3 reasons Baptists should hold to religious liberty for all
By / Jun 30

In recent days, a growing number of Christians are pushing back against the Baptist principle of religious liberty of all people. Some of these believers are themselves Baptists with honest concerns. There are two common, sometimes overlapping reasons for this discomfort with religious freedom. 

Some argue that to defend the freedom of those who embrace false religions is to inadvertently endorse those religions. Baptists should not be allied, for example, with Muslims who wish to build a mosque in a new community and spread their false beliefs. Others suggest that America is, or ought to be, a Christian nation. Therefore, to embrace full religious liberty and its close cousin, the separation of church and state, is tantamount to endorsing secularism. 

Despite these concerns, religious liberty is not a new idea that is the result of progressive theological drift, the Trojan horse of religious pluralism, or the leavening effect of secularism. Defending religious freedom is part of the “DNA” of what it means to be a Baptist.

Religious liberty is a historical principle

Religious liberty is sometimes discussed solely as a product of the Enlightenment. Sometimes, state churches gradually embraced religious toleration. Other times, state churches were dissolved, and no form of Christianity was privileged. The modern secular state, with its commitment to religious freedom, represents a more advanced arrangement than backward cultures that continue to closely entangle religion and politics. 

The heroes of this tendentious (and ethnocentric) narrative are philosophers like John Locke and Voltaire, politicians such as Thomas Jefferson and James Madison, and documents such as the Act of Toleration (1689) and the First Amendment to U.S. Constitution (1791). The villains include the Catholic Church at all times and in all places, politically engaged evangelicals in the U.S., and many Jews, Muslims, and Hindus in non-western nations.

For Baptists, religious liberty is a historical principle that predates the Enlightenment. Our theological cousins, the Continental Anabaptists, and our ecclesial forefathers, the English Separatists, both championed this principle and influenced early Baptists. The oldest Baptist confessions affirm religious freedom, though they often focus more on freedom for Christians who did not belong to state churches. Later confessions written in contexts without a state church, including the Baptist Faith and Message (2000), applied the principle more broadly.

Even from our earliest days, Baptist thinkers applied the principle of religious liberty to members of other religions and no religion. Non-Christians should be free to believe whatever they wish about ultimate matters without their consciences being coerced by any human authority. There is a veritable Baptist “cloud of witnesses” that has written in defense of religious liberty for all from the 17th century to the present. Helwys. Murton. Williams. Backus. Leland. Truett. Mullins. Dawson. Land. These men and others have defended religious freedom for all, sometimes at great personal cost to themselves.

Religious liberty is a theological principle

Baptists have always tied religious liberty to a closely related idea: liberty of conscience. For example, the Second London Confession famously says,

God alone is Lord of the conscience, and hath left it free from the doctrines and commandments of men which are in any thing contrary to his word, or not contained in it. So that to believe such doctrines, or obey such commands out of conscience, is to betray true liberty of conscience; and the requiring of an implicit faith, an absolute and blind obedience, is to destroy liberty of conscience and reason also.

The Baptist Faith and Message (2000) echoes this language when it claims, “God alone is Lord of the conscience, and He has left it free from the doctrines and commandments of men which are contrary to His Word or not contained in it.”

Baptists sometimes call liberty of conscience soul liberty, soul freedom, or soul competency. Whatever term is used, the idea is the same. Every individual is accountable to the Lord alone for his or her convictions about ultimate matters. Each of us will give an account before God (Rom. 14:10-12; 2 Cor. 5:10) for our beliefs and actions. Religion is not a matter of proxy. No other individual can answer on our behalf.

Baptists talk a lot about following Jesus as our Lord and Savior. We emphasize having a personal relationship with Christ by grace through faith. We affirm that Jesus is not only the King of all, but he is also our King when we bow the knee to him in repentance and faith. For Baptists, religious liberty is a theological principle rooted in the Kingship of Jesus.

What a man believes about Jesus is the most important thing about him. One’s faith is not intended to be private, but it is always personal. Religious liberty for all protects the freedom for believers to follow King Jesus, without our consciences being coerced by a lesser authority. Religious liberty also protects the freedom of non-Christians to not have their consciences coerced in religious matters.

Religious liberty is a missional principle

The Great Commission is God’s command that his followers make disciples from among the nations. It is a thread that runs from Genesis to Revelation, though we often identify it with Matthew 28:18-20.

Jesus came near and said to them, “All authority has been given to me in heaven and on earth. Go, therefore, and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe everything I have commanded you. And remember, I am with you always, to the end of the age.”

For Baptists, religious liberty is a missional principle rooted in God’s character and his command to make disciples from among all peoples. When we defend the soul freedom of unbelievers to hold incorrect or irreligious views, we are not affirming their false beliefs. Rather, we are defending their right to be wrong, their freedom to be corrected through the preaching of the gospel, and our right and responsibility to proclaim the gospel to them.

To be clear, Baptists should be committed to the Great Commission even if religious liberty was outlawed tomorrow. In fact, Baptists in many other parts of the world are deeply committed to evangelism, discipleship, and church planting, despite living under oppressive regimes that do not protect religious freedom. But even in those contexts, they advocate for religious freedom for all, so that they might be unhindered in their worship and witness, and so that unbelievers might be free to hear and respond to the good news of Jesus Christ.

Conclusion

Now is not the time for Baptists to abandon our commitment to religious liberty for all. Rather, it is a time to patiently correct misunderstandings, answer honest questions, and make a renewed case for soul freedom. Religious liberty is a historic Baptist principle that is rooted in our theological commitments and helps animate our obedience to the Great Commission. May we continue to stand with those who have gone before us in defending religious liberty for the glory of God, the advance of the gospel, and the sake of human flourishing.

Why Roger Williams contended for our first freedom
By / Aug 12

Though Baptists love to claim him, Roger Williams was a Baptist for about 12 minutes. 

Hyperbole aside, the founder of Rhode Island and the ardent advocate for religious freedom did in fact live out his days as a “seeker” — he did not believe any church, this side of Christ’s return, was pure. He rejected, therefore, the formation of any church and did not attend church himself in his latter years. His views on both theological and political matters made him a constant target of civil authorities in the 1600s — a time where church and state, though distinct threads, were nevertheless intertwined in a mutual pursuit to fashion a godly community. 

