“Stewards of Tradition: Celebrating 400 Years of Baptist Witness” - November 1, 2009, All Saints Day

In the first few centuries of the Christian church, feast days were established to remember and celebrate various saints. In time, a day was set aside to remember all of those nameless, unknown Christians who had led faithful lives, many of whom suffered for their faith. This day became All Saints Day, a day to remember all Christian saints known and unknown, and since the eighth century this has been celebrated on November 1.

Growing up, my Baptist church didn’t pay much attention to All Saints Day, but I have come to appreciate it as a reminder that we owe a great deal to those who have gone before us in the faith - both over the centuries and within the life of this church.

The year 2009 is the 400th anniversary of the first Baptist congregation, and so today seems like an especially good day to remember and celebrate our heritage as Baptists. You may remember that the Pilgrim church that came to America and landed at Plymouth Rock had for several years lived as religious refugees in Leyden in the Netherlands. Around this same time, another small congregation had fled England seeking religious freedom in Amsterdam. They met in the back room of a bakery to pray and study the Bible, and by 1609 they had formed what we know today as core Baptist beliefs, including the necessity of a believers’ church, separation of the church and the state, and believers’ baptism. This church was led by John Smyth, a dissenting priest from the Church of England, and by lay leader Thomas Helwys, a lawyer from a wealthy and well-connected family. In Amsterdam, they had friendly relations with a group of Mennonites and were influenced by their Anabaptist theology. They became convinced of the need to practice believer’s baptism, and the entire church was baptized and became the first Baptist congregation. Smyth wound up joining the Mennonites, and despite the obvious danger, Helwys led 12 members back to London, where they met in Spitalfields in the east end of the city. The exact site has been lost to history because the church met in secrecy, as members were liable to be burnt at the stake for heresy.

Early in 1612, Helwys wrote a treatise arguing for religious liberty and complete separation of the church and the state called “A Short History of the Mystery of Iniquity.” (We actually have a copy in our library if you want to muddle through it.) “The King,” Helwys said, “is a mortal man, and not God, therefore he hath no power over the mortal soul of his subjects to make laws and ordinances for them and to set spiritual Lords over them.” For his trouble, the king had Helwys thrown into Newgate Prison, where he died in 1616 around the age of forty.

The king who had Helwys sent to prison? King James I, for whom the King James Bible is named. I do not understand why so may Baptist are enamored with the King James Bible, seeing that King James killed the first Baptist!

Smyth and Helwys may be the first, but this morning I would like to remember a few of the saints of our Baptist tradition over the years.

Helwys’ writings no doubt influenced a young scholar in Cambridge named Roger Williams. In 1630 Williams sailed for Puritan New England. In the New World, it did not take long for Williams to find himself in conflict with the religious establishment. Among other things, he said that every individual should be free to follow his or her own convictions in matter of religion. And while not very successful, he tried to evangelize the Native Americans – he was one of the very few who believed they were human.

Baptist historian Timothy George traced four major themes that have described Baptists through their four centuries in North America. The 17th century was marked by a struggle for liberty.

Puritans who had been persecuted for their beliefs in Old England persecuted, whipped, and even hanged those who disagreed with them in New England. Williams got wind that the authorities were coming to arrest him in Salem, Massachusetts. He fled in the dead of winter and Narragansett Indians came to his aid. They gave him land where he established a city where all would be welcome regardless of religious belief. He called the city Providence because of God’s providential care. Williams founded the First Baptist Church in America there in 1636.

Others suffered for their beliefs. Henry Dunster, the first president of Harvard College, was forced to resign his position in 1654 because he refused to have his newborn child baptized. Baptists in Virginia were fined and imprisoned because they refused to get a license from the state allowing them to preach. Because of the persecution it faced, the entire congregation of the Baptist church in Kittery, Maine moved to Charleston, South Carolina where it became the first Baptist congregation in the south. The early years of Baptist life in this country involved a struggled for freedom.

A major theme of the 18th century was revival, says George. Baptist faith spread throughout the colonies and after the American Revolution, the Baptists denomination grew in size dramatically. By revival, I think George meant the spread of the faith more than the methods of revivalism, which were more of a 19th century phenomenon. The 18th century was the time of the First Great Awakening, and Baptist faith spread across the nation. Because we are a grassroots kind of church, because we did not have to wait for denominational officials to send seminary-trained clergy to new towns on the frontier, and because Baptists were not identified with British authority as groups like the Episcopalians were, Baptists were ideally suited for the growth of the country. Methodists had circuit riders, pastors who served several churches on a circuit. Baptists were known more for farmer-preachers – what we would call bivocational ministers today.

