly referring to the work of spiritual conversion; but Heck included social ministry in her definition of "saving the lost." In an April 1911 speech to the WMU of North Carolina, Heck commented that North Carolina WMU was at "the beginning of a long march on a higher plane" which included improving the conditions of farm tenants, the isolated poor, and factory boys and girls.62 Heck’s conviction hinged on the notion that the gospel is not something one "believes," but rather it is something one does–a practical rather than exclusively propositional theological position. Her choice of titles for her history of WMU, In Royal Service, suggests the idea of personal work for the "kingdom." Her establishment of a personal service department institutionalized her conviction that the gospel had both social and individual implications. The wholistic perspective of salvation appears throughout personal service materials of the era. In fact, discussion of salvation became the doctrinal focus through which WMU leaders made their strongest Social Gospel statements. An article in Royal Service in 1921 maintained that "winning souls" included service: The [WMU] society that is not winning souls and that considers money gifts, perfunctory prayer and programs on distant fields as their whole duty, omitting personal service to the needy and neglected around them and cooperative effort to solve the social problems that wreck lives and ruin souls in every community, may have a large budget and much self-centered and complacent activity, but it will be like the fruitless vineyard so well tended and so disappointing to the Master. "Cut it down; why cumbereth it to the ground?" Nothing but personal saving of human beings is going to satisfy Him.63 Note that the writer uses the phrase "winning souls" but defines the task broadly as "personal service to the needy and neglected" and as "cooperative effort to solve social problems." Members of missionary societies could not be content with prayer meetings and missionary offerings. Unless women were personally involved in social uplift, argued this writer, they were useless to God. She reiterated that the purpose was "saving of human beings" which implied more than individual salvation both for the Christian and for those in need. One of the plainest presentations of the Social Gospel in the personal service material occurred in Lulie Wharton’s 1915 Annual Report to WMU. Wharton placed the Social Gospel statement on the lips of an anonymous missionary:
This is the theme of wholistic salvation. The missionary continued with an even more specific claim for the regeneration of the social conditions and made three basic arguments.
Finally, Wharton’s anonymous missionary made a direct attack on those who would limit salvation to personal conversion: The reformation of earthly life is indeed the preparation for the heavenly citizenship, and should be not the selfish saving of individual souls alive, but a work as broad and inclusive as is the Love that ‘so loved the world’; so that no physical, social, governmental or intellectual obstacle to man’s trust and highest development is too secular for the spirit of Christ and His Gospel to strike at through its missionaries.64 In addition to defending social service against attacks that it is more "secular" than spiritual, the missionary undermined the notion that salvation consisted only of a verbal assent to propositional truths. It is more than the "selfish saving of individual souls alive." Yet, the anonymous Christian does not use specific religious language to name the "broad and inclusive work of salvation." Neither Wharton nor the missionary venture to describe the "physical, social, governmental, or intellectual" obstacles as sin. Though he or she stops short of developing an explicit liberal soteriology, in the cultural context of Southern Baptist life, the missionary’s words are startling. Though the historian is frustrated with their ambiguity, the message of the missionary would have been abundantly clear to WMU women in the local church. The report said clearly: social work is God’s work. The gospel includes everything that helps human beings in this world and the next. Salvation applies to every aspect of human existence. Practical as these statements may be, they sound strangely familiar—strangely like the Social Gospel. ConclusionThere are three basic things to conclude from this discussion. First of all, WMU leadership of the Personal Service Department borrowed ideas and missionary methods from other denominations immersed in the Social Gospel, from reform organizations with Social Gospel agendas, and directly from Social Gospel writers. Secondly, although the women themselves did not become Social Gospel theologians or promote a comprehensive Social Gospel program, they did allow the ethical content of the Social Gospel to infuse their ministries. Lastly, one of the enduring results of WMU’s encounter with the Social Gospel was their fierce defense of social work programs and methods. WMU has continued to promote and defend social work through the years although the conflict surrounding social work in Baptist life has remained. The model settlement house and the WMU Training School in Louisville, Kentucky, were renamed Carver School of Missions and Social Work in 1952. This institution was merged into Southern Seminary in 1963. Twenty-one years later, the Carver School of Church Social Work became a full school within the seminary equal to the schools of theology, music, and Christian education. During the conservative restructuring of Southern Baptist Theological Seminary which began in 1993, the dean of the Carver School, Diana Garland, was fired over a conflict with President Al Mohler. Garland subsequently joined the faculty at Baylor University where she guides the masters of social work program. After Garland’s departure, the seminary conducted a study of the social work program and concluded that ‘the tenets of social work are not compatible with biblical theology.’65 The social work program was eliminated and the Carver School name sold to Campbellsville University in Kentucky. In 1999, the endowment of the Carver School of Missions and Social Work, nearly one million dollars, was returned to WMU in a private settlement with Southern Seminary. Those monies will be used to benefit Baptist women’s education and social work. History has thus come full circle. While the tensions remain within Baptist life regarding the social application of the gospel, WMU is still invested in the vision of social service initiated by Fannie Heck in 1909. EndnotesCarol Crawford Holcomb is assistant professor of religion, University of Mary Hardin-Baylor, Belton, Texas. 1. Home Field (February 1916), 9. For descriptions of personal service as social service, see Annual Report of Woman’s Missionary Union, Auxiliary to the Southern Baptist Convention (1912), 51, and Royal Service (October 1921), 28. 2. A Handbook of Personal Service, revised (Baltimore: Woman’s Missionary Union, n.d.), 4. Personal Service Notebooks, Woman’s Missionary Union Archives, Birmingham, Alabama [WMUA]. Paul Harvey points out that the terms ‘efficiency’ and ‘uplift’ connote the progressive emphasis on ‘scientific management.’ Shailer Mathews applied ‘scientific management’ to church organization. The elements of efficiency in church programs appealed to Southern Baptists. See Paul Harvey, Redeeming the South: Religious Cultures and Racial Identities Among Southern Baptists 1865–1925 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1997), 197. 3. The definition of the Social Gospel in the southern context is a subject of much debate. For further information see John Lee Eighmy, Churches in Cultural Captivity: A History of the Social Attitudes of Southern Baptists (Knoxville: University of Tennessee Press, 1972); Wayne Flynt, "Alabama White Protestantism and Labor, 1900–1914," Alabama Review 25 (July 1972); John Patrick McDowell, The Social Gospel in the South: The Woman’s Home Mission Movement in the Methodist Episcopal Church, South 1886–1939 (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1982); John Storey, Texas Baptist Leadership and Social Christianity, 1900–1980 (College Station: Texas A&M University Press, 1986); Paul Harvey, "Southern Baptists and the Social Gospel" in Fides et Historia 27 (Summer 1995); and Carol Crawford Holcomb, "Mothering the South: The Influence of Gender and the Social Gospel on the Social Views of the Leadership of WMU, SBC, 1888–1930," Ph.D. Diss., Baylor University, 1999. 4. She received the name ‘Exile’ because she was born in Virginia during the Civil War; her family ‘exiled’ from their home in Morgantown, North Carolina. Although Heck’s father served as an officer in the Confederate army, he was able to maintain his financial holdings. After the war, he built his family a mansion in Raleigh, North Carolina. In Raleigh, Fannie enjoyed all the benefits of leisure and education in southern aristocracy. One biographer reports that she was a crack shot; an expert horsewoman; an accomplished needlewoman; a skilled wood-carver; an artist with brush, pen, and scissors; and an inventor of at least two items. Fannie Heck never married, but instead she brought all her energies to bear on mission work and community service. See Alma Hunt, History of Woman’s Missionary Union (Nashville: Convention Press, 1964) and Catherine Allen, Laborers Together with God: 22 Great Women in Baptist Life (Birmingham: Woman’s Missionary Union, 1987). 5. ‘Editorial,’ Royal Service (October 1915), 4–5; Allen, Laborers Together With God, 26–37. 6. Stanley P. Caine, "The Origins of Progressivism," in Lewis Gould, ed. The Progressive Era (Syracuse: Syracuse University Press, 1974), 13. 7. The 1925 personal service report to the annual meeting of the WMU, SBC offers a farewell to Lulie Wharton as chairman of the Personal Service Department. Annual Report, 61. 8. Catherine Allen, A Century to Celebrate: A History of Woman’s Missionary Union (Birmingham: Woman’s Missionary Union, 1987), 215. 9. Ibid., 215; Hunt, 125. 10. Annual Report (1915), 60–61. 11. Annual Report (1912), 51. Catherine Allen believes WMU avoided using the term ‘social service’ directly in connection with personal service to avoid ‘antagonizing opponents of the Social Gospel.’ Allen, Century to Celebrate, 215. 12. For example, she kept scrapbooks which she used for preparing her own talks and studies on missions. In those books are clippings from such groups as the Presbyterian Missionary Society, the Woman’s Club at Chautauqua, Episcopal Theological School, Cambridge, and the Woman’s Christian Temperance Union (WCTU). 13. Our Mission Fields (January-February-March 1912), 19. 14. Annual Report (1917), 93. 15. McDowell, The Social Gospel in the South, 3. 16. McDowell, The Social Gospel, 20, and Francis A. Downs, "The Greatest Woman of Southern Methodism," Methodist Review 64 (April, 1915). 17. Annie Armstrong to T. P. Bell, 3 March, 1894. Southern Baptist Historical Library and Archives, Nashville. 18. Fannie Heck to Lulie Wharton, circa 1912. Heck papers, Woman’s Missionary Union Archives, Birmingham, Alabama. 19. Royal Service (February 1915), 11. 20. Royal Service (January 1923), editorial. 21. For descriptions of early Methodist settlement houses, see Sara Estell Haskins, Woman and Missions in the Methodist Episcopal Church, South (Nashville: Methodist Episcopal Church, 1920), 202. 22. Carrie Littlejohn, History of Carver School of Missions and Social Work (Nashville: Broadman Press, 1958), 64. 23. A Handbook of Personal Service, n.d. Personal Service Notebooks, WMUA. 24. Proceedings, Birmingham Baptist Association, 1913, 32. 25. Fannie E. S. Heck to Lulie Wharton, c. 1912. WMUA. 26. M. R. McClure to Fannie E. S. Heck, 8 February, 1915, Heck papers, NCBHC. 27. McLure to Heck, 8 February, 1915. 28. J. E. McCulloch to F. E. S. Heck, 3 March, 1913. Heck papers. NCBHC. 29. A full report on the Southern Sociological Congress is included in Royal Service (May 1915), 26. See also Royal Service (March 1916), 8–14. 