Why, then, should Roger Williams hold such a special place in the hearts and minds of modern Baptists? It comes down to his pre-Enlightenment support of total religious freedom. By total, I mean a comprehensive freedom that encompassed not only orthodox Protestants, but Catholics, Muslims, and even atheists. He wrote in his 1652 work The Bloody Tenet Yet More Bloody that “Jews, Turks, Antichristians, and Pagans,” were “peaceable and just . . . notwithstanding their spiritual whoredoms.” In the mid-17th century, Williams’ views scandalized his readers. Parliament ordered his books burned, and theological leaders in England like Thomas Edwards, took direct aim at Williams’ views, calling them blasphemous and pernicious. Indeed, Williams’ most famous interlocular, John Cotton, wrote a letter from the Massachusetts Bay Colony to a minister back in England, decrying Williams as an obstinate rabble rouser — a “Sheba of Bickry,” who “blew a Trumpet” of sedition and separation.

Religious liberty as a means for evangelism

Williams blew the trumpet of soul liberty. He crafted a theological and natural law defense of religious freedom with which Baptists can and should resonate. Indeed, Williams, though not a Baptist himself, stood in a stream of Baptists who defended the rights of conscience. Williams’ ideas imbibed those persecuted Baptists who came before him — figures like Thomas Helwys and John Murton, whose works on religious freedom in the early 1600s proved formative on Williams in the 1640s and 50s. Williams, furthermore, was a source for Baptists who came after him. Most notably, Isaac Backus and John Leeland frequently mentioned Williams as an important voice in their own ideological commitment to religious liberty — Backus himself cited Williams at length in his campaign to disestablish the state church in Massachusetts.   

The cornerstone of Williams’ support for religious freedom, however, came down to an issue of salvation. That is to say, Williams framed the question of whether or not there should be religious freedom around how one came to saving faith. Williams believed that true conversion necessitated the volitional choice to confess one’s sins, repent, and believe in the gospel. Only adults, or at least those who could provide evidence of their regeneration, were candidates for baptism — another controversial view during Williams’ day. Given these soteriological convictions, Williams found it utterly horrific that any civil society would attempt to enact an enforced religious orthodoxy. God, by Williams’ contention, never endowed any magistrate or government an authority over the conscience. Throughout his works, Williams pointed to the natural product of established religion. He wrote during the Thirty Years War, a religious conflict that claimed the lives of nearly 8,000,000 people. He also wrote during the English Civil War, another religious war that killed a higher percentage of the English population than World War I and World War II.

Citing these conflicts, Williams argued that coerced religion, at best, created a church of hypocrites. At worst, it ended in violent revolution. 

Instead, Williams argued that religious freedom was not only biblical, but part of God’s creational design. Men and women were to respond to the gospel summons of their own accord through the process of sharing the gospel. People did not truly repent of their sins when coerced by the civil sword of the magistrate — that, according to Williams, stifled the work of the Spirit. Instead, persuasion, reasoning with the unconverted, and an open dialogue without the fear of retribution were not only the surest means to procure societal peace, but also the means through which people could come to a saving knowledge of the Savior. 

Williams disclosed in his 1644 work, The Bloody Tenet of Persecution for Cause of Conscience, that the concern for evangelism nourished his belief in soul freedom. Indeed, Williams wrote, “He that is a briar, that is a Jew, a Turk, a Pagan, an Antichristian today, may be, when the Word of the Lord runs freely, a member of Jesus Christ tomorrow, cut out of the wild olive, and planted into the tree.” This was his hope and aspiration — that God’s Word be liberated from the fetters of coerced religion so that men and women, likewise freed from establishment, could respond in true faith to the gospel summons. 

In other words, religious freedom was, for Williams, a means to a greater end. He did not contend for soul liberty so that he could be left alone to his own devices or to never face the realities of religious persecution. Instead, he fought for religious liberty because of a soteriological conviction — because of a gospel conviction. 

Modern Baptists and the public square

Williams had a lot more to say about religious freedom, but this concern for evangelism that undergirded his advocacy is especially important for Baptists today. In a recent article I wrote for Public Discourse, I argued that conservatives must resist the temptation to foreclose on the public square and political engagement. Conservatives seem weary of engaging with liberals, arguing that liberals are no longer concerned about seeking the truth or engaging in meaningful dialogue. Our hyper-partisanship seems to tribalize us, entrenching us in unreasoned allegiances and an unwillingness to engage with our political rivals. A large majority of Americans are now dissatisfied with democracy altogether, and a sizeable minority of Americans — 1 in 6 — now favor military rule. 

My points in the Public Discourse piece were directed at political issues — but I sense that significant similarities exist between disgruntled conservatives who no longer wish to engage with liberals and evangelical Christians, who, similarly, have retreated into the comforts of our own tribes. Thus, our advocacy, as Baptists, for religious freedom, has less to do with the common good and evangelism and more to do with our desire to be left alone. 

Roger Williams has much to teach us here. 

We are in an evangelistic emergency, and I fear that Christians — Baptists included — have surveyed the public square and our political moment and surrendered our core commitment to evangelism and preaching the gospel. Like conservatives, we are ready to wash our hands of those on the left — or those we wrongfully deem unsavable. We contend for liberty, but only so that we can just be left alone. When Williams, however, staked his life on religious freedom, he did so with the expressed intent of evangelism. By setting up Rhode Island as a place for people distressed of conscience, Williams pursued those whom he thought had deviated from the truth. Rather than hanging Quakers, he engaged them, toward the end of his life, in theological dialogue. He wanted to convince them of the truth — and he was able to do so because in Rhode Island, the Word of the Lord ran freely. 

This did not mean that Rhode Island was a conflict free, perennially happy place. Williams noted the frequent and bitter disputes between the various religious groups that took up residence in the colony. William Arnold, one of the colony’s leading figures, deplored the civil calamites that besieged his community, stating that liberty of conscience served as a “pretense,” which invited “all the scum” to come and take up residence. Liberty, as it turns out, is messy. 

But religious freedom was, indeed, remains worthy of our defense, and not so that we can just retreat to a quiet and private life. We strive for this freedom for the common good, so that places like Sunrise Children’s Services (a Kentucky Baptist Convention foster care ministry) can continue to be there for the orphan and the abused child without sacrificing religious convictions. 

