America’s Southern Baptists: What They Believe

Southern Baptists have no formally adopted articles of faith, and are in no sense officially bound by creedal affirmations. Inevitably, then, diversity is a trademark of Baptist life. At the same time, Southern Baptists do have distinctive, unifying doctrinal beliefs. But since they are not creedalists, perhaps the best way to explain what they believe is to look at the matter historically.

The Origin Of Baptist Beliefs

In general, Baptists do not look to anyone other than Jesus Christ as the founder of the church. Most Baptists believe the apostolic churches were “Baptist” churches since, as Baptists interpret history, the apostolic churches baptized believers by immersion to symbolize the death, burial, and resurrection motif; they partook of a memorial Lord’s Supper with historic and eschatological implications; they sought a congregational consensus in matters of local church governance; they had no formal hierarchy (though they did recognize the legitimate authority of spiritual leaders); and they exhibited a spirit of voluntary cooperation in generous missionary and ministry support.

Baptists do not believe that the apostolic churches were perfect, nor do they deny that doctrinal development has occurred through the centuries. But they do believe that Jerusalem, Antioch, Ephesus, Rome, and the other early churches were all at first free congregations. As churches gave up their freedom through institutionalization, various groups sought to keep the authentic faith alive. Novatianists (third century), Donatists (fourth century), Paulicians (eighth century), and the Cathari (various groups stressing purity in the Christian life) were not Baptists in the modern sense, but they sought for pure congregations of born-again believers, and they opposed the ceremonial dominance of the church in Rome.

The simple preaching of Peter Waldo (the twelfth-century founder of the Waldenses), and his opposition to the Mass and to the worship of saints, restored for many the emphasis on the spiritual life, repentance from sin, and true conversion as the basis for church life. The fourteenth-century reformer John Wycliffe taught that only the “born again” believer is a true church member, and favored the idea of placing a Bible in the hand and in the language of the common man.

Modern Baptists also feel a close kinship to the doctrinal developments of the Reformers. Luther’s cry for justification by faith and Calvin’s emphasis on God’s sovereignty have been major emphases in Baptist life. Baptists, however, do not think the magisterial reform ever went far enough. Thus they look to Anabaptists such as Felix Manz, who refused to baptize infants, and Balthasar Hübmaier, who held out for the right of free men to respond to God directly without the intervention of priest, pope, or institutional church.

Baptists In America

In 1639, Roger Williams of Rhode Island founded the first Baptist church in America. He is remembered primarily for his contribution to the principle of religious liberty. What is not as often remembered is that his defense of liberty arose strictly from Calvinistic theology (only God is sovereign, not the state).

The Great Awakening of 1734 had a tremendous influence on Baptists, and for the first time they really began growing in numbers. In 1742, Baptists in Pennsylvania adopted the Philadelphia Confession. This Calvinistic confession was also adopted by the church at Charleston, South Carolina, and from there the influence of the confession spread through Baptist life.

In 1833, the New Hampshire Baptists condensed the Philadelphia Confession, modifying it slightly. A moderately Calvinistic evangelical confession, it was soon widely accepted both in the North and South.

Baptists In Dixie

A debate over the propriety of slave holding led, in 1845, to the formation of what is now known as the Southern Baptist Convention. J. R. Graves of Tennessee had a tremendous influence on the churches of the South, teaching them dispensational premillennialism and emphasizing the autonomy of the local church. But the major writing theologian of the period was John L. Dagg, a practical theologian and an evangelistic Calvinist.

Dagg’s “Landmark” (his term for the key elements of New Testament Christianity) emphasis led many Baptists to believe they were the only authentic New Testament body that could trace their beliefs historically all the way back to Christ. J. M. Carroll’s Trail of Blood was widely accepted as an authentic successionist theory of the church in history. (Only within the immediate generation has this view lost its influence.)

An important theologian in the early twentieth century was E. Y. Mullins, of Mississippi, who served as president of Louisville Seminary. He was influenced by prototypical liberal Friedrich Schleiermacher’s emphasis on religious experience, though he was never satisfied with Schleiermacher’s liberal ecumenical perspective. Mullins emphasized soul competency (the individual’s ability to follow God’s way without hierarchical intervention) and religious freedom. He saw “experience” not as a negative subjective factor but as a revitalizing element, necessary for true conversion and thus a necessary presupposition of Baptist theology. The frontier revival spirit of many Baptist people led them to adopt the soul competency emphasis of Mullins. Emphasis on an emotional conversion soon came to dominate, and today many Baptists are calling for a solid discipleship ministry to accompany the invitation-conversion model.