30. Samuel Zane Batten, "Modern Miracles of the Church in Health Conservation," in James E. McCulloch, ed. The New Chivalry–Health (Nashville: Southern Sociological Congress, 1915). Speeches given at the Southern Sociological Congress May 8–11, 1915, Houston, TX. 31. Royal Service (March 1916), 13. 32. Ibid. 33. Ibid., 13–14. 34. Ibid., 14. 35. Victor I. Masters, The Home Board and Social Service (Atlanta: Publicity Department of the Southern Baptist Convention, n.d.), n.p. 36. Minutes of the Woman’s Missionary Societies, Auxiliary to Baptist State Convention of North Carolina (1898), 16. 37. Annual Report (May 1915), 59. 38. Royal Service (August 1917), 8–10. 39. Walter Rauschenbusch, "The Kingdom of God," in Robert Handy, The Social Gospel in America, 1870–1920 (New York: Oxford University Press, 1966), 267. 40. Royal Service (February 1915), 9. 41. Royal Service (October 1921), 28. 42. A Handbook of Personal Service, n.d., 7, WMUA. 43. Rauschenbusch, "The Kingdom of God," in Handy, The Social Gospel in America, 267. 44. Shailer Mathews quoted in C. Howard Hopkins, The Rise of the Social Gospel in American Protestantism, 1865–1915 (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1940), 3. 45. Fannie Heck, "Pageant of the Golden Rule" (Copy of Early Manuscript), Heck Papers, North Carolina Baptist Historical Collection [NCBHC], Z. Smith Reynolds Library, Wake Forest University, Winston-Salem, North Carolina. 46. "Some Questions Answered" (1913), Personal Service Notebooks, WMUA. 47. Rauschenbusch, Gladden, Mathews, and other Social Gospel writers affirmed the necessity of both individual and social salvation. 48. A Handbook of Personal Service, n.d., 12–13. Personal Service Notebooks, WMUA. 49. Washington Gladden, The Church and Modern Life (Boston: Houghton, Mifflin and Company, 1908), 155. 50. Gladden, The Church and the Modern Life, 157. 51. Annual Report (1913), 41. 52. Our Mission Fields (July 1909), 6. 53. Ibid., 8. 54. Ibid. 55. Our Mission Fields (October-November-December 1913), 29. 56. For anti-Social Gospel sentiment among Southern Baptist leaders, see chapter three of James J. Thompson Jr. Tried As By Fire: Southern Baptists and the Religious Controversies of the 1920s (Macon: Mercer University Press, 1982). 57. Eighmy, Churches in Cultural Captivity, 110. 58. A Handbook of Personal Service, n.d., 9. Personal Service Scrapbooks, WMUA. 59. Royal Service (October 1921), 28. 60. Annual Report (1912), 51. 61. Manuscript of Speech, 1910, Heck papers, NCBHC. 62. Fannie Heck, Speech to the Woman’s Missionary Union, Auxiliary to the Baptist State Convention of North Carolina (April 18, 1911), Unpublished manuscript, Heck Papers, WMU Offices, Baptist State Convention of North Carolina, Cary, North Carolina. 63. Royal Service (October 1921), 28. 64. Annual Report (1915), 59–60. 65. Mark Wingfield, "WMU Reclaims Nearly $1 Million from Southern," Baptist Standard (March 1, 2000), 3. This article is reprinted from Baptist History and Heritage 35, no. 2 (Spring 2000), 7-19. Copyright © 2000, Southern Baptist Historical Society. Other articles in this issue on "Baptists and the Social Gospel":Editorial: Merrill M. Hawkins Jr. An Executive Note: "Shaking Hands for History’s Sake," Charles W. Deweese "‘For of Such Is the Kingdom of Heaven’: Institutionalizing Youth Benevolence Among Southern Baptists, 1890–1920," Keith Harper "‘The Striking of Mind Upon Mind’: The Open Forum and the Social Gospel," Arthur S. Meyer "Cooperative Ownership: Reconsidering a Social Gospel Legacy," Ken Estey "Missions and Baptists Systematic Theologies," James Leo Garrett Jr. "Sutton E. Griggs’s Imperium in Imperio as Evidence of Black Radicalism," Larry Frazier Book ReviewsPaul C. Gutjahr, An American Bible: A History of the Good Book in the United States, 1777–1880. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1999. 256 pp. Reviewed by W. Terry Lindley. Carl L. Kell and L. Raymond Camp, In the Name of the Father: The Rhetoric of the New Southern Baptist Convention. Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press, 1999. 176 pp. Reviewed by H. Wayne Ballard Jr. George H. Shriver, Pilgrims Through the Years: A Bicentennial History of First Baptist Church, Savannah, Georgia. Franklin, Tenn.: Providence House Publishers, 1999. 242 pp. Reviewed by Douglas W. Crabb. Abraham Friesen, Erasmus, the Anabaptists, and the Great Commission. Grand Rapids: William B. Eerdmans Publishing Company, 1998. 196 pp. Reviewed by W. Terry Lindley. Cecil P. Staton Jr., Why I Am a Baptist: Reflections on Being Baptist in the 21st Century. Macon: Smyth and Helwys, 1999. 204 pp. Reviewed by Glenn Jonas. Edwin S. Gaustad, Liberty of Conscience: Roger Williams in America. Valley Forge: Judson Press, 1999. Xiv + 229 pp. Reviewed by Jerry L. Summers. This issue can be ordered for $8.00 plus shipping and handling by calling 800-966-2278. Reflections:
Baptists and Women's Issues in the Twentieth Century by Carloyn
DeArmond Blevins Breathing helium produces a higher voice. Sore throats usually make one hoarse. Laryngitis leaves a person silent much to the delight of so-called friends. Anger usually results in a loud and perhaps frighteningly powerful voice. A shaky voice may indicate fear. Voices are revealing. Voices are powerful. Controlling others’ voices has been and is the goal of governments around the world. Controlling the voices of others is often the mission of the power figures in families—even denominational families. Reflecting on Baptists and women’s issues in the twentieth century, it seems to me that there was one issue that dominated woman’s relationship with Baptists: who controls the voice of women? One statement sums up woman’s story in twentieth century Baptist life: Baptist women, black and white, in the north and in the south, spent the century trying to get a voice in the denominations they served. Recall some of the issues Baptist women faced in the last century: Can women speak in mixed audiences? Can women vote in the nation, in the convention, in the church? Will women be elected to denominational boards? And if they are, will they be elected at the same rate as men? Can women be admitted to all educational opportunities? Will women be hired into any vocation to which they are called? Can women be ordained? Will churches call women as senior pastors? Other issues confronted women as well, but you get the picture. All of these issues center around one basic question. Do women really have a voice in Baptist life? Various voices assist us in examining this topic and understanding the struggle. First, noiseless voices reveal the problems of having speech controlled. Second, confusing voices shed light on the complexities of the issue. Third, noisy voices demonstrate a refusal to be silenced by the powerful forces around them. Noiseless Voices First, the effort throughout the twentieth century to control the voices of Baptist women resulted in noiseless voices, frustrated yet powerful in some cases. Although they likely had not heard of him, many Baptists in the last century seemed to agree with the philosopher Pliny the Elder. In his book Natural History, Pliny insisted that women were to be quiet and inconspicuous so that when they died no one would even know they had lived.1 Centuries later William P. Harvey, an early twentieth century Baptist minister, asked, "What kind of woman does the Bible command?" Harvey immediately ruled out the "public speaking, woman’s rights, shrieking, Amazonian, man-defying woman."2 Harvey did not want what some called a "platform woman." Many stories bare witness to that attitude among Baptists.3 From the early 1900s to the late 1990s, too many Baptists preferred women with silent voices—women who would unquestionably follow the authority of men. Myrtle Morris may have been an unknowing prophet in 1904. Myrtle was truly the first noiseless voice for women in the Southern Baptist Convention (SBC). Since Myrtle could not hear she could not speak. Myrtle was heading to Cuba to start a school for the deaf. The convention voted unanimously to "hear" Morris as she interpreted a song being sung by a man. So the first woman to address the convention was in reality a silent voice, apparently the kind of female voice Baptist conventioneers still like best. As the century opened, American Baptists, National Baptists, and Freewill Baptists included women speakers at their meetings. But in the SBC muted women were the rule of the day at conventions, in churches, in classrooms, wherever men were present. Occasionally a woman reported to her state convention in the first quarter of the century with little stir. But a woman speaking before the convention was cause of considerable tension and debate. The first time a woman reported to the Southern Baptist Convention was through a male voice. Fannie E. S. Heck wrote a twenty-fifth anniversary report of the Woman’s Missionary Union (WMU), in 1913 but the report was read by a man, W. O. Carver.4 The rare times that women did speak even briefly before the Southern Baptist Convention are curiously missing from the minutes of the convention although newspapers and diaries reported the events. Such omissions give evidence to the growing realization that often the contributions of women have been intentionally omitted from historical records. That’s one way of silencing women. B. D. Gray, the secretary of the Home Mission Board in 1916, gave thirty minutes of his time at the convention to Kathleen Mallory and Maud Reynolds McLure to raise money for the WMU Training School. And did he turn the heat up on a boiling pot! While the editor of the Western Recorder was appalled at Gray’s action, the editor of the Baptist Standard, J. B. Gambrell declared that the most thrilling part of the convention was the two ladies speaking.5 Perhaps so, but those who found it thrilling had to wait fourteen years to hear a lady again. Because WMU was celebrating its fortieth anniversary, Ethlene Cox was invited to address the convention in 1929. Again, the issue of a woman speaking at the convention was contentious. J. W. Porter offered a resolution protesting any woman speaking at the SBC since it was not scriptural, and he added, "Eve tempted Adam. Now the SBC is tempting women. The women would do all right if the petticoated preachers would leave them alone."6 But M. E. Dodd countered that all were one in Christ. The audience broke into applause. When Porter’s resolution was defeated with a thunder of negative votes, he grabbed his hat and left.7 Something about women’s voices bothered men. Even in the classroom at Southern Baptist Theological Seminary women could listen, but could not ask questions, contribute to a discussion, or even record their words on a test. The strict control of women’s voices in any arena where men were present causes me to wonder: what was it that men feared? No Petticoated, Platform Preachers The United States Supreme Court continues to rule that speech is not limited to words but is expressed in other ways such as financial contributions. The Court is correct. Voices are much more than words and speeches. Voting is one way of being a voice. Although women could work in slums or in the back country of foreign lands, national suffrage would surely permanently soil them. Women could lead in missions education and giving, but they could not have a say in how those programs were designed or those monies were spent. Women should not vote in the nation, in the convention, or in the church. In other words, women were free to have the responsibilities of being Baptists but not free to have the privileges. Robert H. Coleman started plowing the ground for women suffrage in the SBC in 1913 by notifying the convention that the next year he would propose amending the constitution to recognize women as messengers. His resolution was based on Baptist principles of all things. It began with these words, "Whereas, In so pure a democracy as a Baptist church, all members have equal privileges; and Whereas, Women