More than the common good, we contend for this first freedom — this soul liberty — for the reasons Williams did. When the Word of the Lord runs freely, and when we preach that Word, those who today are lost, might tomorrow be saved. 

3 reasons Baptists should look to John Leland
By / Jul 19

One of the values of Christian history is learning from past role models for the sake of present-day faithfulness. Baptist history is filled with such role models. Though none of them is perfect — who is except King Jesus? — they nevertheless offer a wealth of wisdom for those who are willing to learn from our history.

In recent days, I’ve become convinced that John Leland (1754–1841) is among the most important role models from Baptist history. Leland was a native of Massachusetts, though he spent many of his most fruitful years of ministry in Virginia. He became one of the most important Baptist leaders of his era, a time that coincided with the emergence of Baptists from their persecuted sectarian roots into a national denomination.

Three reasons to look to Leland

There are three reasons I believe contemporary Southern Baptists should look to John Leland as a key role model. 

Religious liberty: First, and most famously, Leland was unwavering in his commitment to what Baptists have often called the “First Freedom” of religious liberty for all people. This principle is a cherished Baptist distinctive that is enshrined in the First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution. In God’s providence, Leland played a significant role in that signal moment in American history.

In 1788, James Madison of Virginia was running for a seat in the U.S. House of Representatives. Madison met with Leland in the hopes of garnering support from the Baptists in his district. The two men came to an agreement. Leland would encourage Baptists to vote for Madison. In return, Madison would advocate for full religious freedom. Madison won the election and subsequently authored the First Amendment that guaranteed religious freedom for all by rejecting the idea of an established state church. Leland was also a strong supporter of Thomas Jefferson, in part because of the latter’s commitment to church-state separation. In 1801, Leland famously gifted President Jefferson with a 1235-pound block of cheese from Massachusetts Baptists. In response, Jefferson invited Leland to preach at a Sunday worship service in the House of Representatives. Jefferson attended the service.

Personal evangelism: The second reason we should look to Leland is because of his zeal for personal evangelism. While Leland is best remembered for his tireless advocacy for religious liberty, he would have identified himself first and foremost as an evangelist. Leland preached over 8,000 sermons and baptized approximately 2,000 converts during the course of his ministry. In fact, one of the reasons Leland was such a strong advocate for religious liberty is because he wanted every individual to have the freedom to believe the gospel without confusion or compulsion. For Leland, defending religious liberty was not about commending an Enlightenment principle but rather was about advancing the Great Commission.

Biblical justice: A final reason Leland is an important role model for contemporary Baptists is because of his advocacy of biblical justice, which he understood to be compatible with his commitment to personal evangelism. In Leland’s day, the greatest public injustice was the system of race-based chattel slavery in the American South. Leland was arguably the most famous Baptist to argue against human enslavement. In 1791, he chose to leave Virginia and return to Massachusetts following the controversy that resulted from a strongly worded anti-slavery sermon. Though his views on how best to end the evil of slavery legally evolved over time, Leland maintained his belief that slavery was incompatible with Christianity and that Christian slaveowners should emancipate their slaves.

Leaning in to Leland’s legacy

Though times have changed, our world is not so different from that of Leland. Religious liberty is under fire in our own day, not so much from the specter of state-imposed religion but rather primarily from the threat of state-imposed secularism and culturally endorsed revisionist morality. The religious freedom of Christian bakers and florists is denigrated as hateful bigotry. Churches are coerced into closing their doors because of government overreach during a pandemic. Roman Catholics are forced to provide insurance coverage for contraceptives or medical procedures that violate their religious convictions. The list could go on. Baptists must remain firmly committed to our historic principle of religious liberty for all people.

Leland lived during the period when the irreligious South was finally becoming the Bible Belt because of the influence of the First and Second Great Awakenings. Today, what was once the Bible Belt may well remain overchurched in some places but it is increasingly underreached. This is even more the case in other parts of our nation. Research shows that across the USA, the share of citizens who claim to be Christian is shrinking while the percentage of “nones” is increasing at a rapid rate. Leland stands out as an evangelistic role model at a time when Southern Baptists are recommitting ourselves to sharing the gospel with all people and planting churches where there is minimal gospel witness.

Finally, our own day is threatened by culturally sanctioned injustice. While race-based slavery is outlawed in the United States and most other nations, various forms of both personal and corporate racism persist. The modern slavery of human sex trafficking harms women all over the world, often in our own communities. Millions of unborn image-bearers are legally murdered because of the tragedy of abortion-on-demand. Too many women are abused by powerful men, far too often in religious contexts by those in positions of spiritual authority. Minority groups are the victims of state-sanctioned genocide in other nations. Countless children are exploited by pornographers. This is just scratching the surface. Leland reminds us that evangelistic proclamation and the advocacy of public justice are complementary ministries.

There is no better time than now for Baptists to become reacquainted with the life and legacy of John Leland. May his holistic commitment to defending religious liberty, spreading the gospel, and advocating for justice encourage us to do likewise.

Why is religious liberty so important to Baptists?
By / Apr 20

Some have suggested in recent days that a crisis is no time to be concerned about things like religious freedom. As COVID-19 has spread around the globe and continues to wreak havoc here in the United States, many have criticized those who’ve displayed concern that governments not trample upon the rights of believing citizens during this time. Arguments have been made elsewhere about the necessity of pastors and churches working in good faith with elected leaders and public health officials to mitigate the spread of the virus, but it seems appropriate to say something in defense of religious liberty. After all, for many, including Baptists like myself, religious freedom is not some ancillary or abstract concept, but a key distinctive of our faith, practice, and history.

Religious liberty lies at the heart of the Baptist tradition. Since the earliest days of the movement, Baptists have found themselves defending the necessity of separation of church and state. Beginning in England in the early 17th century, our forebears dissented to the idea of a state church and rejected the legitimacy of any formal ties between matters civil and ecclesial. English Baptists like John Smyth and Thomas Helwys and the American Baptists Roger Williams and John Clarke after them were pioneers in advancing the cause of religious freedom in their respective countries. 

