Sunday 3 June 2018

Why This Church? Believer's Baptism

Bloomsbury Central Baptist Church
3 June 2018
 

Matthew 28.18-20; Acts 10.44-48 
Romans 6.1-5; Ephesians 4.1-6 
 
Here at Bloomsbury we tend to think of ourselves
            as a modern, liberal-minded, pragmatic people,
            who relate well to our ecumenical partners in other Christian traditions,

            and indeed take a positive stand in our inter-faith relationships.[1]

We are part of Churches Together in Westminster and Churches Together in England,

            and the ministers from Bloomsbury meet each month
                        for breakfast with clergy from other West End churches.
The Meet The Neighbours events see people from Bloomsbury
            visiting a variety of different Christian traditions in our area
            to share in worship and to learn more about each other.
We will shortly be welcoming
            The Revd Canon Mark Oakley, Canon Chancellor of St Paul’s Cathedral,
            to preach at our Church Anniversary service on the 1st July
                        (you do have it in your diary, don’t you!?),
            which is a reciprocal visit for the service last year
                        when I was invited to preach at St Paul’s
                        (have I mentioned that before? I might have…).
I’m part of the Interfaith Group For Dignity in Dying,
            alongside Jews, Unitarians, and other Christians;
and I represent Bloomsbury as part of the interfaith chaplaincy team
            at King’s College London.
In addition to this, we’re deepening our relationships
            with other churches, synagogues, and mosques
            through our involvement with London Citizens,
and our occasional series of Seth Stephens Lectures
            has seen us hosting a variety of events looking at inter-faith issues,
            including one where Archbishop Rowan Williams
                        sat here on this platform and had a public conversation
            with Mona Siddiqui, the professor Islamic studies at Edinburgh University

So, it can come as something of a surprise
            when you drill down into what we actually stand for as a Baptist church,
to discover that at the core of our identity
            remains a practice which is both fundamental and exclusionary.
I’m talking, of course, about the practice of believer’s baptism.

And it’s not only our church which is named after this ritual.
            We’re part of Baptists Together,
                        which is the new and apparently trendy name
                        for the Baptist Union of Great Britain,
            and we support BMS World Mission,
                        which is the new and apparently trendy name
                        for the Baptist Missionary Society.
            We are linked with the European Baptist Federation
                        and the Baptist World Alliance.

We are, in case you hadn’t noticed, Baptists.

Historically speaking, the Baptists fit into the general category known as Separatism,
            which is a technical term for the kind of churches
                        set up in England in the early 17th century by the Puritans
            who, impatient for a thoroughgoing reform of the British church
                        along what they regarded as Biblical principles,
            separated themselves from the Established Church of England.

It was out of this Separatist tradition
            that the earliest English Baptists were to emerge.
And it’s from Separatism that Baptists derive their key distinctives
            of: a commitment to scripture,
                        a gathered church confined to those
                        who have professed faith in Christ,
            a practice of congregational church government,
                        and a focus on simplicity in worship
                        without resort to ceremony and ritual.

But Baptists went beyond the Separatists
            in confining Baptism to believers,
            and insisting on full religious liberty for all, not just for themselves.

We’ll be coming back to some of these distinctives in future months
            as we continue our series of monthly Communion Sermons
                        looking at the nature of the church.
But today we’re going to stick with the practice of believer’s Baptism.

One of the key figures in the emergence of the Baptists from the Separatists
            was a wealthy lawyer called Thomas Helwys (1550-1616),
            who left England for Amsterdam in 1608 to escape persecution under King James I.

Together with a man called John Smyth,
            Helwys became a leader in an English-speaking Separatist congregation
                        in Amsterdam.
In 1609, this group became the first ever Baptist Church,
            when Smyth baptised himself and the other members,
having concluded that the true church had died out
            and needed to be re-started.

Two years later Helwys produced his now famous pamphlet
            the Declaration of Faith of English People (1611),
setting out the view that each congregation
            ‘though they be but two or three, have Christ given them’,
            and that therefore they ‘are the body of Christ’.

This was, as I’m sure you can appreciate, radical stuff,
            because in one short sentence
it challenged the entire basis of the established church,
            the episcopacy of church government,
            and the authority of the monarch as the head of the church.

