Reflections on the removal of Canberra Baptist Church and Hamilton Baptist Church from the Baptist Association of NSW and ACT.
Over the weekend the Baptist Assembly of NSW and the ACT voted to remove two long standing Baptist communities: Canberra Baptist Church and Hamilton Baptist Church. There will be more to come.
After all, there are other churches in the association who also hold a broader view on sexuality and marriage. More than ever before followers of Jesus are revisiting scripture around these important issues. I am one of many no longer willing to defend such traditional interpretations of scripture. Too many lives damaged. Too many barriers unnecessarily erected to hearing the invitation to follow Jesus.
Most significantly, however, removals like this have never happened – at least in our association.
Baptists inherit a rich heritage. In our case a more than century-long conversation that has held us together. It is bigger than any of us – or, at least, it was. I am deeply grateful for this tradition. This heritage prides itself on defending individual freedom of conscience before God and the independence of our local churches to determine how they practice their faith.
Baptists have always made statements of faith – indeed, at times, it has looked like something of an obsession! What we have never done, however, is use them to cut our never-ending conversation short or to make rigorous theological debate unsafe. At our best we fiercely protect the conversation around our always-unfolding knowledge of scripture, one another, the universe, and the Spirit of God.
These values effectively defend minority and marginalised voices. We are a community of communities risking the discomfort of the majority. Freedom of conscience, obviously, insists your voice is valuable. It also, however, insists that the voice of others is valuable. It calls for the courage to speak and the courage to listen. Any resulting inconvenience is a small price to pay for the right to follow our conscience before God and remain part of the Baptist family.
Over the last 6 years, however, our association has articulated the belief of the majority, put in place mechanisms to continually remove anyone who disagrees, and now, over this weekend, enacted them. This is unquestionably a narrowing of the theological conversation for future generations. On the topic of sexuality, it is effectively ending it altogether.
Baptists who came before us refused to do this. Why? Because they knew that every generation needed genuine freedom to explore scripture in light of the questions of their time. There is no other way for those following after us to find authentic faith.
Of course, the vote this weekend is not a threat to the faith of future generations. They will find communities where they are encouraged to explore scripture and the questions of their time without the threat of no longer belonging. They will find faith and voice with or without us.
Yet this is a sad day. Our assemblies are never more than custodians of Baptist freedom. This weekend’s assembly acted as if it had arrived at a place where we no longer need marginal voices. As if our gathering has nothing more to discover from God, the world, and scripture on one of the most divisive issues of our time!
Freedom of conscience is especially vital – and fragile – around ‘hot’ topics. In our generation, and at this assembly, these were the nature of marriage and our response to the reality that the Spirit of God resides in and among us, at least in part, through sisters and brothers of diverse orientations.
So our council conducted interviews and came to conclusions as to where Hamilton Baptist and Canberra Baptist stand on these issues. There was little debate as they openly embraced their Baptist freedoms and articulated their hard-won positions. Courageous. Faithful. Exemplary. After all this, the assembly still had the capacity to vote against these motions and keep these churches in the Baptist conversation.
They did not.
When we remove marginal voices we run the significant risk of silencing God’s prophets. This was a risk the Pharisee, Gamaliel, was not willing to take when he counselled the assembly of his time ‘…if this plan…is of man, it will fail…if it is of God, you will not be able to overthrow…You might even be found opposing God!” (Acts 5:38-39).
A simple argument that there is no need to fear – even when we do not understand. God really is guiding.
Prophets at least a big as Gamaliel have been in our association before. I think of the debates when the majority found theological reason to reject the divorced, or women with the gift of leadership, and, much earlier, when most Baptists disapproved of dancing!
Of course, you may dismiss my dancing argument as absurd. Perhaps. It may also be instructive. Early Baptists defended this position with scripture and did what they could to convince others of the worthiness of their convictions and practices. They put in place guidelines and expectations. A hundred years on and this looks positively archaic.
So I am glad that they refused to enact motions to silence and freeze in time the Baptist conversation. Our association would, undoubtedly, not exist today if they did!
This humility makes them look, to me at least, like big ‘B’ Baptists!
Hamilton Baptist and Canberra Baptist are, and have been, far too valuable to our life together for their voice to be cut off like this. The truth is we may yet need them. When the heat dies out of this conversation – as history tells us it most certainly will – we may find ourselves searching for their voices, and their help, as we seek to read scripture anew and learn to serve people of diverse orientations.
If I know the heart of Hamilton and Canberra Baptist churches, they will be far too gracious to refuse. Given the hurt caused, theirs will be a generous grace indeed!
At stake this weekend was the way majority power will be employed among us. Will we, as followers of Jesus, use the blunt instrument of might is right or relate to one another with more finesse, humility, and grace? Jesus once said, “The kings of the Gentiles exercise lordship…But not so with you.” (Luke 22:24).
We are simply called to do better.
If the biblical stories of God’s prophets tell us anything, they remind us that the heart of God is not always found with the numbers. Perhaps it is rarely found there. Our assembly had the power to vote these fear-filled motions down and put these decisions – decisions that clearly pertain to the practice of our faith – where they truly belong: in the hands of our local, autonomous, churches.
They could have defended the Hamilton and Canberra churches freedom and autonomy – rather than scapegoating them – an alarmingly common practice that simply never works!
The conversation across our association over the past few years has deepened and confirmed my desire to be in a truly Baptist context – one where the freedom of conscience and the independence of the local church is respected and defended. A place where we are as big, broad, exciting, and dangerous as the Kingdom Jesus proclaimed. I am deeply concerned the legacy this weekend’s assembly leaves is, well, less.
Yet, who knows, the time may yet come when that ongoing, rigorous, and always unfolding Baptist conversation – the one that has served us so well over the past century – is re-started.
Today this seems radically ambitious.