Among the many Baptist forebears who stood in defense of religious freedom, one of my personal heroes is Isaac Backus. A Baptist from New England living during the American Revolution, Backus is best remembered for his tireless advocacy of religious freedom in the fledgling United States as the leader of the Warren Association’s Grievance Committee. On behalf of the churches of that association, Backus stood in defense of men and women whose religious convictions were violated by various governments in New England. But my favorite memory of Backus, however, is not actually about him. 

Though Backus was already convinced of his Baptist beliefs and had rallied to the cause of religious liberty, the event that galvanized him into action and enabled him to maintain his zeal for the cause actually involved his mother, Elizabeth, a 54-year-old widow. Because Puritan ministers in New England were supported through taxation, Baptists and other dissenters were forced to pay taxes in support of religious views they objected to. When Elizabeth, who was also a Baptist, refused to pay the tax, she was jailed. And she remained so for nearly two weeks. But as a result of his mother’s mistreatment, Backus renewed his commitment to the cause of religious freedom. For the rest of his life, he defended the rights of others to worship God according to the dictates of their consciences. 

I’m drawn to that story because it illustrates something important about Baptists’ commitment to the doctrine of religious liberty. Religious liberty protects not the strong but the weak. It is meant to protect not the powerful but the marginalized. Citizens living in the United States today enjoy broad protections when it comes to religion. The First Amendment guarantees that we are able to freely exercise our religious beliefs without fear of punishment or interference at the hands of government. But it has not always been this way. And Baptists, who once were fined, jailed, and beaten here on American soil simply for practicing religion in ways the state deemed unacceptable, played a critical role in establishing that freedom. It should be easily understood, therefore, why Baptists and others endeavor to protect these precious freedoms even amid the current crisis.

Indeed, this is familiar territory. Baptists were born dissenters. Because they rejected the idea of a state church, by default they were at odds from the beginning not only with the religious establishment but with the state itself. And for good reason. Baptists have always recognized that a person’s spiritual beliefs and ultimate commitments are sacred, and they’ve refused to conform to the standards of state-sanctioned religion. The state has no authority to use religion in order to amass power or enforce its will. As the American Baptist John Leland wrote, “Every man must give an account of himself to God, and therefore every man ought to be at liberty to serve God in that way that he can best reconcile it to his conscience. If government can answer for individuals at the day of judgment, let men be controlled by it in religious matters; otherwise let men be free.”

Defending religious freedom is not ultimately some mechanism for self-protection or self-preservation; religious liberty is about protecting the rights of others, particularly the weak, vulnerable, and marginalized. 

And this conviction stands at the center of the Baptist commitment to religious freedom. The Scriptures declare that each person will one day stand before God to give an account of his or her life (Rom. 14:10-12). No one will answer on behalf of another. And for this reason it is critical for the state, which wields the power of the sword, to preserve the rights of every person to live and worship God according to conscience (Rom. 13:1-7; 1 Pet. 2:13-14). No obedience, whether rendered to the state or any other authority, will excuse us on the day of judgment. Each of us will answer only to God. Convinced of this, Baptists have, for centuries, defended the right of every person to freely live and worship. 

Still, people will sometimes ask why Christians, who literally worship a man who was willfully crucified at the hands of the state, are unwilling to sacrifice their religious freedom. Why not simply suffer as Christ did? Is it not the case that mounting such a defense about individual rights and liberties is un-Christian? I think the question is understandable. But as the example of Elizabeth Backus demonstrates, defending religious freedom is not ultimately some mechanism for self-protection or self-preservation; religious liberty is about protecting the rights of others, particularly the weak, vulnerable, and marginalized. 

As is often said, the kinds of speech or belief most in need of protection are those that are out of step with the zeitgeist or majority opinion. Christians living in a hostile culture recognize the necessity of these protections not only for ourselves but for others like us who are unable to countenance the quickly changing moral and sexual mores of our day. So, for the sake of all, we maintain our support of this fundamental doctrine.

Baptists have a long memory. We may be numerous at present, but only a few hundred years ago Baptists were a small and despised minority, suffering violence at the hands of the government. Today we remember that history as we fight to protect religious freedom not merely for our own sake, but for the good of our neighbors. Even now, in the midst of a pandemic, Baptists are justified in their concern about encroachments upon these rights. Historically, Baptists have taken a posture of peaceful cooperation toward the state in times of crisis. And we have rightfully done so once again. But even so, Baptists must recognize how easily the state can, and often has, overstepped its bounds.

This leaves us in a precarious position. Few among us anticipated the magnitude of change the coronavirus pandemic would bring about. As we confront the situation before us, we must do so with sober and measured realism. State and local governments have taken aggressive action to mitigate the spread of the virus. In certain cases, churches have been unfairly targeted by these measures—actions met with public outrage and legal action that was swift and well deserved. But as we weather the current storm, it is imperative for defenders of religious freedom to recognize the gravity of the moment. 

The virus is still an existential threat. And churches remain critical allies in the government’s efforts to safeguard public health. So even as we fight to protect these liberties, we must proceed with caution and recognize the volatility of this situation. The incursions upon religious freedom we’ve seen so far have been local and isolated. There is little evidence suggesting the threat is more widespread. As we navigate this crisis, the last thing our nation needs right now is an insurrection of churches. Fortunately, we are not now being forced to choose between submitting to those in authority or protecting our fundamental rights. But even so, one of the benefits of being reared in the Baptist tradition is a constant awareness of potential threats to the free exercise of religion. For the sake of all, in our religious practice and worship we must remain absolutely free. And just as our forebears did, Baptists and other defenders of liberty will continue to ensure it.

Baptists and the Benedict Option in American Babylon
By / Mar 22

One of my favorite non-fiction authors is Rod Dreher, a journalist and cultural commentator who blogs at The American Conservative. Since late 2013, Dreher has been calling for a Benedict Option as a strategy for spiritual renewal and cultural witness in the post-Christian West. He draws inspiration from Alasdair MacIntyre, who in his book After Virtue commends Benedict of Nursia as a model for cultivating virtuous Christian communities. In a helpful Q&A, Dreher defines the Benedict Option:

The “Benedict Option” refers to Christians in the contemporary West who cease to identify the continuation of civility and moral community with the maintenance of American empire, and who therefore are keen to construct local forms of community as loci of Christian resistance against what the empire represents. Put less grandly, the Benedict Option … is an umbrella term for Christians who accept MacIntyre’s critique of modernity, and who also recognize that forming Christians who live out Christianity according to [the] Great Tradition requires embedding within communities and institutions dedicated to that formation.