Due to Mullins’s leadership, the convention formally adopted a version of the New Hampshire Baptist Confession, not as a creed for individual churches, but as guidelines for convention agencies and institutions. The confession unified Southern Baptists and prevented the separation and division experienced by Northern Baptists in those days.

The Baptist Faith And Message

Until the 1950s, Southern Baptists were not significantly influenced by modern biblical criticism, but a conservative form of higher criticism entered the seminary classrooms during that decade. The impact was felt when the denomination’s publishing house, Broadman Press, released Ralph H. Elliott’s The Message of Genesis. Elliott implied the nonhistoricity of Adam and Eve and basically adopted a higher critical approach to the text. Convention debate was so intense that the book was withdrawn from circulation, and a special committee was formed to re-evaluate the convention’s statement of faith.

The SBC (meeting in Kansas City) responded positively to Herschel Hobbs of Oklahoma and his committee by adopting the 1963 Baptist Faith and Message Statement. (The statement was not considered a creed, but presented as “information” for churches and “guidelines” for convention agencies and institutions.) This document, a slightly revised version of the 1925 confession, remains unmodified as the convention’s current doctrinal statement, and is crucial for understanding what Southern Baptists believe (see sidebar below, “What Southern Baptists Tell on the Mountain”).

Baptists Today

Contemporary Baptist laymen are devout, mission-minded, Bible believers. But they are not necessarily well informed about the details of their belief. Only a small percentage, for instance, have ever read the entire 1963 confession. And most oppose Calvinistic doctrine (they think it is antievangelistic) without even being aware of the strength of that tradition in Baptist history.

A church training program that emphasized doctrine and daily Bible reading was strong in the fifties, but almost completely disappeared in the seventies. Many Baptist youth have had virtually no training in church history, doctrine, or biblical hermeneutics. The great struggle in the SBC today is related to this loss of denominational identity.

What Southern Baptists Tell On The Mountain

The Baptist Faith and Message Statement, adopted in 1963, is the clearest and most comprehensive declaration of what contemporary Southern Baptists believe, and so worth considering at length.

The last part of the statement’s preamble reads: “Baptists emphasize the soul’s competency before God, freedom in religion, and the priesthood of the believer. However, this emphasis should not be interpreted to mean that there is an absence of certain definite doctrines that Baptists believe, cherish, and with which they have been and are now closely identified.”

Article 1 treats the Scriptures: “The Holy Bible was written by men divinely inspired and is the record of God’s revelation of Himself to man. It is a perfect treasure of divine instruction. It has God for its author, salvation for its end, and truth, without any mixture of error, for its matter. It reveals the principles by which God judges us; and therefore is, and will remain to the end of the world, the true center of Christian union, and the supreme standard by which all human conduct, creeds, and religious opinions should be tried. The criterion by which the Bible is to be interpreted is Jesus Christ.”

Article 3 says “Man was created by a special act of God.… Through the temptation of Satan man transgressed the command of God, and fell from his original innocence; whereby his posterity inherit a nature and an environment inclined toward sin, and as soon as they are capable of moral action become transgressors and are under condemnation. Only the grace of God can bring man into His holy fellowship.…”

Article 4 defines regeneration as “… a change of heart wrought by the Holy Spirit through conviction of sin, to which the sinner responds in repentance toward God and faith in the Lord Jesus Christ.”

Article 5 affirms election as the gracious purpose of God. Election is “… consistent with the free agency of man, and [it] comprehends all the means in connection with the end.… All true believers, endure to the end. Those whom God has accepted in Christ, and sanctified by His Spirit, will never fall away from the state of grace, but shall persevere to the end.”

The church, in Article 6, is defined as “… a local body of baptized believers … associated by covenant[,] … observing the two ordinances of Christ.… The church is an autonomous body, operating through democratic processes under the Lordship of Jesus Christ.… Its Scriptural officers are pastors and deacons.”

The full consummation of the kingdom awaits the return of Jesus Christ. But historically, Southern Baptists have not made eschatology a test of fellowship. Article 10 says only that “God in His own time and in His own way will bring the world to its appropriate end.” (It does affirm the personal, visible return of Christ, a judgment, and a literal heaven and hell.)