Helwys, along with some others, decided to return to England
            where in 1612 they established a Baptist church in Spitalfields,
            outside the city of London,
and this was the first Baptist church on English soil.

And the practice of believer’s baptism as they enacted it
            had two key distinct emphases:
Firstly, it was for those who were already believers,
            and secondly it was by full immersion.

They claimed, as Baptists have claimed ever since,
            that the basis for this practice of baptising believers by immersion
                        is to be found in the New Testament.
It is, Baptists claim, the biblical option,
            as opposed to the practice of other Christian groups
which tend to hold church tradition alongside their reading of scripture.

And it is on this practice of baptism for believers
            that we have tended, historically speaking, to take our big stand.

However, while we are generally quite clear
            about what we do, and don’t do, at baptism;
            we are often less clear about why.

Baptists have typically not been so good at the theology of baptism,
            as they have been at the practice of it.

Ruth Gouldbourne has often said that Baptists are pragmatists,
            we do first, and think about it afterwards.
So we adopted believer’s baptism, and went to the stake over on occasions,
            but didn’t necessarily think through the significance
                        of this dramatic break from the practice
                        of almost every other Christian tradition.

And the problem with our rather unswerving adherence
            to what we claim as a ‘biblical’ position on baptism
is that we end up, historically speaking,
            struggling to know where we stand in our ecumenical relationships;
we don’t always know how to relate to other Christian traditions.

The hard-line position is one of ecumenical non-engagement,
            where Baptists simply assert that they are right,
                        and that everyone else is wrong;
            or even that we are the only true church
                        and that everyone else is apostate.
This was kind of the Smyth and Helwys position,
            which led to John Smyth baptising himself to re-start the church.

Whilst you do get this approach here in the UK,
            especially amongst the Strict, Particular, and Grace Baptists,
it has become the mainstream position for certain groups of Baptists of the United States,
            and the many Baptist churches worldwide
            which have been heavily influenced by the American Baptist missions.

Of course, thinking that you, and you alone, have the truth
            and that everyone else is wrong,
            is a very attractive and secure place to be.

The lure of fundamentalism is strong,
            as people search for certainty in an uncertain world.

It’s one of the reasons that churches which offer
            strong and definitive answers to life’s questions do so well.
Churches like ours, which invite honest questioning
            and intelligent engagement with faith,
can suffer here because those looking for easy answers
            will end up looking elsewhere.

But as a thoughtful Baptist church we are more in step
            with the other, second, approach to ecumenical engagement.
Rather than adopt a hard-line, we’re-right-you’re-wrong position,
            most Baptist churches in the UK tend towards
            a softer middle-ground approach on Baptism,
where we still assert that
            on the basis of scripture we think we’re right;
but we temper this with a recognition
            that other Christian traditions don’t see it the same way,
            and that we should all agree not to fall out over it.

So in common with many other British Baptist churches,
            we have open rather than closed membership,
where we welcome as members
            those whose initiation into faith
            took place in a tradition other than our own,
and we do so without requiring them to be baptised
            according to our convictions.

But of course, we are more than willing to offer believer’s baptism
            to those whose early life included infant baptism,
            should they request it.
And we hold that we can do this without compromising our commitment
            to there only being one baptism,
because deep down we still don’t really think that infant baptism is truly baptism;
            it’s just that we’re just too nice to make a fuss about it.

However, we might take some comfort here from the fact
            that there is strong historical precedent
            for this position of pragmatic compromise.

The early British Baptists didn’t exist in isolation
            from the other Separatist traditions of the early seventeenth century,
and from the very beginning they had to work out
            how they were going to relate to other Christians
            whose baptismal practice was very different from theirs;
and we are the heirs to this tradition of compromise,
            just as the American Baptists are the heirs to the hard-liners
                        who could not live with compromise and set sail for the New World
                        looking for a fresh start where everyone could get it right
                        and compromise would be unnecessary.

The early British context was further clouded by the civil war period,
            when Baptists found themselves on the same side
            as other radical protestants who were all aligned with Cromwell,
                        but who differed on baptismal practice;
and to have declared them to be un-Christian
            would have been politically disastrous.