constitute so vital a part of the membership of our churches, both in numbers and in workers; . . ."8 But it took this pure democracy four more years to grant equal privileges. Not until 1918 did Coleman’s amendment get approval. Even so, Southern Baptists gave women the privilege of voting two years before the nation did. The suffrage dominoes did not fall as rapidly as one might expect. Kentucky women were not allowed to be messengers in their state convention until 1956. Now that women were recognized as voting members of the convention, Mrs. W. C. James, president of the WMU, recommended that the convention include nine WMU members on the executive committee, and twelve on the other five boards or 33 percent of each board. In light of the significant contribution WMU made to the financial health of more than one board, James’s request was most appropriate. And still is. The editor of the Religious Herald at the time said there was no good reason why the boards should not include the women and at least a dozen reasons why they should.9 And he is still correct. Clearly the Baptist men then and now want women to provide major financial support of the programs but not to have a significant voice in their execution. At least half of the mission boards’ annual budgets are currently met due to the educational and promotional effort of women, yet in 1999 women made up only 26 percent of the International Mission Board trustees and 23 percent of the North American Mission Board.10 At present the Executive Committee, the most powerful committee of the SBC, is composed of a mere 5.6 percent women. As we enter a new century, seventy-nine years after Mrs. James’s requests, her percentages have yet to be met. Women’s voices remain overpowered if not stilled. While Southern Baptist men were debating whether women could speak or vote, women were speaking, not on platforms but in print—soundless voices. Since its early days, WMU produced growing amounts of literature for missions organizations. Women wrote, edited, and published the materials. Social work gave women a quiet but effective voice. Baptist men and women believed it was proper for women to be involved in changing society. Many Baptist women worked to solve urban problems brought on by industrialization and immigration. While women were not platform women or petticoated preachers, they were nevertheless one-on-one evangelists and very effective at that! Unlike platform male evangelists who knew little about the needs of the souls they won, the women often were working to improve the living conditions of those to whom they proclaimed the gospel. As the U.S. Supreme Court says, money is a voice. When the Foreign Mission Board refused to appoint single women as missionaries, the WMU ladies suggested that they would merely keep some of the money raised and support the single women themselves. The mission board had a rapid change of heart. Money talks. In later years as the executive secretaries of the two boards and the WMU began to work more closely, the women did finally exert some influence in the expenditure of the offering money. More recently the leadership of the convention attempted to usurp or steal the control of the missions program from the WMU. The auxiliary status the men demanded in 1888 prevented them from the immediate control they wanted to demand a century later. However, convention forces are still at work eroding the independence and voice of the mission organization that has been the backbone of SBC missions for over a century. The SBC is still working on several fronts to control the noise of women’s voices. Let’s recall a few: The 1984 resolution on women and ordination, the 1998 resolution on family, the "ordination of women" litmus test being used today in its institutions and agencies, and the 2000 Baptist Faith and Message statement limiting the "office of the pastor" to men. With muted voices many Baptist women faithfully served their churches and conventions anyway. Fortunately many women have seen beyond the opposing men to the teachings of Christ. As W. O. Carver said in 1941, although the Christian church emerged in a man’s world and reflected masculine responsibility, the Christian idea "saves man from the spirit of domination and the arrogance of superiority."11 Some very influential Baptist men have yet to experience this salvation. Confusing Voices Second, confusing voices reveal the complexities of controlling women’s voices. Noiseless voices are a problem for any group because being heard is essential to being taken seriously. However, some of the voices women heard were a problem as well. Mixed messages are also a part of the Baptist landscape and are very confusing to women and their supporters. Baptists believe in every one being his or her own priests, interpreting Scriptures for oneself, and forming one’s own beliefs rather than adopting a creed written by another. Therefore, on the "woman question" some Baptists insisted on controlling women; others insisted on liberating them to use their gifts. When a person is unquestionably on one side or the other, the messages and positions are clear. Quite puzzling to all Baptist women, north and south, are the mixed messages they continue to get. From the beginning of the century, women have dealt with messages that give a pious woman whiplash. John A. Broadus in 1900 said the primary reason for the elevation of women was the Bible, but it placed restrictions on women’s activities and instructed them to submit to their husbands.12 Restrictions and subordination are elevation? (Broadus’s daughter Ella later gave women instruction on effective public speaking! She apparently favored elevation over restriction.) Not long after Broadus’s androcentric conclusion, A. T. Robertson insisted that Galatians 3:28 referred to salvation, not to preaching. For, said he, just because women might be better speakers at associational meetings, they did not have the right to speak there.13 God does not want the better speakers? William Harvey admitted that woman had been mistreated by society and "pagan barbarism." Woman’s hope, he insisted, was in Christianity where she should be "gentle, retiring and unassuming" avoiding public forums.14 So Christianity was not mistreating woman? I wonder if Broadus, Robertson, or Harvey mangled their tongues speaking out of both sides of their mouths at once? Progression of time did not weaken the puzzling messages. In more recent years, when a WMU leader visited a church as its first female speaker, she was introduced as "Brother Dorothy."15 In 1977, the South District Association of Baptists in Kentucky voted to withdraw fellowship from the Beech Fork Baptist Church because it ordained Suzanne Coyle. Then in a totally mystifying action they voted to send her a letter of encouragement! Noting that ordination was "surely one of the most significant choices" of her life, the letter said they did not intend any negative statement regarding her call or usefulness and felt God had something special for her. The letter closed by saying they did not want to wound her and prayed that God would guide her and let her do great things according to His will.16 They kicked her out although God had something special for her? And they were praying God would let her do great things? Apparently they did not believe God could do special and great things in the South District Association. Then, there was the 1984 SBC resolution "On Ordination and the Role of Women in Ministry" which acknowledged the "equal dignity of men and women, . . . [that] the Holy Spirit was at Pentecost divinely outpoured on men and women alike," that women prophesied in the early church, that women should be held in high honor and esteemed, and that women should be encouraged to serve in all capacities of church life except pastoral duties or anything requiring ordination."17 Exclusion from leadership is high honor, esteem, and equal dignity? Again, in 1998, the convention passed a resolution on family that exalted women while subordinating them. Exalted subordination sounds like an oxymoron to me. Southern Baptists voted in 2000 on a revision of the Baptist Faith and Message which stated that "each member is responsible and accountable to Christ as Lord" and "both men and women are gifted for service" but the "office of Pastor is limited to men."18 If each person is accountable to God, how can Southern Baptists state a limitation? Baptists need a Pulitzer Prize for their continuing ability to talk out of both sides of their mouths using the Holy Writ to support their duplicity. Many Baptist women shake their heads in amazement that seemingly intelligent people formulate such incongruent statements to secure their own positions. Very often that kind of doublespeak speeds too many thoughtful women away from our churches, institutions, and convention. Some choose to ignore the puzzling rhetoric and go about their business of doing Christianity within the Baptist context. Others continually struggle with their anger toward the community of faith that birthed them and yet sends these perplexing messages, refuses to hire them, and in fact shuns or expels them. One of the noteworthy events for Southern Baptist women in the last century was the Consultation for Women in Church-Related Vocations held in 1978. Eleven denominational agencies sponsored the three-day event. Women from agencies, schools, and churches expressed their sense of call, their fulfillment in their careers, their anger over lack of support by virtually all the entities of the convention, and their frustration over the confusion of SBC voices. Quite moving were the voices of women who served in various offices or ministries, knowing they were where God wanted them to be. Quite disturbing were the angry voices of women who could not find an open door of service. As I drove home from the meeting, lingering questions haunted me: Why did pastors and churches encourage all young people to answer God’s call but fail to call young ordained women to serve in their churches? Why did seminaries encourage young women to study theology and yet do little to assist them in vocational placement? What were the eleven sponsoring agencies doing to employ more women or to place more women on their boards of trustees? Was a consultation a way of airing a problem without making significant change? As I drove on, I reflected on the voices I heard the last three days. The frustrated voices were those who were recently graduated from seminary or recently ordained and could not find employment. The angry voices were those who had been in that pursuit for about five years. The hostile voices came from those who had spent the better part of a decade trying to find a place to minister. With our double messages, we were actually creating a core of hostile women. Some of those women finally settled on another way to serve Southern Baptists and have made their peace with the realities. The sad truth is that many of those very frustrated, angry, hostile, dedicated, and bright women have either found places to serve in other denominations or have become agnostics. Mixed messages unrecognized and uncorrected are ultimately damaging. The year after that consultation, the fundamentalists proudly took over the SBC and any hope for affirming women’s leadership went down the androcentric drain. Unfortunately the gender issue is not limited to the Southern part of the Baptist family. American Baptist, National Baptist, and to some extent Freewill Baptist women suffered similar whiplash from mixed messages. Women in those three branches of the Baptist family tree have experienced more support and opportunities than women in the SBC. Yet, even they have struggled and continue to struggle with denominations that affirm them verbally more than they do in employment. All three groups were ordaining women at the dawn of the twentieth century and have a significantly higher percentage of women serving as senior pastors today. At the same time, those women struggle to get the