The Benedict Option has struck a chord with believers from across the ecclesial spectrum. A variety of observers have weighed its relative merits and measured the potential pitfalls. Many have dismissed the Benedict Option for various reasons. For my purposes in this essay I’m far more interested in those who’ve offered thoughtful alternatives to, or refinements of, the Benedict Option—especially those proffered by my fellow evangelicals. For example, see the Buckley Option, the Francis Moment, the Kuyper Option, and the Wilberforce Option.

I want to offer my own friendly alternative to the Benedict Option. It’s covenantal, congregational, counter-cultural, catholic, and commissioned—all for the common good. I’m tempted to just call it the Baptist Option. But if you know anything about Baptists, you know that where two or three of us are gathered together, especially in a church business meeting, there are at least seventeen opinions. So, though it’s not as neat a term, I’m calling my proposal the Paleo-Baptist Option.

In his final book, the late Richard John Neuhaus provocatively compared modern America to ancient Babylon, a place where truth and justice are perennially compromised and committed believers are increasingly marginalized. Less than a decade removed from Neuhaus’s death in 2009, his words seem prescient. I argue the Paleo-Baptist Option has much to commend it for believers living in American Babylon, including many who don’t identify with the Baptist tradition. Baptists will best thrive in American Babylon by self-consciously framing ourselves as an ecclesiological renewal movement within the Great Tradition of catholic Christianity.

The Rise of the Paleo-Baptist Vision

The Baptist movement emerged in the British Isles and colonial America during the first half of the 17th century. Early Baptists disagreed among themselves about the nature of election and the atonement, but their understanding of the church was fairly consistent. Like all Protestants, Baptists were committed to the supreme authority of Scripture for faith and practice, but they emphasized how this principle applied to matters related to the church’s nature, structure, and mission.

Baptists formulated their views of salvation and the church in covenantal terms. To be a Christian was to participate in the eternal covenant of grace through repentance and faith. Local congregations were regenerated communities wherein professing believers voluntarily covenanted together in membership. Believer’s baptism was considered the sign of the new covenant and represented the individual’s covenant commitment to individual and communal discipleship. To fall into ongoing unrepentant sin was to transgress the church’s covenant and possibly evidence that you weren’t really a partaker of the covenant of grace.

Early Baptists practiced congregational polity. They believed every local church is a microcosm of the church universal and that it was the responsibility of the entire membership to exercise the power of the keys to the kingdom. Churches were kingdom embassies, church members were kingdom citizens, and every kingdom citizen was to take ownership of the King’s agenda. While Baptist congregations set apart individuals to serve as pastors and deacons, they argued all believers were called to the ministry of proclaiming the gospel in word and living out its implications in deed.

They were counter-cultural. They weren’t Anabaptist separatists who rejected the legitimate authority of magistrates or embraced pacifism. Baptists desired to see sincere Christians hold government office, they professed political loyalty to the Crown, many served in the New Model Army during the English Civil War, and a few even sat in Parliament during the early Commonwealth era. Nevertheless, the Baptists were counter-cultural in that they rejected the establishment of the English state church. Baptists wanted a nation governed by Christian principles, but they advocated full religious liberty, arguing one is ultimately accountable to God alone for his or her religious convictions.

The earliest Baptists were committed to a form of reformational Free Church catholicity that has largely been forgotten by contemporary Baptists. In their key confessional statements, they echoed the language of the ecumenical creeds in formulating their views of the Trinity and Christology. The Orthodox Creed (1678) commended the Apostles’, Nicene, and Athanasian Creeds to General Baptist congregations. The Second London Confession (1689) argued strongly for a universal visible church, of which Baptists are only one part. Calvinistic Baptists also understood themselves to be a part of the “Protestant Interest,” the transcontinental Reformed-Lutheran bulwark against the encroachments of Roman Catholicism.

The final component of the Paleo-Baptist vision was the last to be incorporated into the DNA of the Baptist movement. Baptists didn’t always understand themselves to be a commissioned people. While early Baptists were committed to evangelism and starting new churches, the 17th century was not a time of widespread intentional missionary work by Protestants. By the early 18th century, some Baptists had imbibed deeply of Enlightenment skepticism and were drifting into heresies that rejected the deity of Christ and substitutionary atonement. Other Baptists were influenced by a hyper-Calvinist rationalism that downplayed the urgency of spreading the gospel. Near the end of the Evangelical Awakening in Great Britain, leaders such as Daniel Taylor, Andrew Fuller, and William Carey offered evangelical rationales for intentional evangelism and foreign mission. The key verse became the Great Commission of Matthew 28:19–20. From the mid-1700s onward, Baptists interpreted the Great Commission as a binding command on every generation of believers.

The Decline of Paleo-Baptist Principles

With the exception of an emphasis on mission, among American Baptists these Paleo-Baptist priorities were either lost or redefined over the course of the 19th and 20th centuries. Like other evangelicals, many Baptists embraced a radical form of biblicism that substituted what some have called solo scriptura for the Reformational principle of sola scriptura. Some went so far as to claim that creeds have no authority whatsoever—not even as a secondary authority under the supreme authority of Scripture.

Baptists increasingly interpreted historic Baptist principles such as congregational polity and local church autonomy through the lenses of Enlightenment individualism and Jeffersonian democracy. In terms of religious liberty, many Baptists advocated a version of strict church-state separation that emerged from the Enlightenment and has been identified with Thomas Jefferson and James Madison.

By the 20th century, Baptist leaders such as E. Y. Mullins and George Truett were arguing the Baptist tradition is quintessentially American because of the Baptist commitment to democracy and church-state separation. Baptists frequently credited themselves with the passage of the first amendment to the Constitution because the Baptist evangelist John Leland strategically allied himself with Madison on church-state matters. In perhaps the biggest Baptist irony in history, Southern Baptists in particular became so culturally influential in the American South and Southwest that the historian Martin Marty argued the Southern Baptist Convention became a de facto religious establishment—the “Catholic Church of the South.”