A primary theme of the 19th century was mission. The American Baptist Home Mission Society and Foreign Mission Society were established, sending missionaries around the world as well as around the nation. John Mason Peck was a home missionary in the Midwest, mostly in Illinois and Missouri. He started 900 churches and ordained 600 pastors. He did not distinguish between races and helped start an interracial church in St. Louis. He ordained the first black clergy in the St. Louis area, former slave John Berry Meachum, who would lead that church. This was at a time when slaves were openly sold at the courthouse. Both Peck’s tireless work and his racial openness were quite remarkable.

After the railroads were built, Baptists had a chapel car ministry – the train would bring the chapel car to new towns and churches were started on chapel cars. One of those cars is on the grounds of our American Baptist Assembly in Green Lake, Wisconsin. The American Baptist Publication Society published tracts, Bibles, magazines, and educational materials. Baptists were involved in the temperance movement and abolition movement. They started schools and colleges and hospitals around the country.

A theme of the 20th century might be witness. Walter Rauschenbusch ministered among the poor of Hell’s Kitchen in Manhattan. He argued that Christian faith should be brought to bear not only on individuals, but on institutions and structures in society, and he was the leading voice of the social gospel movement. Jitsuo Morikawa was the director of evangelism for American Baptists from 1956 to 1966. His faith was shaped by his life experience. As a Japanese-American, he spent 18 months in a detention center in Arizona during World War II. The experience so heightened his sense of injustice that he devoted his life to social justice causes, and like Rauschenbusch was committed to evangelism that seeks to redeem “the soul of the individual as well as the soul of society.”

Martin Luther King, Jr. is one of the best-known Baptists of the 20th century, leading the movement for civil rights and racial reconciliation. He was educated at ABC-related Morehouse College in Atlanta and Crozer Seminary in Pennsylvania, graduating about 10 years before a former pastor of this church, Ron Wells, became the president of Crozer. In his mid-90’s today and living in Connecticut, Dr. Wells is also one of those saints we remember.

We are inheritors of a great tradition. Some of us grew up in this tradition; many of us did not. In this church, about 1/3 grew up American Baptist, about 1/3 came from some other variety of Baptist, and about 1/3 came from another tradition – among our church family are those who have been Methodists, Presbyterians, Lutherans, Roman Catholics, United Church of Christ, and more. And this too is part of our tradition. As American Baptists, we have been involved in and very much a part of the wider church.

Freedom, personal faith, mission, and witness have been broad themes of the Baptist movement over the centuries. What does all of this mean for us today?

This is actually a question of stewardship. We are stewards of this great tradition. How do we build on and live out this tradition?

Well, being stewards of tradition does not mean holding on for dear life to the way things are. If you think of all those saints of the past, that cloud of witnesses, one of the things they held in common was an openness to change. William Carey, one of the very first Baptist missionaries, served in India. He struggled to convince the people of his day that Jesus’ Great Commission, “Go ye therefore and make disciples of all nations,” was intended for them. Most at that time thought those words only applied to the apostles. Carey challenged the way scripture was read.

At a time when the church and the state were one, Thomas Helwys challenged people to rethink their understanding of scripture and of the faith. The idea of religious liberty was completely new, and completely radical.

Roger Williams, John Mason Peck, Walter Rauschenbusch, Helen Barrett Montgomery, Martin Luther King Jr. – all of these saints of the past challenged the way things were. For me, an authentically Baptist spirituality is open to change, open to new light, open to the leadings of the Spirit.
If I had to describe the Baptist way in just one word, it would be freedom. The heart of the Baptist movement is Soul Freedom, the freedom of each individual before God – the freedom and the responsibility to follow God as we understand God’s leading, the freedom to interpret scripture and discern God’s will for oneself, and even the freedom to say no to God.
Two corollaries to soul freedom are religious freedom, which is simply extending that same freedom to every other person, and separation of church and state, which is religious freedom at work in the political realm. The Baptist tradition and heritage is to move toward the future, open to the God who leads us in freedom.

With our emphasis on freedom, our tradition of change, and our understanding that God gives new light and new insight, it is ironic that so many Baptists are fundamentalists. For me, that kind of spirituality is directly opposed to the kind of adventurous spirit that has marked Baptist faith at its best.

Now, this kind of adventurous spirituality can be difficult for us. Fear and freedom are opposites, and it is easy to be fearful. But fear limits God’s possibilities for our lives. As stewards of a great tradition, we are called to set aside fear, set aside all that would hold us back, and place our hope and trust in the God who leads us forward - in freedom.

Friends, we are surrounded by a great cloud of witnesses. In freedom and in great hope, “let us run with perseverance the race set before us, looking to Jesus, the pioneer and perfecter of faith.” Amen.