positions easily obtained by the men of their faith. We Baptists tout our doctrines of freedom while we muzzle our female voices. It is a very confusing message. Like Archie Bunker, we have tried our best to stifle the voices of our partners to make them noiseless. The effort to control women’s voices produced millions of noiseless voices and thousands of confusing voices. In spite of long and sustained tactics to keep the women silent or least confuse them, the movement failed. Noisy Voices The third chorus of voices are the noisy voices. Sure, there are still muted voices and confused voices in our Baptist family, but the attempts to make those voices universal among women has failed because important noisy voices emerged in the twentieth century also. Women’s voices simply could not and would not be muted. Nannie Burroughs, addressing the National Baptist Convention in 1900, declared there was a "righteous discontent" among black women.19 Burroughs spoke for countless Baptist women of all races. To the chagrin of many pious men, some Baptist women considered the Bible as their ultimate authority and their call by God as their ultimate commitment. Whenever Baptist men have difficulty controlling Baptist women, Baptist theology is often the culprit. Baptist doctrine places great confidence in the believer. So Baptist principles fortified the women and gave them the freedom to claim their own priesthood, their right to interpret Scriptures for themselves, and their churches the freedom to make their own decisions. All female voices did not remain silent; some became increasingly noisy. The noise was blasphemy to the controllers; it was exhilarating to numerous women and men. In 1921, when Southern Baptist women were begging for a few positions on convention boards, Helen Barrett Montgomery was elected president of the Northern Baptist Convention.20 Ordained women in the North served churches throughout the century. Lansing Burrows, who served as president of the SBC in 1914, observed that many Christians were excited about the possibility of ordaining women.21 Most Southern Baptists were exercised about the possibility but not excited. In fact, it was a half century later in 1964 that Southern Baptists finally jumped on board kicking and screaming when the Watts Avenue Baptist Church boldly ordained Addie Davis. American Baptists and Freewill Baptists encourage women in ministry more than National Baptists and Southern Baptists do. But in none of these Baptist groups do women occupy posts of leadership in proportion to their membership or work in the denomination. For example, the average African-American church has three times as many female members as male members. Yet, leadership is overwhelmingly male. Mary Beth Sarhatt reports in the American Baptist Churches USA that there are not many churches willing to consider a woman as pastor.22 Nannie Burroughs, a National Baptist, ushered in the century by noting "how the sisters are hindered from helping." As the century ended, the sisters were still hindered from proclaiming the good news to all people. Today, there are almost 1,600 ordained women among Southern Baptists. Only 100 serve as pastor and 600 are trying to find a place to minister.23 In 1983, Southern Baptist Women in Ministry was formed to provide a network for women called to all forms of ministry. In 1995, they dropped the "Southern" from their name to open the doors to all Baptist women in ministry. Although American Baptists and National Baptists have a higher percentage of women serving as senior pastors, ordination, placement, and promotion remain problems for all Baptist women called to ministry. Lay women are also called to serve. The very first Baptist church in the seventeenth century had women deacons as have some Baptist churches ever since. In the last thirty or forty years of the twentieth century, increasing numbers of churches were seeing the value in having both genders serve as deacons. Two Progressive Steps Backward Students of Baptist history recognize immediately that women in the twentieth century made two progressive steps backward. In early English and American Baptist history, women were accepted leaders as deacons and preachers. Baptist women of the twentieth century who responded to the call to serve as preacher or deacon were merely progressing back to our earlier Baptist heritage. Placing Baptist women in leadership positions was not initiating a twentieth-century innovation but was reclaiming our deepest roots. But like many of their sisters, Baptist women in the last century hit a glass ceiling—except Baptist women hit it very quickly, and it was a stained glass ceiling. The stained glass was not a colorful glass depiction of one of the many biblical models of womanhood to which Baptist women could aspire. The glass was stained with the bruised heads of women who attempted to rise to their calling and hit the ceiling installed by men not God. Baptist women of the twentieth century claimed a theology of liberation (Gal. 3:28; Acts 21:9). Baptist men insisted on a theology of limitation (1 Tim. 2:11; 1 Cor. 14:34). The message given to all disciples in Matthew 28:19-20 to "go, tell" has no gender criteria, but is curiously constrained by gender for some. The Bible’s message is one of liberation, not limitation. Conclusion All three of these voices— the noiseless, the confused, and the noisy—are heard throughout the century. An astute observer will recognize notable periods when some voices crescendo. In the first two decades of the century, the focus was on keeping women silent in every way. In the next five decades, from 1920 to 1970, gradual and quiet progress was made for woman in several areas. The last three decades of the century heard increasing numbers of women declaring their call and prodding Baptists to open doors to ministry. At the same time a growing choir of voices searched for ways to subdue the noisy ones. The century began and ended with strong fundamentalist efforts to control the voices of women. A deeply perplexing question for many thoughtful Baptists is: If our urgency is to tell the world about Christ, why not empower every voice? Restriction makes no theological sense—unless the theology is about power rather than mission. One issue dominated women’s relationship within Baptists in the twentieth century: who controls the voice of women? When other persons attempted to control that voice, they silenced some women, confused many women, and made ministry difficult for those who refused to be silenced. Baptist women spent the century trying to get a voice in their denominations. By the end of the twentieth century, had woman gained a voice in Baptist life? My conclusion is that she was a strong soloist surrounded by a chorus of opposition.
Endnotes Carolyn DeArmond Blevins is associate professor of religion, Carson-Newman College.
1. Joan Morris, The Lady Was a Bishop (New York: Macmillan, 1973), xi. 2. William P. Harvey, Shall Woman Preach? (Louisville: Baptist Book Concern, 1905), 30. 3. Certainly many women and men among Baptists did not share this attitude. In this article, "Baptists" will refer to those of majority and influential views. 4. Annual, Southern Baptist Convention, 1914, 64-67. 5. Catherine B. Allen, A Century to Celebrate: History of Woman’s Missionary Union (Birmingham: Woman’s Missionary Union, 1987), 306. 6. Ibid., 312. 7. Ibid. 8. Annual, Southern Baptist Convention, 1917, 37. 9. Harry Leon McBeth, "The Role of Women in Southern Baptist History," Baptist History and Heritage 12 (January 1977), 15 10. See Annual, Southern Baptist Convention, 1999. Also note that the Foreign Mission Board is now called the International Mission Board and the Home Mission Board is now called the North American Mission Board. 11. W. O. Carver, "Christ’s Gift to Women and His Gift of Women to the Human Race" (Address at Baptist W.M.U. Training School Commencement, Louisville, Kentucky, May 8, 1941). 12. John A. Broadus, "Should Women Speak in Mixed Assemblies?" Feminism: Woman and Her Work, ed. J. W. Porter (Bloomfield, N.M.: The Historic Baptist, 1995 reprint), 66. 13. A. T. Robertson, "Introduction," Shall Women Preach? William P. Harvey (Louisville: Baptist Book Concern, 1906), 5. 14. Harvey, 30. 15. Ellen M. Rosenberg, The Southern Baptists: A Subculture in Transition (Knoxville: The University of Tennessee Press, 1989), 127. 16. Leon McBeth, Women in Baptist Life (Nashville: Broadman Press, 1979), 162. 17. Annual, Southern Baptist Convention, 1984, 65. 18. Baptist Press, May 18, 2000. 19. Evelyn Brooks Higginbotham, Righteous Discontent: The Woman’s Movement in the Black Baptist Church 1880–1920 (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1993), 150. 20. The Northern Baptist Convention is now called American Baptist Churches, USA. 21. Sermon by Lansing Burrows, "Woman’s Position in the Church," June 1872 (Southern Baptist Historical Library and Archives). 22. Mary Beth Sarhatt, "We’ve Come This Far By Faith," American Baptist Quarterly 13 (December 1994): 375 . 23. Statistics provided by Sarah Frances Anders, phone interview, April 19, 2000. Reprinted from Baptist History and Heritage 35, no. 3 (Summer/Fall 2000): 55-63. This issue can be ordered for $15.00 plus shipping and handling by calling 800-966-2278. Religious
Pluralism in the Unitd States: A Challenge for Baptists and Other Christians in the
21st Century by Alan Neely My paper concentrates primarily on prospects rather than retrospects for two reasons. First, I have dealt with this subject in a number of previous essays. Second, Baptists, like other evangelicals, have given their primary attention to evangelism, missions, and personal conversion rather than to interreligious dialogue and other nonevangelistic endeavors. By and large, Baptists have been far more concerned with their responsibility to take or proclaim the gospel to all people, including the followers of other faiths, than to study thoroughly or consider objectively what other people believe. Until the last half of the past century, except for missionaries, businesspersons, and government representatives, Baptists had little direct contact with peoples of other faiths. After World War II, however, migration from Asia and Africa to the West began to change the demographic character of most predominantly Christian countries, including Western Europe and North America. The most dramatic upsurge of Asians and Africans entering the United States, however, came after the change in the immigration laws in 1965. And though no one knows precisely how many Muslims, Buddhists, and Hindus there are today in the United States, it is generally conceded that there are at least six million followers of Islam, a million to two million Hindus, and a slightly lesser number of Buddhists. Moreover, these numbers continue to increase, and the visible evidences of other faiths are all around us. You may be surprised to know, for example, that the largest Baptist university in the United States, Baylor University, located in Waco, Texas, had in their student body last year 72 Muslims, 68 Buddhists, and 67 Hindus,1 a momentous change from a generation ago. Unfortunately, if most Baptists have any knowledge of other faiths, it is academic or anecdotal. Southern Baptists through the Interfaith Witness Department of the Home Mission Board did during the 1970s attempt some interfaith dialogues. But during the 1980s, these efforts were dropped in favor of evangelism. Given the fact that this country—as most countries in the West—is becoming increasingly multicultural and multi-religious, how we Christians relate to non-Christians will determine whether we are able to live together in a truly pluralistic society or whether we will become a tangle of competing, mutually suspicious, antagonistic neighbors. Because of these possibilities, I want to concentrate on the future of Baptists and peoples of other faiths. Three years ago I was invited to give the Scherer Lectures at the Chicago Lutheran Seminary, lectures sponsored