Then the world began to change. While Baptist elites resonated with mid-century Supreme Court decisions that codified secularist forms of church-state separation, grassroots Baptists—again, especially in the South—became increasingly persuaded that America was a Christian nation that was losing its way. The moral turbulence of the 1960s contributed to a growing sense of dread. In a story that is now fairly familiar, those who were experiencing this sort of cultural angst, including millions of Southern Baptists, signed on with emerging Religious Right, became active in the Republican Party, and sought to reclaim America for God.

The Religious Right became arguably the most powerful force in American politics between about 1980 and 2005. They played a key role in electing presidents, establishing majorities in Congress, and putting evangelicals on the cultural radar. But from the vantage point of 2016, they also failed in most of their long-term objectives. Instead of America becoming more like the kingdom of God, it has become more like Babylon. That so many Baptists wanted America to be a Christian nation demonstrates the massive gap between Paleo-Baptist priorities and many contemporary Baptist views of culture—especially politics.

Advancing Paleo-Baptist Priorities

The time is ripe for Baptists in America to reclaim the Paleo-Baptist vision and commend it to all faithful Christians living in American Babylon. To borrow Dreher’s language, Paleo-Baptists are already committed to “construct[ing] local forms of community as loci of Christian resistance against what the empire represents.” We call them local churches, and in the Paleo-Baptist vision, churches are counter-cultural communities of disciples who covenant to walk together for the sake of worship, catechesis, witness, and service.

To those like Dreher who are drawn to neo-monastic movements, Paleo-Baptists would say that a covenantal understanding of church membership accomplishes the same goal, but applies it to all church members, which we believe closely follows the New Testament vision of the church. When membership is restricted to professing believers, churches become the most natural context for theological and moral formation and intentional discipleship.

Though pragmatic forms of revivalism and populist versions of patriotism have distracted many Baptists, the Paleo-Baptist vision is making a comeback. Groups such as 9 Marks Ministries advocate historic Baptist ecclesial priorities, but do so in a way that also appeals to many other low church Protestants such as Presbyterians, Bible Churches, Evangelical Free congregations, and even many non-denominational evangelicals. Public intellectuals such as Russell Moore have urged American evangelicals to ratchet-down their propensity to identify the GOP with God’s Own Party and have called upon all believers to be an orthodox counter-culture for the common good. These Paleo-Baptist calls resonate with many Baptists and many other believers, especially among the millennial generation.

Furthermore, we Baptists have continued to understand ourselves as a commissioned people who are called to proclaim the gospel and make disciples among all people. In recent years, the wider conversation about the missional church has helped many Baptists to ground our Great Commission instincts in a Trinitarian theology of mission. This has led to an increasing awareness that all of Scripture speaks to God’s mission, which is both prior to and animates the church’s mission. As Ed Stetzer argues, “The church is sent on mission by Jesus. It’s not that the church has a mission, but rather that the mission has a church. We join Jesus on His mission.” A commitment to mission seems to be a serious lacuna in the Benedict Option as presently conceived. I hope Dreher addresses this topic as he continues to refines his paradigm and finishes his book-length project on the Benedict Option.

Learning from the Benedict Option

Though I believe the Paleo-Baptist vision addresses some shortcomings in the Benedict Option, there is a key area where I believe Paleo-Baptists have much to learn from Dreher’s proposal. Dreher calls for communities committed to “forming Christians who live out Christianity according to the Great Tradition.” As discussed above, early Baptists were committed to a form of reformational Free Church catholicity. Nevertheless, it’s fair to say that catholicity has never been a strong suit among Baptists. Our very name highlights our most visible difference with our fellow Christians.

I know some Baptists will disagree, perhaps strongly so, but I believe the time is ripe for what Timothy George calls an “ecumenism of the trenches” as modeled in initiatives such as The Manhattan Declaration. Paleo-Baptist Christians should be willing to link arms with other believers in as many ways as we can, with integrity, without retreating from our own tradition’s core distinctives. The encroachment of American Babylon necessitates the mortification of all forms of sectarianism, denominational idolatry, and party spirit.

I’m encouraged by the growing number of (especially younger) Baptists and baptistic evangelicals who are embracing the ecumenical creedal tradition, more closely observing the Christian calendar, celebrating communion more frequently in corporate worship gatherings, and learning from the spiritual practices of brothers and sisters in other ecclesial traditions. I personally know of both new church plants and older “legacy” churches that have intentionally embraced a greater sense of catholicity without backtracking one bit on their Baptist identity.

Again, I argue Baptists will best thrive in American Babylon by self-consciously framing ourselves as an ecclesiological renewal movement within the Great Tradition of catholic Christianity. Far more important than passing on our Baptist identity to the next generation is passing on the faith once and for all delivered to the saints. To be clear, I believe historic Baptist distinctives are essentially correct and ought to be embraced, defended, and commended to others. But only the faith shared by all believers everywhere will fuel our spiritual maturity, empower us for Christian witness, motivate us for humble and sacrificial service, and help us to think rightly about God and his world and live rightly before God in his world.

Conclusion

The Paleo-Baptist Option offers a way to navigate American Babylon that is more deeply rooted in local churches than the Benedict Option. It’s also more explicitly missional than the Benedict Option, at least as the latter is presently conceived. Even traditions that disagree with Baptists concerning our theology and practice of baptism can embrace a more intentionally covenantal, congregational, counter-cultural, and commissioned outlook and adapt these priorities to their contexts. In this sense, all American believers can develop certain “Baptist instincts” in response to anti-Christian tendencies in the wider culture.

At the same time, if the vision I’m commending is to be truly Paleo-Baptist—in the fullest sense—then those of us who are convictional Baptists will need to more intentionally embrace the Great Tradition and embody a commitment to catholicity that is both deeper and wider than we’ve normally affirmed in our tradition. As with any authentic ecumenical moment, all Christians need to learn from each other, sharpen one another, and spur each other on to love and good deeds. We need each other as our respective traditions seek to follow Christ and bear witness to his Kingship in a culture that is increasingly hostile to all forms of orthodox, full-throated, publicly engaged Christianity.