Article 12 affirms Christian education, but says: “The freedom of a teacher in a Christian school, college, or seminary is limited by the preeminence of Jesus Christ, by the authoritative nature of the Scriptures, and by the distinct purpose for which the school exists.”

One other article, 17, is of note because of its affirmation of religious liberty: “God alone is Lord of the conscience, and He has left it free from the doctrines of men which are contrary to His word or not contained in it. Church and state should be separate.… A free church in a free state is the Christian ideal.…”

By L. Russ Bush.

Conservatives in the convention have sought a doctrinal basis for unity, and have encountered opposition even to a call for a common affirmation of biblical inerrancy. So it seems the influence of modern biblical criticism has been strongly felt.

The convention “moderates” are much more diverse than the “new conservatives.” A few are quite liberal, but most are conservative in personal convictions. But for some, financial support of the denomination’s unified budget (the Cooperative Program) has become the essence of denominational unity. Others have seemingly identified the priesthood of the believer as the psychological equivalent of the First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution. Their cries for “doctrinal freedom” clash with traditionalist cries for legitimate centers of authority, such as the pastoral office, or Scripture itself. Authority (its nature, source, and application) is the most critical issue facing Baptists today.

Religion departments in some Baptist colleges have at times ignored evangelical scholarship, preferring to teach traditional neo-orthodox and/or higher critical theories about the Bible. This antievangelical, procritical mindset (though advocated by only a few) is a serious threat to denominational unity.

A handful of contemporary issues particularly concern Southern Baptists. Abortion divides them as it does Americans generally, though most Baptists probably oppose “abortion on demand.” The majority of Baptists also oppose the charismatic movement; they deny the second-blessing doctrine, and find tongues to be a divisive activity—not a true work of the Holy Spirit. Universalism is also opposed by most Baptists, who see it as heretical.

There has been some controversy over the role of women in the church, though the media have perhaps blown this out of proportion. Baptists do not officially require ordination for any form of ministry (including preaching), and local churches call their own pastors without any direction from denominational leadership. Women often teach men in Sunday school classes; and the Woman’s Missionary Union is one of the most active organizations in SBC church life. Southern Baptists generally have not approved of women as pastors, but a few urban churches have moved to use women as deacons.

Baptists In General

In general, Baptists historically have been a free, evangelistic people, holding to divine sovereignty, trinitarianism, the deity of Christ, election resulting in regeneration, the necessity of visible repentance and faith, salvation that begins and perseveres by grace alone, believer’s baptism by immersion, a symbolic Lord’s Supper, a gathered church, and a congregational polity. Baptism is not thought of as an essential for salvation nor even a means to it. Likewise, the Lord’s Supper is a strictly memorial communion celebrated by the gathered body of true believers.

Under Christ each church stands alone, but because all serve the same Christ, they join in voluntary associations to enhance the work of missions.

Just As They Are

Quentin Kinnison

Student.

Phoenix, Arizona

Generations of Southern Baptists: Two

Why I’ve stayed a Southern Baptist:

I’m sure one of the main reasons is that it is how I grew up. But I’ve studied other doctrines, and I believe Southern Baptists are the most correct.

On the Southern Baptist image:

Going to college, people hear you’re Southern Baptist and they assume you’re going to slam Jesus down on them with a big, heavy, family Bible. They see us as being much more strict and rigid than we really are.

There are things we’re strict about, like the inerrancy of the Bible, but there are things—dare I say it—like dancing, that we’re not as strict on anymore. At one time that was a main issue, but for the younger generation it’s not.

What I did as a teen that the church said I shouldn’t do:

Used profanity.

Personal doctrinal struggle:

In some churches, unless you are Southern Baptist baptized, you have to be rebaptized before you can join the church. I think that misses the meaning of what baptism is all about.

If God will bring Southern Baptists back together emotionally, psychologically, and doctrinally, they can still heal their political divisions. Southern Baptists may be evangelical Christianity’s greatest potential resource for world evangelization. Their goal is to reach every person in the world with the good news of Jesus Christ. When this gospel is sufficiently preached, then, they believe, shall the end come.

L. Russ Bush is associate professor of philosophy of religion at Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary, Fort Worth, Texas.

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