by the Theological Consortium composed of the Lutheran and McCormick seminaries, as well as by the Chicago Theological Union. The theme I chose was the challenge of religious pluralism in North America. The two lectures were subsequently published in the Lutheran school’s journal, Currents in Theology and Mission 25 (April 1998). In the first lecture, I addressed the question of whether genuine religious pluralism is desirable or even possible in the United States. In the second discourse, I tried to allay what I consider to be instinctive as well as incited fears about religious, cultural, and ethnic pluralism by accentuating the missiological possibilities that a genuinely pluralistic context offers. This last September, I had the privilege of giving "the Baptist Lecture" at Andover Newton Theological School in Newton Centre, Massachusetts, and it is the essence of that lecture that I am offering here today. It is not, however, exactly the same because of things that have happened within the intervening months. Today, I will focus specifically on Baptists and why the multiplicity and growing numbers of peoples of other faiths in this country represent a particular challenge for Baptists. It would be a mistake, however, to assume that only Baptists are challenged, and it would be a mistake to conclude that Baptists in other lands do not face the same or similar challenges. Our roots are those of Christians and Protestants in general, but we are also beneficiaries of a specific heritage from Congregationalists in terms of church polity, and Presbyterians and Congregationalists in terms of theology. We are Congregationalists in polity and modified Calvinists in theology, that is, most Baptists hold to a modified form of Calvinism. Moreover, migration in the world today is as high or higher than anytime in history. Thus the incidences of peoples of multiple faiths living in close proximity to each other is not diminishing. It is increasing. Pluralism Defined One of the terms often used imprecisely in church circles is the word "pluralism." What is pluralism theologically speaking? It is not a passive or even intentional toleration or formal acceptance of others—be they Asian, African, European, Latin American, Hindu, Buddhist, Muslim, or Jew—because we believe that basically all human beings, cultures, and religions are essentially the same. This appears to be how some understand pluralism. What is it, then? Philosophically, pluralism rests on the assumption that ultimate reality is many, multiple, that is, more than one or two. There is evidence that some of the early Greek philosophers were philosophical pluralists, such as Empedocles in the fifth century BCE.2 Socially and politically, pluralism implies that diverse ethnic, racial, social, political, and religious groups not only can live together in relative harmony as each group maintains its individual identity—ethnically, racially, culturally, religiously, and in some case linguistically. Pluralism also means that each group can legitimately endeavor to preserve and perpetuate its own beliefs, values, and customs, and, if necessary, defend its particular interests, while at the same time each contributing to the development and enrichment of the total society. Instead of the "melting pot" imagery, pluralism suggests the image of a "tossed salad." I am not sure which of these the founders of this country envisioned, but I believe they hoped for the first—a melting pot—and thus the motto, E Pluribus Unum. But legally they made provision for the second—a tossed salad kind of society. Admittedly, a genuinely pluralistic society has always eluded us, and it seems to me that the prevailing view is that pluralism is nothing more than a quixotic, romantic, unrealizable dream. Currently, we are witnesses to the difficulty—some would say the impossibility—of maintaining even an approximation of a socially pluralistic society. For social pluralism appears not only unpopular these days; it seems to be under siege all over the world. If you think this is hyperbole, listen to the talk shows in this nation, and count the number of hate groups with home pages on the World Wide Web. Think of the senseless killings and maimings that have taken place in the last two years in Texas, Illinois, California, Wyoming, and Colorado. Then reflect on what has happened and is happening in the former Yugoslavia as well as in several republics of the former Soviet Union. Note the difficulty or difficulties on both sides to implement the peace accords between the Palestinians and Israelis. Consider the violence that has occurred and is occurring in India and the threat of war between India and Pakistan. Think of the hundreds and thousands of East Timorese who were killed or driven from their homes and land last August and September. Underlying all these conflicts, all this violence, and all this needless suffering is a simmering and often erupting hatred of others who are different. Today, pluralism appears to be out and separatism appears to be in. Tragically, separatism—ethnic, racial, and cultural—is frequently justified as well as intensified by religion. What then is religious pluralism? One of the clearest definitions I have read is that of Mark Heim when he says, . . . pluralism in a true sense means that we live with each other and accept each other though we see clearly that we are not the same. America is a pluralistic nation, not because underneath cosmetic appearances we all think and feel and act the same, but because we do not. There are real differences in our families, our histories, and our convictions about ultimate matters. True pluralism does not mean coming to terms with my Buddhist neighbor by affirming that underneath it all we believe exactly the same thing. If that is so, we are not really distinct and plural. Pluralism means living with real distinctions, conflicting answers about what is most determinative for our lives.3 Religious pluralism remains an elusive objective even in this land. It is my belief, however, that Baptists have a unique contribution to make and therefore a unique responsibility for the future. We Live in an Increasingly Segmented and Fragmented Society Perhaps these are not significant, but I cannot ignore the growing number of indications of our ethnic, racial, cultural, and religious distinctions. If you visit Raleigh, and you have the opportunity to pass what is known as Capitol Square in downtown, you can see there a dramatic illustration of our social and religious fragmentation. Facing the state capitol on the east side are two church sanctuaries: First Baptist (predominantly black) and Christ Episcopal. To the back of the capitol are First Presbyterian (PCUSA) and another First Baptist (formerly SBC and now CBF), (predominantly white). Then on the perpendicular side street of Edenton are the Church of the Good Shepherd (also Episcopal) and the Edenton Street United Methodist Church. One block from the capitol grounds on the street running parallel to Edenton Street is Hillsborough Street on which is located Sacred Heart Cathedral (Roman Catholic). Thus within a radius of two blocks surrounding the North Carolina capitol building are seven churches representing two races, three branches of Christianity (Roman Catholic, Anglo Catholic, and Protestant), and six different Christian denominations. Religiously, we professing Christians are a segmented, segregated people. Driving from Raleigh to Durham a few weeks ago, I could hardly miss the widely advertised "Expo of Black Businesses." Recently, the Raleigh newspaper carried articles such as "Scarcity of Latinos on TV Triggers Boycott";4 the NAACP protested the absence of blacks in this year’s new television offerings. These tell the story without having to read a line of the articles themselves. Three years ago, Daniel Zwerdling interviewed Harvard University’s Gary Orfield about how schools in the U.S. are rapidly becoming segregated again.5 Last fall, NPR aired a story entitled "Selective Segregation" describing the ethnic and racial divisions evident in university and college fraternities and sororities, a ten-minute segment on NPR’s "Morning Edition." Recently, I became a member of the Hispanic Chamber of Commerce in Raleigh to represent the Interfaith Alliance in this distinctly Hispanic organization. Christian "Yellow Pages"; black business expositions; white, black, and Hispanic fraternities and sororities; ethnic chambers of commerce—what do these suggest? A melting pot, a tossed salad, or a balkanization of our country? Incidentally, which part of the U.S. do you think is more segregated? According to an analysis of the 1990 national census, the most segregated cities in the U.S. are in the Northeast, not in the South.6 I am not implying that any of one of these alone should be regarded as necessarily indicative or even ominous. But I am saying that the U.S. as a "melting pot" or even as a "tossed salad" is giving way to a society that is increasingly divided into self-contained and too often competing units of culture. To question these trends and advocate something different is to risk the ridicule and rejection of some very vocal and sometimes hostile groups. The phenomenon of fragmentation is complicated by what I sense to be a growing resentment and dislike of immigrants to this country. It is to be expected, of course, that some people will be angry about and will protest immigration into the U.S., despite the fact that all of us, with the arguable exception of Native Americans, are immigrants or the descendants of immigrants. Were it not for having the opportunity to be in many parts of this country over the past three decades, I might well mistake the manifestations of what I call "neo-nativism" i.e., the renewed opposition to immigration, as being a southern phenomenon and southern problem. It is, unfortunately, a national problem.7 All it takes, or so it appears, is for an ethnic group to move from being relatively invisible, remaining in the shadows or on the margins into the spotlight for these neo-nativists to begin to chillar or squeal. In July 1999, for example, our newspaper ran a story regarding the growing number of Burmese refugees coming to the Triangle (Raleigh, Durham, and Chapel Hill). This was followed the next day by an account of a new Hindu temple—the second in Raleigh—that is under construction in the Raleigh suburb of Cary. A week after the two stories appeared, the following letter to the editor was published. Before sharing the letter, I should note that the Raleigh News and Observer regularly reports on the mistreatment and exploitation of Latin Americans, residents and migrants, in North Carolina.8 Hence the reference to Latin Americans by the letter writer. On July 11 and 12 you published articles that most readers might conclude are a continuation of a pro-immigration, multiculturalist agenda. Past N&O articles appeared to empathize with illegal Mexicans. In both the Burmese piece ("Continuing conflict swells influx of Burmese refugees") and the piece on the Hindu temple ("South Indians to build a temple of their own in Cary") it was reported that more immigrants would follow. From another source I read that a thousand Hindu temples are either built or planned across this nation. I am certain I do not have to remind you of who did most of the settlement and development of, and dying for, this country. And in spite of the gate being wedged open in President Lyndon Johnson’s days (with 25 million illegal and legal immigrants since then), America is still mostly white, black and Christian. Of course, there are other major religions, and we have always been multiracial. But this is not about temples and certainly not about race. It’s about massive unchecked immigration. Therefore, it’s only fair that you tell the rest of us, i.e., natives and legal and assimilated immigrants, just how much dilution of and adverse change to traditional America, its heritage, culture, lifestyle, language base and environmental impacts due to