One of my favorite non-fiction authors is Rod Dreher, a journalist and cultural commentator who blogs at The American Conservative. Since late 2013, Dreher has been calling for a Benedict Option as a strategy for spiritual renewal and cultural witness in the post-Christian West. He draws inspiration from Alasdair MacIntyre, who in his book After Virtue commends Benedict of Nursia as a model for cultivating virtuous Christian communities. In a helpful Q&A, Dreher defines the Benedict Option:

The “Benedict Option” refers to Christians in the contemporary West who cease to identify the continuation of civility and moral community with the maintenance of American empire, and who therefore are keen to construct local forms of community as loci of Christian resistance against what the empire represents. Put less grandly, the Benedict Option … is an umbrella term for Christians who accept MacIntyre’s critique of modernity, and who also recognize that forming Christians who live out Christianity according to [the] Great Tradition requires embedding within communities and institutions dedicated to that formation.

The Benedict Option has struck a chord with believers from across the ecclesial spectrum. A variety of observers have weighed its relative merits and measured the potential pitfalls. Many have dismissed the Benedict Option for various reasons. For my purposes in this essay I’m far more interested in those who’ve offered thoughtful alternatives to, or refinements of, the Benedict Option—especially those proffered by my fellow evangelicals. For example, see the Buckley Option, the Francis Moment, the Kuyper Option, and the Wilberforce Option.

I want to offer my own friendly alternative to the Benedict Option. It’s covenantal, congregational, counter-cultural, catholic, and commissioned—all for the common good. I’m tempted to just call it the Baptist Option. But if you know anything about Baptists, you know that where two or three of us are gathered together, especially in a church business meeting, there are at least seventeen opinions. So, though it’s not as neat a term, I’m calling my proposal the Paleo-Baptist Option.

In his final book, the late Richard John Neuhaus provocatively compared modern America to ancient Babylon, a place where truth and justice are perennially compromised and committed believers are increasingly marginalized. Less than a decade removed from Neuhaus’s death in 2009, his words seem prescient. I argue the Paleo-Baptist Option has much to commend it for believers living in American Babylon, including many who don’t identify with the Baptist tradition. Baptists will best thrive in American Babylon by self-consciously framing ourselves as an ecclesiological renewal movement within the Great Tradition of catholic Christianity.

The Rise of the Paleo-Baptist Vision

The Baptist movement emerged in the British Isles and colonial America during the first half of the 17th century. Early Baptists disagreed among themselves about the nature of election and the atonement, but their understanding of the church was fairly consistent. Like all Protestants, Baptists were committed to the supreme authority of Scripture for faith and practice, but they emphasized how this principle applied to matters related to the church’s nature, structure, and mission.

Baptists formulated their views of salvation and the church in covenantal terms. To be a Christian was to participate in the eternal covenant of grace through repentance and faith. Local congregations were regenerated communities wherein professing believers voluntarily covenanted together in membership. Believer’s baptism was considered the sign of the new covenant and represented the individual’s covenant commitment to individual and communal discipleship. To fall into ongoing unrepentant sin was to transgress the church’s covenant and possibly evidence that you weren’t really a partaker of the covenant of grace.

Early Baptists practiced congregational polity. They believed every local church is a microcosm of the church universal and that it was the responsibility of the entire membership to exercise the power of the keys to the kingdom. Churches were kingdom embassies, church members were kingdom citizens, and every kingdom citizen was to take ownership of the King’s agenda. While Baptist congregations set apart individuals to serve as pastors and deacons, they argued all believers were called to the ministry of proclaiming the gospel in word and living out its implications in deed.

They were counter-cultural. They weren’t Anabaptist separatists who rejected the legitimate authority of magistrates or embraced pacifism. Baptists desired to see sincere Christians hold government office, they professed political loyalty to the Crown, many served in the New Model Army during the English Civil War, and a few even sat in Parliament during the early Commonwealth era. Nevertheless, the Baptists were counter-cultural in that they rejected the establishment of the English state church. Baptists wanted a nation governed by Christian principles, but they advocated full religious liberty, arguing one is ultimately accountable to God alone for his or her religious convictions.

The earliest Baptists were committed to a form of reformational Free Church catholicity that has largely been forgotten by contemporary Baptists. In their key confessional statements, they echoed the language of the ecumenical creeds in formulating their views of the Trinity and Christology. The Orthodox Creed (1678) commended the Apostles’, Nicene, and Athanasian Creeds to General Baptist congregations. The Second London Confession (1689) argued strongly for a universal visible church, of which Baptists are only one part. Calvinistic Baptists also understood themselves to be a part of the “Protestant Interest,” the transcontinental Reformed-Lutheran bulwark against the encroachments of Roman Catholicism.

The final component of the Paleo-Baptist vision was the last to be incorporated into the DNA of the Baptist movement. Baptists didn’t always understand themselves to be a commissioned people. While early Baptists were committed to evangelism and starting new churches, the 17th century was not a time of widespread intentional missionary work by Protestants. By the early 18th century, some Baptists had imbibed deeply of Enlightenment skepticism and were drifting into heresies that rejected the deity of Christ and substitutionary atonement. Other Baptists were influenced by a hyper-Calvinist rationalism that downplayed the urgency of spreading the gospel. Near the end of the Evangelical Awakening in Great Britain, leaders such as Daniel Taylor, Andrew Fuller, and William Carey offered evangelical rationales for intentional evangelism and foreign mission. The key verse became the Great Commission of Matthew 28:19–20. From the mid-1700s onward, Baptists interpreted the Great Commission as a binding command on every generation of believers.

The Decline of Paleo-Baptist Principles

With the exception of an emphasis on mission, among American Baptists these Paleo-Baptist priorities were either lost or redefined over the course of the 19th and 20th centuries. Like other evangelicals, many Baptists embraced a radical form of biblicism that substituted what some have called solo scriptura for the Reformational principle of sola scriptura. Some went so far as to claim that creeds have no authority whatsoever—not even as a secondary authority under the supreme authority of Scripture.

Baptists increasingly interpreted historic Baptist principles such as congregational polity and local church autonomy through the lenses of Enlightenment individualism and Jeffersonian democracy. In terms of religious liberty, many Baptists advocated a version of strict church-state separation that emerged from the Enlightenment and has been identified with Thomas Jefferson and James Madison.

By the 20th century, Baptist leaders such as E. Y. Mullins and George Truett were arguing the Baptist tradition is quintessentially American because of the Baptist commitment to democracy and church-state separation. Baptists frequently credited themselves with the passage of the first amendment to the Constitution because the Baptist evangelist John Leland strategically allied himself with Madison on church-state matters. In perhaps the biggest Baptist irony in history, Southern Baptists in particular became so culturally influential in the American South and Southwest that the historian Martin Marty argued the Southern Baptist Convention became a de facto religious establishment—the “Catholic Church of the South.”