And so we learned to live together with difference on this issue,
            a skill which has stood the Baptists in good stead down the centuries
as we have negotiated other theological differences
            from Calvinism, to women in ministry, to same sex marriage.

The conviction that what we have in common
            is stronger than what would divide us
has also helped us negotiate our baptismal practice difference
            with other denominations,
to such an extent that the Baptists have often played key roles
            in establishing major ecumenical initiatives
including the Dissenting Deputies, the Bible Society,
            the London Missionary Society, and a variety of anti-slavery societies.

The upshot of all this
            is that we find ourselves in a strangely anomalous position as Baptists.

On the one hand, in theory,
            we are radically committed to the baptism of believers
                        as the only biblical mode of baptism,
                        and as the sacrament of initiation into the true church.
While on the other hand, in practice,
            we simply aren’t that committed to it.

Steve Holmes sums up the situation:
“British Baptists find themselves in a curious position
            as a result of this tradition of ecumenical openness:
they are, in practice, less committed
            to the importance of baptism in ecclesiology
            than almost any other mainstream denomination.
In most British Baptist churches
            a person may be in membership or even leadership,
            and may receive or even celebrate the Eucharist,
            without being baptised, either as a believer or infant.
No other British denomination (excluding the Salvation Army, of course)
            is as lax in its baptismal polity
            as the main line Baptists.”[2]

What this has led to
            has been an attempt by Baptists over the last few decades,
                        really for the first time in our history,
            to start doing proper theology
                        around what on earth we think is going on in baptism?

Is there some theological common ground
            that we can find between our absolutist origins in a river in Amsterdam,
and the traditional practice of infant baptism
            as it is found in almost every other Christian church;
or is the best we can hope for
            a continuation of pragmatic co-existence and mutual respect?

The conclusion of a Baptist report published in 2005,
            called ‘Pushing at the Boundaries of Unity’
suggested that Baptist congregations
            ‘might recognise a place for the baptism of infants
                        within the whole journey that marks the beginning of the Christian life’,
            as well as challenging the practice of some churches
                        in requiring a re-baptism of those who had been baptised as infants.

I was present at the Baptist Union Council in 2006 which received this report,
            and it wasn’t universally well-received.
Some welcomed it as a good way forwards
            in negotiating our baptismal differences with our ecumenical partners,
while others felt it to be compromising our core belief
            that baptism should be for believers by full immersion.

So, I wonder, what do you think?
            What’s your understanding of your baptism,
                        if you’ve been baptised?
            And if you’re sitting here and you’ve never been baptised,
                        do you know why you haven’t?

It may help if I share something here of my own story,
            and please accept my apologies if you’ve heard some of this before.

I started attending a Baptist church before I was born,
            and I honestly can’t remember a time when I didn’t have faith.

Just as I never needed to be converted
            to the conviction that my Mum loved me,
neither did I need converting to the love of God.

When I was ten years old, I was attending a baptismal service,
            which in those days were held on a Sunday evening.
The church was full to overflowing,
            and I was up in the balcony,
            sat at the back leaning against the large leaded window.

We were singing the old hymn, ‘Just as I am without one plea’,
            and the baptisms were taking place in between each verse.

When we got to the verse,
            “Just as I am, of that free love
            the breadth, length, depth, and height to prove,
            here for a season then above –
            O Lamb of God I come”,
I just knew with absolute conviction
            that I needed to take a step of faithful witness,
            and to seek baptism as the next step in my walk with God.

For me, it was an act of obedience,
            and also a marking of a definite commitment
                        to faithfully seek God in the life, teachings and witness of Jesus.

So I went to speak to the minister after the service,
            and he told me that I was far too young,
            and that I should come back if I still felt the same when I was 14.

He then said something very interesting,
            which was that I could start taking communion if I wanted to.

Well, whether he knew it or not, and I suspect that he did,
            this distinction he was making between admission to the table,
                        and admission to the pool,
            has been one of the key areas of disagreement
                        between Baptists over baptismal practice.