crowding you wish to promote. The temple piece ended with a leader quoted as saying that they desired to preserve their traditions for the next generation. Imagine that. American needs to get smart and elect a president and a Congress with the courage to lean on the gate before balkanization sets in.9 I will refrain from commenting on the letter except to say the writer was correct in noting the sharp rise in non-European immigrants into the United States since 1965. For it was during that year that the national quota system, which had long favored immigrants from Europe and severely restricted Asians and Africans, was replaced by a more equitable system which permits many more peoples from Asia, Africa, and Latin America. Though we have estimates of how many non-Jewish and non-Christian peoples of faith are now in the United States, the fact is no one knows how many there are. No questions regarding religion are included when a national census is done every ten years. Thus, no one really knows how many Hindus, Buddhists, Muslims, Sikhs, Jains, or Taoists are here. Some of them publish statistical information about their numbers. Most do not. Moreover, the samplings and estimates vary widely.10 Although for several years a number of scholars and researchers, such as Professor Diana L. Eck of Harvard, have attempted to gather more reliable data, their statistics are at best indicative and may be far off the mark. What seems clear is that there are as many as six million Muslims in the U.S. today, over a million Hindus, and more than a quarter of a million Buddhists, together with smaller numbers of Sikhs, Jains, Baha’is,11 and others. If one is looking for "mission fields," they are all around us. These Demographic Changes Represent a Summons to Baptists and Other Christians Most Christians, including many Christian leaders, appear to be oblivious or uninterested in the dramatic migration to this country and the changing composition of our society. For some Christians, however, these swelling numbers of peoples of other faiths represent a serious threat. Christians, they say, will be enticed away from the one true faith. For other Christians, large numbers of non-Christians mean head-to-head competition or a growing pool of potential converts. We must win them to Christianity before they win us, or we must win them to Christian faith because that is what Christians are supposed to do, viz., evangelize. Finally, the changing religious composition of the U.S. is a summons, a new call to mission, and, I believe, a call to new forms of mission. For those who see Hinduism, Buddhism, and Islam as threats, opposition to immigration as well as restricting religious freedom are instinctive responses. For those who see non-Christian faiths as potential competitors or potential converts, mission is usually reduced to evangelism.12 But for those who see peoples of other faiths as indicators of a kairos moment, mission can take many forms, only one of which may be evangelism. For Baptists, because of our history, the summons is much more complex. We are summoned to reaffirm and be advocates of religious freedom for everyone in this nation, Christian and non-Christian. When, therefore, a city or town zoning or planning board denies a Muslim group a permit to open an Islamic center—as occurred in the mid-1980s in Starkville, Mississippi,13 and in the 1990s in Chapel Hill, North Carolina, Baptists should be among the first to protest this kind of religious discrimination. Moreover, if those being discriminated against file a suit against the city—as the Muslims did in Mississippi—Baptists should be the first to file an amicus curiae brief in their behalf. The reason is simple: governments that deny Muslims their rights can just as easily deny the rights of Jews or Christians. Admittedly, there will be occasions when it will be difficult for Christians to support or to advocate religious freedom for some groups and some people. But unless we have religious freedom for everyone in this land, no one is truly free—Christian, Jew, Hindu, Muslim, Buddhist, or whatever. And though it may "stick in our craw," the same is true for the followers of the so-called pagan religions, such as Wicca.14 Religious freedom in this country is not a concession. It is a right guaranteed by the Constitution.15 We are called to support and defend, if need be, this right for everyone. We are summoned to address openly and honestly the nettlesome, complex issue of religion in the public schools and religion in "the public square." Few issues today are as divisive as the matters of prayer in the schools, the posting of the Ten Commandments in publicly-owned buildings, and the provision of tuition vouchers or credits for children attending religious schools. It is almost impossible to have an open forum or a civil discussion of these issues. Three years ago, The Washington Post published a story about a rancorous debate in the South Carolina state Board of Education. Some were insisting that the Ten Commandments be exhibited in the schools, while other board members questioned the legality and the propriety of doing so. They pointed out that the Ten Commandments are inseparably connected to the Judeo-Christian tradition, and to post these commandments would be a violation of the Constitution and an affront to non-Christians and non-Jews. A member of the board, Dr. Henry Jordan, a surgeon, responded in rage: "Screw the Buddhists and kill the Muslims." Then to underscore his point he said, "And put that in the minutes." He concluded by declaring, "What I want to do is promote Christianity as the only true religion. This nation was founded to worship, honor, and glorify Jesus Christ, not Mohammed, not Buddha."16 Baptists—together with many others—have insisted that it is not the role of government to promote Christianity, or, for that matter, to promote any religion. Jordan, along with many other people in this land, sees it differently. Although congressional legislation favoring "prayer" in public schools and the display of the Ten Commandments has not mustered enough votes to pass Congress, allowing the use of school vouchers may well be approved by Congress and allowed by the Supreme Court in the near future. Underlying this legal quagmire is an issue that the Court until the summer of 2000 had adroitly sidestepped, namely, what forms of aid can local, state, and the federal governments provide without violating the principle of church and state separation? Until 1947, state courts as well as the Supreme Court consistently denied financial aid to religious schools. The case of Everson vs. the Board of Education was first filed and decided in New Jersey against the plaintiff. The decision was appealed and the ruling handed down in 1947. The Supreme Court agreed by a razor-thin margin of 5–4 that public funds could be used to transport parochial school students. Everson therefore marked the first breach in the wall of separation between church and state. The Court allowed that the New Jersey school board could use public funds to reimburse parents of parochial school students for their transportation to and from school.17 More than a half-century and dozens of cases and decisions later, we may have just witnessed the inclination of the Court. While advocates for school vouchers not only appeal to the precedent established in 1947, the federal courts have rendered a series of conflicting decisions. The Supreme Court has declined to hear some cases, none more puzzling than its refusal to consider the case involving the Milwaukee, Wisconsin, voucher program.18 Those who favor change point out that many church leaders appear to want things both ways. They are quite willing to benefit from laws that exempt churches from paying property taxes and laws that allow ordained clergy to claim a parsonage allowance.19 Also, churches, like other non-profit organizations, take advantage of significantly reduced postage rates. Are these not forms of government subsidy? critics ask. Why are they not a violation of the First Amendment? And are religious school children that are handicapped not provided the same special help they would receive in public schools, and does the government not already pay for nonsectarian textbooks for all children whether in public or parochial schools? Also, are subsidized school meals not available to needy children regardless of where they are enrolled?20 Why then are you strict interpreters of the First Amendment not protesting these forms of government aid? Opponents of change respond by pointing out that the Supreme Court has not overturned its own 1973 decision that ruled unconstitutional a New York tuition reimbursement grant program to parochial school students from low income families. It is difficult, opponents to change say, to see any substantive difference in the 1990s Milwaukee voucher program and the 1970s program in New York that the Court declared violated the establishment clause.21 It is impossible to predict what the Court will decide in regard to the complicated issue of school vouchers. Meanwhile, instituting voucher programs is being discussed and tested in a number of states. Wisconsin and Ohio already have such programs, though in the case of Cleveland, Ohio, U.S. District Judge Solomon Oliver Jr. suspended the program, but then allowed students who had been receiving the aid to continue receiving it the first semester of this school year or until the courts resolve the issue.22 Meanwhile, Arizona has sanctioned what are called school tuition organizations (STOs) and a state tax credit of up to $500 per year for those who give to support an STO. A STO is a legal entity to which parents can apply for aid to send their children to private and/or religious schools. Despite what Justice Black said, the wall of separation has not always been impregnable, and increasingly the lower courts are urging the Supreme Court to clarify what has become a maze of seemingly contradictory decisions. I am not a constitutional lawyer, and neither am I prepared to come down on one side or the other of these complicated cases. But I see several small clouds on the horizon that appear to signal an approaching storm which has the potential of destroying the so-called wall of separation between church and state, first in education, then in welfare and other areas as well. Likewise, such a storm could contribute to the further deterioration of the public school system. And finally, it could accelerate the growing racial, class, and religious divisions in this country. I wonder if the conservatives who lobby so fervently for government aid to their religious schools are prepared to see tax monies going to Hindu, Muslim, and Jewish religious schools—all of which should by law have the same privileges claimed by these conservative Christians. We are summoned likewise to join with all persons of good will against the purveyors of hate and discrimination, especially those who sow hate in the name of religion. You may expect me to refer at this point to the growing number of "Christian identity" groups that seem to be appearing everywhere, or to say something about people like Buford O. Furrow who on August 10, 1999, entered the North Valley Jewish Center in Whittier, a suburb of Los Angeles, began shooting, amazingly wounding only five people but not killing anyone. I would not minimize the harm these sick and deranged people have done and can do. What comes to my mind, however, is an experience and conversation I had at the Conference on Baptist Distinctives at the American Baptist Assembly, Green Lake, Wisconsin, August 17-23, 1996, with a well-known Baptist leader from the Bay Area of California. The theme of the week’s conference was "Preserving Baptist Distinctives," but this person was determined to shift the issue to homosexuality. When he failed to gain a following, he resorted to threats and intimidation. It was my first face-to-face contact with an American Baptist who was unbending and unwilling to engage in respectful