Then the world began to change. While Baptist elites resonated with mid-century Supreme Court decisions that codified secularist forms of church-state separation, grassroots Baptists—again, especially in the South—became increasingly persuaded that America was a Christian nation that was losing its way. The moral turbulence of the 1960s contributed to a growing sense of dread. In a story that is now fairly familiar, those who were experiencing this sort of cultural angst, including millions of Southern Baptists, signed on with emerging Religious Right, became active in the Republican Party, and sought to reclaim America for God.

The Religious Right became arguably the most powerful force in American politics between about 1980 and 2005. They played a key role in electing presidents, establishing majorities in Congress, and putting evangelicals on the cultural radar. But from the vantage point of 2016, they also failed in most of their long-term objectives. Instead of America becoming more like the kingdom of God, it has become more like Babylon. That so many Baptists wanted America to be a Christian nation demonstrates the massive gap between Paleo-Baptist priorities and many contemporary Baptist views of culture—especially politics.

Advancing Paleo-Baptist Priorities

The time is ripe for Baptists in America to reclaim the Paleo-Baptist vision and commend it to all faithful Christians living in American Babylon. To borrow Dreher’s language, Paleo-Baptists are already committed to “construct[ing] local forms of community as loci of Christian resistance against what the empire represents.” We call them local churches, and in the Paleo-Baptist vision, churches are counter-cultural communities of disciples who covenant to walk together for the sake of worship, catechesis, witness, and service.

To those like Dreher who are drawn to neo-monastic movements, Paleo-Baptists would say that a covenantal understanding of church membership accomplishes the same goal, but applies it to all church members, which we believe closely follows the New Testament vision of the church. When membership is restricted to professing believers, churches become the most natural context for theological and moral formation and intentional discipleship.

Though pragmatic forms of revivalism and populist versions of patriotism have distracted many Baptists, the Paleo-Baptist vision is making a comeback. Groups such as 9 Marks Ministries advocate historic Baptist ecclesial priorities, but do so in a way that also appeals to many other low church Protestants such as Presbyterians, Bible Churches, Evangelical Free congregations, and even many non-denominational evangelicals. Public intellectuals have urged American evangelicals to ratchet-down their propensity to identify the GOP with God’s Own Party and have called upon all believers to be an orthodox counter-culture for the common good. These Paleo-Baptist calls resonate with many Baptists and many other believers, especially among the millennial generation.

Furthermore, we Baptists have continued to understand ourselves as a commissioned people who are called to proclaim the gospel and make disciples among all people. In recent years, the wider conversation about the missional church has helped many Baptists to ground our Great Commission instincts in a Trinitarian theology of mission. This has led to an increasing awareness that all of Scripture speaks to God’s mission, which is both prior to and animates the church’s mission. As Ed Stetzer argues, “The church is sent on mission by Jesus. It’s not that the church has a mission, but rather that the mission has a church. We join Jesus on His mission.” A commitment to mission seems to be a serious lacuna in the Benedict Option as presently conceived. I hope Dreher addresses this topic as he continues to refines his paradigm and finishes his book-length project on the Benedict Option.

Learning from the Benedict Option

Though I believe the Paleo-Baptist vision addresses some shortcomings in the Benedict Option, there is a key area where I believe Paleo-Baptists have much to learn from Dreher’s proposal. Dreher calls for communities committed to “forming Christians who live out Christianity according to the Great Tradition.” As discussed above, early Baptists were committed to a form of reformational Free Church catholicity. Nevertheless, it’s fair to say that catholicity has never been a strong suit among Baptists. Our very name highlights our most visible difference with our fellow Christians.

I know some Baptists will disagree, perhaps strongly so, but I believe the time is ripe for what Timothy George calls an “ecumenism of the trenches” as modeled in initiatives such as The Manhattan Declaration. Paleo-Baptist Christians should be willing to link arms with other believers in as many ways as we can, with integrity, without retreating from our own tradition’s core distinctives. The encroachment of American Babylon necessitates the mortification of all forms of sectarianism, denominational idolatry, and party spirit.

I’m encouraged by the growing number of (especially younger) Baptists and baptistic evangelicals who are embracing the ecumenical creedal tradition, more closely observing the Christian calendar, celebrating communion more frequently in corporate worship gatherings, and learning from the spiritual practices of brothers and sisters in other ecclesial traditions. I personally know of both new church plants and older “legacy” churches that have intentionally embraced a greater sense of catholicity without backtracking one bit on their Baptist identity.

Again, I argue Baptists will best thrive in American Babylon by self-consciously framing ourselves as an ecclesiological renewal movement within the Great Tradition of catholic Christianity. Far more important than passing on our Baptist identity to the next generation is passing on the faith once and for all delivered to the saints. To be clear, I believe historic Baptist distinctives are essentially correct and ought to be embraced, defended, and commended to others. But only the faith shared by all believers everywhere will fuel our spiritual maturity, empower us for Christian witness, motivate us for humble and sacrificial service, and help us to think rightly about God and his world and live rightly before God in his world.

Conclusion

The Paleo-Baptist Option offers a way to navigate American Babylon that is more deeply rooted in local churches than the Benedict Option. It’s also more explicitly missional than the Benedict Option, at least as the latter is presently conceived. Even traditions that disagree with Baptists concerning our theology and practice of baptism can embrace a more intentionally covenantal, congregational, counter-cultural, and commissioned outlook and adapt these priorities to their contexts. In this sense, all American believers can develop certain “Baptist instincts” in response to anti-Christian tendencies in the wider culture.

At the same time, if the vision I’m commending is to be truly Paleo-Baptist—in the fullest sense—then those of us who are convictional Baptists will need to more intentionally embrace the Great Tradition and embody a commitment to catholicity that is both deeper and wider than we’ve normally affirmed in our tradition. As with any authentic ecumenical moment, all Christians need to learn from each other, sharpen one another, and spur each other on to love and good deeds. We need each other as our respective traditions seek to follow Christ and bear witness to his Kingship in a culture that is increasingly hostile to all forms of orthodox, full-throated, publicly engaged Christianity.