We’re going to come back to communion in a future sermon in this series,
            so I won’t go into it in depth now,
but just as we’ve already mentioned Open Membership
            (whether you can be a member of a Baptist church
            without undertaking believer’s baptism),
there is a parallel debate in terms of an Open Table,
            and whether you should be admitted to communion
            if you’re not baptised as a believer.

My minister at the time had trained at Spurgeon’s college,
            and the offer he made me,
                        of taking communion whilst still un-baptised,
            could have come straight from the mouth
                        of the great nineteenth century preacher Charles Spurgeon himself,
            because Spurgeon believed in closed membership
                        but open communion.

However, to finish my story, I declined the offer.
            I can remember thinking, with all the logical clarity of a ten year old,
                        that if I wasn’t old enough to be acceptable to Jesus in baptism,
                        the same must surely also apply to communion.

So for the next four years I sat there
            staring fixedly at the minister every time we had communion,
                        firmly passing the bread and wine with my mouth clamped shut,
and shortly after my 14th birthday
            I went back to see him,
            and this time my request for baptism was accepted.

So what changed for me at my baptism?
            I certainly didn’t become a Christian in the water,
            and neither did the Holy Spirit descend on me in a new and definitive way.

To the best of my memory I just felt wet and cold afterwards.
            But something definitely changed.
            I had made my promises and intended to keep them.

I often describe baptism as being a bit like a wedding,
            because both are places where people make promises in church.
And the thing about a wedding
            is that you’re no more in love after you’ve said ‘I will’
                        than you were before;
            and in fact a wedding which is not built on a foundation
                        of already existing love is probably deficient.
But nonetheless something changes:
            the unmarried become married.

And so with baptism.
            At one level nothing changes,
                        faith is already present (and if it isn’t, then the good Baptist in me
                                    still wants to argue that something is deficient),
                        and words of commitment spoken before God and a congregation
                                    don’t change that.
            And just as the exchange of rings doesn’t make a marriage,
                        neither does the action of immersion into water make a Christian.

But promises and action do still make a difference.

Some Baptists argue that baptism is simply a symbolic act,
            an enacted sermon, which witnesses publicly
                        to the faith of the person being baptised.
However, whilst I’m sure that that baptism does do this,
            I don’t think this is all it does.

It seems to me that there is more to baptism than mere symbolism.

I find something deeply sacramental in the act,
            which takes us beyond what we do in obedience to Christ’s command,
            into a consideration of what God does in the moment of baptism.

Have you heard the classic definition from St Augustine
            of a sacrament as ‘an outward and visible sign of an inward and invisible grace’?
Well, we may not have the full seven sacraments of the Roman Catholic tradition,
            but I still think that even within the Baptist tradition
            there exist those moments where God meets us in our action of obedience,
                        active by his Spirit to bring to bring an act of grace into our lives.

I do think something changes in the person being baptised, at the point of baptism;
            just as something changes in a person at the point of their wedding vows.
The old has gone and the new has come.

And one of the significant outworkings
            of a more sacramental understanding of baptism
has been on the Baptist engagement with our ecumenical relationships
            that I was speaking about earlier;
where we are discovering more common ground than had previously been found
            with those who also stress the action of God in baptism
            either alongside, or indeed over and above,
            the action of the baptismal candidate.

And so we will come, next Sunday morning, to an open pool,
            and we shall be sharing with Tommaso in his baptism.
It is not, quite, too late for anyone else to join him in the pool,
            and if you would like to explore this
            please speak with me afterwards.

But back to today.

I started this monthly Communion sermon series by looking at baptism
            because, as we shall see, it informs many of the other themes
            we’ll be exploring over the coming months.

It is the starting point for our understanding of what it means
            to be a church like Bloomsbury Central Baptist Church.

And now, as we come to share communion,
            the meal that sustains us as a church,
I shall be inviting all those who love God and seek him in Christ Jesus
            to join in sharing bread and wine,
as once again we are re-created and re-membered as Christ’s body.



[1] See Stephen Holmes, Baptist Theology, p.89ff
[2] Holmes, Baptist Thelogy, p.93.

1 comment:

Unknown said...

Add the Quakers to the Salvation Army as a denomination that does not practice baptism.