dialogue. No less shocking was a copy of a newsletter I read recently. It is a monthly published by the Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission (nee, Christian Life Commission) of the SBC. The headline read, "Hate-Crimes Efforts Threaten Traditional Morality," and included "Ten Reasons to Oppose Hate Crimes Legislation," because, e.g., "It advances the radical, well publicized agenda of homosexuals to gain acceptance for and legal recognition of homosexuality as a normal lifestyle." In other words, Baptists are admonished to oppose federal legislation against "hate crimes," because to support such legislation is equivalent to promoting homosexuality. Baptists of all people should remember what it is like to be a despised and scorned minority. Furthermore, regardless of one’s position on homosexuality, gay people are human beings, and they are citizens who are often targets of violence because of their sexual orientation. No one would be advocating "hate crime" legislation were it not for the fact that some people are victims of crimes perpetrated by people who hate. Do we as Baptists, therefore, have any contribution to make in this divisive debate? Are we going to remain mute about the need for hate crime legislation simply because we fear that it will somehow benefit homosexuals? We are summoned, I believe, to continue to reflect theologically and experientially on the meaning of the uniqueness of Christ. To put it another way, as Baptists we should be slow to finalize our beliefs as if we have all the light and all the truth we need. In a word, we ought to be fearful of dogma, for dogma has a way of shutting down discussion and closing off new insights and perspectives. One of my former Ph.D. students now teaches in a Presbyterian seminary. He called me recently and told me that he is suffering from "presbyopia." I thought he was joking. But he went on to explain that presbyopia is a visual problem caused by a loss of elasticity of the lens which prevents or slows down the focusing of the eye. The worse the condition becomes, the more time it takes for the object of vision to come into focus. We all suffer to one degree or another from theological presbyopia. It takes time for difficult questions to come into focus. "Is Christ the Only Way?" is a question that is always relevant and never finally settled. From the reading I have done, it is a question to which Baptists have given a variety of answers, none of which I am ready to anoint or endorse as the last word on the subject. As a matter of fact, the wisdom of E. Stanley Jones, Methodist missionary to India, one whom I have admired since I was an adolescent, addresses this question. Avoiding the debate regarding the nature of Christ and the enigmatic doctrine of the Trinity, Jones spelled out the significance of Jesus by saying: We know now that God is like what we have seen in Jesus. God is Christlike. God is a good God and trustable. . . . Strange, a person lived among us, and when we think of God we must think of God in terms of this person, Jesus. [In fact], we may transfer every single moral quality in Jesus to God without loss or degradation to our thoughts of God. On the contrary, by thinking of God in terms of Jesus we heighten our view of God.23 If we insist that our view of truth is the only view, that our doctrine has exhausted and explained God’s revelation in Jesus Christ, we will close ourselves off to new light and we will continue to place in the path of many sincere people impediments to following Jesus. Opportunities in the Coming Decades The presence of so many people of different faiths in this country offers virtually everyone the kind of opportunity once enjoyed only by missionaries, government or international business people, and travelers to foreign lands. For broadening and enriching our lives and cultures. Exceptions exist, of course, but I can think of no experience or series of experiences that have increased my understanding, enhanced my sensitivity to others, and enriched my life more than the years my family and I have lived outside this country. We had to give up some things to be sure; primarily we had to sacrifice being geographically close to family and friends. But separation from them was ameliorated by our becoming members of a new family and by the tremendous enlargement of our circle of friends. A similar experience has been mine here in the United States since becoming involved in interfaith work. Our friendship with Imam Amad Chebli, with Rabbi James Diamond, with Buddhist leader Ami Trimé in Princeton was an educational as well as religious awakening. Then after moving to Raleigh, I have had the opportunity to know and work with people like Dr. Ghazala Sadiq, a Muslim woman and engineer; Imam Oliver Muhammad, chief Muslim chaplain for the NC Department of Corrections; Rabbis Lucy Dinner and Deborah Cohen, Martin and Judi Jacobs, a Jewish couple; Murali Bashyam, a Hindu attorney; and Dr. Padmini Srinvasan Hands, a Buddhist professor at North Carolina State University—these persons have added an invaluable and incalculable dimension to my life. For creating and nurturing interfaith coalitions. Several years ago I decided to dedicate much of my time and energy to interfaith work. Even before we moved from New Jersey to North Carolina, I learned of a fledgling interfaith organization in Raleigh. So after we moved I began to attend the meetings. After a couple of meetings, I saw that the organization was so divided that it was in danger of collapsing altogether. After several months the number of faithful participants had dwindled to five. We decided to reorganize. We discovered several things. First, we found that to have an effective interfaith group we had to be clear about our purpose.24 This meant (1) sharpening and refocusing our vision; (2) developing a concise and explicit missions statement; (3) specifying and defining our goals; (4) recruiting personally and prudently board members; (5) selecting officers who were willing to work and who could work together; and (6) planning events and engaging in projects that would challenge, inform, and involve grassroots people of faith in activities that were interfaith, but that would also be significant and relevant to their lives. In a word, it means having events and projects that moved us toward our stated goals. Second, we discovered also that interfaith work does not appeal to great numbers nor is it high on the agenda of many Christian pastors. This has been especially true of Baptist pastors in Raleigh. Fortunately, some pastors have ecumenism and interfaith activities as a part of their job descriptions, and others become involved because they see these as crucial aspects of their ministry. Third, we also found that not only are there impediments to coming and working together between Jews and Muslims, Protestants and Catholics, Christians and peoples of almost any other faith, but also that there is deep suspicion in the black community of well-meaning but naïve and insensitive whites. My main focus these last several months has been given to bridging the racial divide in our city. The progress we have made in the past two years has, nonetheless, been gratifying, and the payoffs have been multiple and in some respects incredible. It has been worth all the effort, for we have established a presence and an image, and now with regularity we receive calls for information and for help as well as invitations to be a part of interfaith endeavors. For demonstrating the workability of pluralism. As Mark Heim says, authentic pluralism is not erasing or ignoring our religious, theological, and cultural differences. It is rather living together, accepting each other, and working together despite the fact that we are different. Poverty and prejudice are not problems only for whites or blacks, Christians or Jews, Muslims or Hindus. These are human problems, and we are called to work with all people of good will to resolve or at least reduce the incidences of these conditions. For engaging in authentic and effective Christian witness. Most of us recognize that there are various ways to witness, some good and effective, some dubious or controversial, and some counter-productive. Recently, the International Mission Board of the largest Baptist convention in the country produced a number of small pamphlets. The first, ostensibly a call to pray for Jews, was entitled, "Days of Awe. Prayer for Jews." According to the writer, the eighteen-page pamphlet was designed to help Southern Baptists pray for and "share the gospel" with Jews. When some Jewish leaders in this country learned about this, they were annoyed and publicly protested what they deemed was an arrogant and disrespectful targeting of them and other Jewish people for evangelism. Their objections were, first, that the prayers and the evangelistic efforts were to be engaged in during the highest holy days of the year for Jewish people, the ten-day period that begins with the Jewish New Year, Rosh Hashanah, and ends with the Day of Atonement, Yom Kippur. In the second place, these Jewish spokespersons objected because the photographs were stereotypical and the text reinforced Christian pride and condescension toward the Jewish faith. They objected also because they interpreted statements such as, "Build authentic friendships with Jewish people. Love them as you would an unsaved relative"25 as code language for developing disingenuous and manipulative relationships with Jewish people or, even worse, as a prelude to discrimination and oppression. This kind of "evangelism" is unfortunately not uncommon in Christian relations with peoples of other faiths.26 The reaction by Hindus to the pamphlet calling on Southern Baptists to pray and work for the conversion of Hindus was no less negative. Since that time, the IMB has published pamphlets calling for prayer for Muslims and Buddhists. There are, I believe, better, less offensive, and more Christlike ways to witness, and some were specified three-quarters of a century ago by the well-known Hindu leader, Mohandas Gandhi (1869–1948). In his biography of Gandhi, E. Stanley Jones tells of his first meeting with Gandhi who much later came to be known as "Mahatma" (or "The Great-souled" one). I think this incident occurred sometime after Gandhi’s 1915 returned to India from South Africa, that is, between 1915 and 1920. Jones said, "I was giving addresses in St. Stephen’s College, Delhi, and Principal Rudra said rather casually: ‘Mr. Gandhi . . . is upstairs. Would you like to see him?’" Jones seized the opportunity. When he entered the room where Gandhi was staying, Jones found the thin, unpretentious, and ascetic-looking man "seated on a bed surrounded by papers. He greeted me with an engaging and contagious smile," says Jones. Presently, Jones, always a missionary, posed the principal reason for his wanting to meet the Indian leader. He had a question to ask—a crucial, astonishing, and daring if not presumptuous question. "How can we [Christians], Jones asked, "make Christianity naturalized in India, not a foreign thing, identified with a foreign government and a foreign people. . . ? What would you as one of the Hindu leaders of India tell me, a Christian, to do in order to make this possible?" Gandhi’s response was forthright and timeless. "First," he said, "I would suggest that all of you Christians—missionaries and all—must begin to live more like Jesus Christ. Second, practice your religion without adulterating it or toning it down. Third, emphasize love and make it your working force, for love is central in Christianity. Fourth, study the non-Christian religions more sympathetically to find the good that is within them, in order to have a more sympathetic approach to the people."27 I know of no better prescription to give to Christians today than this candid and probing advice from the Mahatma. ________ Alan Neely is Henry Winters Luce Professor Ecumenics and Mission Emeritus, Princeton Theological Seminary, Princeton, New Jersey.
