Mensch tracht, und Gott lacht

Tuesday, April 19, 2005

Still More Baptists and Higher Education Reporting

The Future of Baptist Higher Education Conference wrapped up at Baylor today with some interesting sessions. Most notably, Martin Marty (in case you don't know THE RELIGION SCHOLAR IN AMERICA) addressed the entire conference. Your intrepid reporter showed up at the session with four friends who are also Ph.D. students. For some reason, perhaps nobility of soul, Dr. Marty made a beeline for us and spoke to us corporately and individually for 5-10 minutes. He asked about our research interests and commented on each. Before walking away he whispered his email address as though to say, "Write me. I'll actually field your questions and give advice." Shocking stuff from a tremendously prolific scholar. I'm still composing my message in my head.

In any case, Marty attacked the standard account that claims America is secularizing in linear fashion. Nothing new there, but he was trying to blunt the alarm many of us feel about the trajectory of the American academy. He sees America as very religio-secular, in a good way, with more give and take about religion than ever before. In particular he points to the profusion of good scholarship relating religion to . . .well, everything.

We also had a concluding session by young Baptist scholars who convincingly criticized older lions for being stuck in the old Southern Baptist Convention war and completely absorbed in defending freedom and autonomy. Being Baptist better mean more than freedom and dissent, otherwise we can just don our baseball caps and be Michael Moore-ons. Not a pretty future, not for me, anyway. Sadly, that's just what we heard from some conference speakers. Kirby Godsey, president of Mercer University, gave an account of reality that sounded exactly like Moore in Bowling for Columbine. Happily, the young scholars in the final session offered hope for something other than freedom (surely the value that needs less defending than any other in North America) as a basis for Baptist life and scholarship.

5 comments:

Hunter Baker said...

The similarity of your response to that of some of the older Baptists is the supreme verification of the bankruptcy of their position. If any value can be said to have won the day in North America, it is freedom/autonomy. It takes no courage to wear blue jeans when everyone has four pair. If Baptists want to be counter-cultural now, they have to emphasize a different portion of the denominational DNA. I'd recommend love of Scripture or insistence on a regenerate life and church membership.

Hunter Baker said...

What you're missing is that Baptists rebelled against the connection of the church with state power. They emphasized a regenerate church membership as opposed to one where the state and church see that all are baptized at birth as a sign of community membership. Baptists have always held to an orthdox view of scripture and have always been able to easily disassociate from those who are in heresy. The battle of the last couple of decades was over the question of whether determinations of orthodoxy would extend to cooperative institutions beyond the local church.

Anonymous said...

tlaloc seems to view social institutions in general in anarchist, anti-organizational terms ("give any organization long enough and it will become corrupted and embody the opposite of what it originally stood for"). Organization itself, in other words, is immoral since it only leads to corruption. It follows that tlaloc's call for more individualism and freedom in the Baptist Church in particular could never be satisfactorially realized until it makes the existence of the denomination in any meaningful and coherent sense impossible.

Anonymous said...

"1) will the baptist church ever suit me? No. But that's not the point."

Sure it is. Given your admitted anarchist, individualist, anti-organizational beliefs, no church or organization of any kind will ever suit you.

"2) Does the current Baptist church suit Baptists and the ideals baptism was centered on? No."

Of course it does. Many millions of Baptist members proves that it suits them.

"3) why? because the organization was coopted and corrupted and now embodies the opposite of the religious freedom it originally stood for."

Hunter Baker's point, however, is that no Baptist ever held to the radical anarchist and individualist definition of religious freedom you espouse.

Hunter Baker said...

Tlaloc, there was no loophole. The SBC was set up in a democratic manner where presidents had the right to appoint committee members who appointed trustees. The conservative group won presidential elections enough times consecutively to gain control of institutions. Nothing hidden about that. It was a known strategy other Baptists tried to stop and failed. It did not compromise the core beliefs of autonomous local churches. Some autonomous local churches have left, which is their right. Many more have stayed, which is their right.