Notes 1. See Julie J. Everitt, "Keeping the Faiths," The Baylor Line 62 (Summer 2000): 38-44. 2. Whereas for Thales ultimate reality was water; for Heraclitus, fire; and for Anaximenes it was air; Empedocles rejected all these notions and insisted that reality consisted of four elements: earth, water, air, and fire. 3. Is Christ the Only Way? Christian Faith in a Pluralistic World (Valley Forge, Penn.: Judson Press, 1985), 29. 4. News and Observer [Raleigh] (September 10, 1999): 2A. 5. Orfield was one of the authors of the Harvard study, "Deepening Segregation in American Public Schools," sponsored by Harvard. Aired on "Weekend All Things Considered," April 5, 1997. See www.npr/morningedition.org/cflcmn/cmnvs02fm.cmf. 6. "Cheryl Corley Reports on a Study Based on the 1990 Census." See www.npr/morningedition.org/cf/ cmn/cmnvs02fm.cmf. 7. Although the Associated Press reported in June of 1997 that most Americans were more tolerant of immigration then, than in years previously ("America’s tolerance of immigration rising, poll says." The News and Observer (June 16, 1997): 6A, the poll on which this optimistic declaration was based indicated that this was the view of 45 percent of those polled, while 42 percent said immigration was harming the nation, and 10 percent said the effects were mixed. 8. An example is David Cecelski, "Marta Galvez: We Can Outlast," News and Observer (September 12, 1999): 10D, about the abuse of Latinos by the chicken processing plants in N.C., and how Mart Galvez, a Guatemalan woman helped organize a union in the Case Farms plant in Morganton, N.C. The news story is an excerpt form the "Listening for a Change" segment of the Southern Oral History Program at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. 9. "Diluting Our America," a letter to the News and Observer (July 20, 1999): 10A. I suspect that the letter writer, John Parker, was even more disturbed when he opened the "Faith Section" of his paper on September 3, and saw the multicolored photographs and the story, "Temple Blessings," describing in more detail the size and cost—$2 to $3 million—of the new Hindu temple. Curiously, Parker’s reference to leaning "on the gate" is reminiscent of Thomas Bailey Aldrich’s 1895 poem, "Unguarded Gates," in The Poems of Thomas Bailey Aldrich 1 (Boston: Houghton, Mifflin, 1907): xx. 10. See, for example, The Williamsburg Charter Survey on Religion and Public (Washington, D.C.: The Williamsburg Charter Foundation, 1988); James D. Hunter, Culture Wars: The Struggle to Define America (New York: Basic Books, 1991); The Yearbook of American and Canadian Churches, 1998 (Nashville: Abingdon Press, 1998); "Surprises Surface in Religious Study," Chicago Sun Times (April 7, 1991), Microfiche: NEWSBANK 1991, Soc 40:32; "Free-Form Freedom of Religion," USA Today (November 18, 1993), 2D. The Princeton Religious Research Center (George Gallop’s organization) study, "Religion in America 1996," says nothing about the numbers of Hindus, Buddhists, Muslims, et al. Many have depended on the annually published Yearbook by the National Council of Churches for these data. But, according to Derek Lander, associate editor of the Yearbook of American and Canadian Churches (Nashville: Abingdon), "we based our statistics [regarding the number of adherents of non-Christian religions in the North America] from the Encyclopedia Britannica, we became less and less content with their figures." Telephone interview, September 7, 1999. All of the figures were "rounded off" which suggests estimates, not hard data. 11. Jainism is a sixth century BCE India faith which emerged from Hinduism and is best known for its emphasis on ahimsa or nonviolence to all living creatures. Jainism also emphasizes strict aceticism in order to gain control over the appetites of the body. "Jain" means conqueror (over the flesh). Sikhism is a derivation of, or reaction to, Hinduism that appeared in the northwest part of India, in Punjab, during the late-fifteenth and early-sixteenth century. The founder, Guru Nanak (1469–1538), sought to bring Muslims and Hindus together in a single brotherhood under the one true God. Sikhism therefore teaches monotheism and rejects all forms of idolatry and caste. Sikh means disciple. The Baha’i faith originated in Persia, now Iran, in 1863 among Shia Muslims. Followers believe in the unity of all humankind, that the world was created for all human beings, and that in essence all revealed religions are the same, and that the worship of God is best seen in serving others. 12. Even humanitarian efforts are regarded proto-evangelism, that is, as ways to open nonbelievers to the gospel. 13. See Islamic Center of Mississippi, Inc. v. City of Starkville, Mississippi, No. 87-4083, United States Court of Appeals, Fifth Circuit, March 23, 1988, in the 840 Federal Reporter, 2d Series, 293–303. 14. The followers of Wicca, proudly "pagans" who worship gods and goddesses and claim 50,000 according to the American Wiccans in Berkeley, California. They celebrate two festivals a year during the vernal and autumnal equinox, insist they do not worship the devil nor permit human or animal sacrifices. They were recognized as a legitimate faith three years ago by the Department of Defense and have covens on five military bases, but at Fort Hood in Central Texas, the Army had to increase security recently "to deter members of Christian groups from intimidating" Wiccan witches. Current News Summary by the editors at ReligionToday.com, May 21, 1999. 15. Roger Williams’s analogy of a group of Christians, Jews, and Muslims traveling on the same ship together comes to mind. Refusing to come to the prayers led by the ship’s captain or conducting prayers distinct from those read at such occasions does not threaten the welfare of the passengers or the crew. 16. "Official Rejects Non-Christians," Washington Post (May 17, 1997), and was cited in the Baptist Joint Committee’s Report from the Capital, June 3, 1997. 17. Mr. Arch Everson contended that such uses of public funds violated the First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution. The majority of the court, however, did not agree. Justice Hugo Black wrote the majority opinion: "The First Amendment has erected a wall of separation between church and state. The wall must be kept high and impregnable. We could not approve the slightest breach." But Justice Black saw no breach in the New Jersey law for, he reasoned, providing transportation for parochial school children does nothing to establish religion. It merely accords the children and their parents their rights. To decide against them would be equivalent to denying them equal rights on the basis of their religion, and this the Constitution prohibits. 18. See "Parochial School Vouchers," New York Times 9 (August 29, 1999): 14wk. 19. One of the more curious tax benefits accorded clergy in the U.S. is the "parsonage allowance." Not only can an ordained minister avoid paying income tax on what is spent for housing, but can "double-dip" by deducting from his or her income property taxes and insurance on that property. Also, the amount considered "housing allowance" could be added in if the amount is needed to qualify for paying maximum self-employment or Social Security taxes. 20. When the Court opens in October 2001, there will come before them a number of cases involving what is called Title VI programs. In summary, the issue is whether the program can legally provide instructional equipment, such as computers, to private/religious schools as well as to public schools. The first of these cases began to wind its way through the courts in 1985. But it was not until 1997 that a decision was rendered, and then it was in a U.S. District court, only to have the 5th Circuit Court reverse the District court’s decision. The case now is in the lap of the highest court in the land. 21. "Parochial School Vouchers," New York Times (August 29, 1999): 14wk. 22. The Cleveland, Ohio, plan grants up to $2,250 for children of parents with low incomes, and the amount is available for education in public or parochial schools. The Wisconsin plan is similar with a few more restrictions, such as, stating that children attending religious schools cannot be required to attend religious services or events, and that schools must attempt to have a religiously diverse student body. Upheld as legal in 1998 by the Wisconsin Supreme Court, the U.S. Supreme Court set aside a petition to review the case. 23. E. Stanley Jones, The Christ of Every Road (New York: Abingdon, 1930), 67. 24. A small number, two of our faithful, were committed to making the Interfaith Alliance the principal adversary of the Christian Coalition. When we decided to make our mission "actionary" rather than reactionary, we lost one of these. 25. "Days of Awe. Prayer for Jews," International Mission Board of the Southern Baptist Convention (August 1999), 5. 26. In a recent issue of a well-known Baptist missionary magazine, I was stunned to see a small article on page one, just inside the cover. The article was entitled, "Know your enemy." And who was the designated enemy? It was Hindus. "’The Gods of India’ is a video over-view of Hinduism, which holds 774 million people worldwide in spiritual darkness. For more information, e-mail (wcn@ex.org) or write World Christian News, P.O. Box 26479, Colorado Springs, Co 80936." The Commission (September 1999): 1. 27. Originally published as Mahatma Gandhi—An Interpretation (Nashville: Abingdon, 1948) and later as Gandhi: Portrayal of a Friend (Nashville: Abingdon Press, 1983), 51–52. Book Reviews in this Issue: The Words of Gardner Taylor. Quintessential Classics, 1980–Present. Edited by Edward C. Taylor. Valley Forge: Judson Press, 2000. Bibliographical references, 208 pages.
The Baptists in Australia. By Philip J. Hughes. South Carlton, Victoria, Australia: Bureau of Immigration, Multicultural and Population Research, 1996. 86 pages.
Revivals, Baptists and George Rawlyk: A Memorial Volume. Edited by Daniel C. Goodwin. Wolfville: Acadia University. Distributed by Gaspereau Press, 2000. 191 pages.
Baptists Against Racism. Edited by Denton Lotz. McLean, Va.: The Baptist World Alliance, 1991. 192 pages.
A Genealogy of Dissent: Southern Baptist Protest in the Twentieth Century. By David Stricklin. Lexington: University of Kentucky Press, 1999. xvii+229 pages.
Southern Baptists: A Historical, Ecclesiological, and Theological Heritage of a Confessional People. By Slayden A. Yarbrough. Nashville: Southern Baptist Historical Society and Fields Publishing, Inc., 2000. 132 pages.
Biographical Dictionary of Christian Missions. By Gerald H. Anderson, editor. Grand Rapids: William B. Eerdmans Publishing Company, 1999. 845 pages.
We Are Baptists: Studies for Younger Elementary Children. Valley Forge: Judson Press, 2000. 110 pages.
A Review of Paradigm Wars: The Southern Baptist International Mission Board Faces the Third Millennium. By Keith E. Eitel. Regnum Books International, 2000. Regnum Studies in Mission Series. 139 pages.
You Are a Great People: Maryland/Delaware Baptists, 1742–1998. By W. Loyd Allen. Franklin, Tenn.: Providence House Publishers, 2000. xii + 324 pages.
Pilgrim Pathways: Essays in Baptist History in Honour of B. R. White. Edited by William H. Brackney and Paul S. Fiddes with John H. Y. Briggs. Macon: Mercer University Press, 1999. 328 pages.
The Myth of Christian America: What You Need to Know About the Separation of Church and State. By Mark Weldon Whitten, Macon: Smyth and Helwys, 1999. 122 pages.
Inventing the "Great Awakening." By Frank Lambert. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1999. 300 pages.
Blessed Are the Peacemakers. By S. Jonathan Bass. Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 2001. 322 pages.
The Journal and Selected Letters of William Carey. Edited by Terry G. Carter. Macon: Smith and Helwys Publishing, Inc., 2000. xv + 304 pages. Additional articles in this issue on "Global Baptists": "Baptist World Alliance Relief Efforts in Post-Second-World-War Europe" by Richard V. Pierard "Patterns of Canadian Baptist Life in the Twentieth Century" by Robert S. Wilson "Central Canadian Baptists and the Role of Cultural Factors in the Fundamentalist-Modernist Schism of 1927" by Paul Wilson "Religious Pluralism in the United States and Other Lands: A Challenge for Baptists and Other Christians in the 21st Century" by Alan Neely "U. S. Baptists and Modernity: Great Dissenters, Lousy Conformists" by Edwin S. Gaustad "Union of Evangelical Christians-Baptists of Estonia, 1945-1989: Survival Techniques, Outreach Efforts, Search for Identity" by Toivo Pilli "Baptist Developments in the Nordic Countries During the Twentieth Century" by Peder A. Eidberg "Another Way of Being a Christian in France: A Century of Baptist Implantation" by Sebastien Fath "The Holy Spirit: The Key to the Baptismal Sacramentalism of H. Wheeler Robinson" by Anthony R. Cross "Baptist Theological Education in Africa, Particularly in South Africa" by Louise Kretzschmar "Japanese Baptists’ Compromise with Nationalism in 1941" by Eiko Kanamaru "Seeking a Turangawaewae: Constructing a Baptist Identity in New Zealand" by Martin Sutherland "The Fundamentalist Controversy Concerning the Baptist Theological College of Scotland" by Kenneth B. E. Roxburgh "Baptists in Latin America and Their Theological Contributions at the End of the Twentieth Century" by Pablo P. Moreno Reprinted from Baptist History and Heritage 36, nos. 2-3 (Winter/Spring 2001): 82–100
This issue can be ordered for $15.00 plus shipping and handling by calling 800-966-2278.
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