Drawing and Re-Drawing Boundaries

The history of evangelicalism, as well as that of the Southern Baptist Convention, in the twentieth century is marked by ongoing debates over identity and boundaries.  In this paragraph, Margoret Bendroth seems to put her finger on one reasons for these almost constant (and likely necessary) debates:

In some traditions, especially those with visible hierarchies, questions about who belongs and who does not travel through set institutional channels.  Thus, for example, the line separating Catholics from non-Catholics is rarely an object of dispute–although internal debates about what constitutes a ‘good Catholic’ might well persist.  But when hierarchy is weak, continuing and often irresolvable debate is almost compulsory; boundaries stay strong only under regular scrutiny.  In recent years, this theoretical understanding has proved very important in analysis of modern evangelicalism, a diverse movement that has generally lacked a central institutional or ideological core.

– From Bendroth’s essay, “New Directions on the Congregational Way,” in American Denominational History: Perspectives on the Past, Prospects for the Future, ed. Keith Harper (Tuscaloosa: University of Alabama Press, 2008), 33:

The Rise of Christianity in the United States

A good reason to spend some extra time studying nineteenth-century Christianity in America:

During [the nineteenth century] the United States experienced one of the most dramatic expansions of Christianity that to that time had ever taken place in the long history of the church.  From 1815 to 1914, the U.S. population grew very rapidly (from 8.4 million to 99.1 million).  Yet over the same century Christian adherence grew even faster, from under one-fourth of the population to over two-fifths of the population, that is, from something around two million to something around forty million.  Only the recent history of Christianity on the continent of Africa and in China reveals a more rapid increase of Christian adherents in a single geographical location.

– Mark Noll, The New Shape of World Christianity: How American Experience Reflects Global Faith, 110-111.

Numbers

Kanzo Uchimura (1861-1930), a Japanese Christian leader, spent a lot of time in North America.  In 1926, he gave his take on American Christianity:

Americans are great people; there is no doubt about that.  They are great in building cities and railroads. . . .  Americans too are great inventors. . . .  Nedless to say, they are great in money. . . .  American are great in all these things and much else; but not in religion. . . .  Americans must count religion in order to see or show its value. . . .  To them big churches are successful churches. . . .  To win the greatest number of converts with the least expense is their constant endeavor.  Statistics is their way of showing success or failure in their religion as in their commerce and politics.  Numbers, numbers, oh, how they value numbers!

- Qtd. in Mark Noll’s The New Shape of World Christianity: How the American Experience Reflects Global Faith.

Southern Seminary’s Anniversary and a Question of Honor

This has been a big week in the history of the Southern Baptist Convention. On Tuesday, messengers at the annual meeting passed an important resolution that could help shape the future of the Convention for the better. On Wednesday, Southern Seminary celebrated its 150^th Anniversary. During the celebration, Southern’s current president, Al Mohler, honored former president, Duke McCall, by naming a new welcome pavilion after him. Dave Doran, the president of one of fundamentalism’s flagship institutions, Detroit Baptist Theological Seminary, has written “Honor to Whom Dishonor is Due,” in which he criticizes Mohler and Southern for honoring a heterodox leader like McCall:

This is what boggles my mind. Here you find a staunch theological conservative (Al Mohler), backed by other staunch conservatives (e.g., chairman of the SBTS board, Mark Dever), naming a pavilion in honor of a man whose service at SBTS produced the mess which Mohler is credited for reversing. Recognizing him at the event is one thing, but naming a pavilion after him? What biblical justification can there be for something like this?

Symbolic gestures are important. Naming schools after new evangelicals like Billy Graham and buildings after liberals like Duke McCall are symbolic gestures that mean something. And they mean something bad to many of us.

I just don’t get it.

Let me say this first. I do not know Dr. Doran, but I have heard wonderful things about him from good friends of mine. From what I hear, Dr. Doran is my superior, both in biblical wisdom and spiritual maturity. But I do not understand the fundamentalist viewpoint on this, and hope to better understand it through further dialogue.

This is what I don’t get. Where is the biblical verse, passage, theme, or inference that teaches us to dishonor, kick dirt on, or otherwise humiliate those we have defeated? Honor to whom dishonor is due? How is that?

Duke McCall was a moderate. He was a politician who fired the twelve most liberal professors in 1958. He was essentially a-theological, like much of the SBC at that time, and allowed a lot of heresy to go on during his watch. He was unfaithful in many ways, and it hurt a lot of people. But he was the president of SBTS for over thirty years. He gave the best years of his life to raise money, to lead, and to build the school. Every other president of Southern has a substantial building named after him, and McCall is getting  a welcome center. Should Southern Seminary erase all memory of moderates from their history?

Where is the article from fundamentalists criticizing Bob Jones University for continuing to carry the name of Bob Jones Sr., who held unbiblical, racist views that undermine the gospel and deeply hurt the cause of Christ? Where is the article against Southern for having buildings named after slave-holders? Does racism not undermine the gospel? Is the view that white and black people should not mix in a school or be married, evangelical? Should we not separate from those who justify the subjugation or separation of one race from another? I fail to see how naming a building for Duke McCall is any less problematic than naming a university for Bob Jones, Sr.

Just as Dr. Doran “doesn’t get it,” I don’t get his viewpoint either. Rather than an article rejoicing in the strong, uncompromising stance that SBTS has come to have after years of heterodoxy (it is a miracle of God), we get (what seems to me like) nit-picking? Southern has named a pavilion after a former president—nobody at SBTS, nobody in Louisville, nobody in the entire SBC world is going to be confused on Southern’s theology by this honor of a man who led the Seminary for 20% of its history.

One last thing: Al Mohler took hard shots for years. He received regular death threats and had to have bullet proof windows installed on his house. His children were mistreated. An entire city was against him. Professors that he had fired slandered him and wished him dead. But he engaged in the battle, rather than withdrawing. As a result, a place that once preached a false gospel now trains more faithful pastors than anywhere on earth. Then, rather than kicking dirt on the grave of those he fired, Mohler reached out to them. Mohler and others in leadership at SBTS have reached out to elderly former professors and presidents. They have cared for them and visited them as they were sick. Mohler and others have cared for President Honeycutt’s widow since he died a few years ago. They have continued to engage former professors on matters of truth and the gospel. Mohler and others have, behind the scenes, demonstrated incredible grace and Christ-likeness to their enemies, continuing to befriend and share the gospel. Yesterday Mohler and SBTS honored a dying man on the day they celebrated what God has done at Southern–and it is amazing. I wish all Christians could celebrate with them.

–See also, “Mohler, McCall, Truth, and History,” which Greg Gilbert (former assistant to Dr. Mohler) posted today over at the 9Marks blog.

What is it to have a god?

From Martin Luther’s Large Catechism.

He is discussing the first commandment: “You shall have no other gods.”

What is it to have a god? What is God?

Answer: A god is that to which we look for all good and in which we find refuge in every time of need. To have a god is nothing else than to trust and believe him with our whole heart. . . .

The purpose of this commandment, therefore, is to require true faith and confidence of the heart and these fly straight to the one true God and cling to him alone. “The meaning is ‘See to it that you let me alone be your God, and never seek another.’ In other words: ‘Whatever good thing you lack, look to me for it and seek it from me, and whenever you suffer misfortune and distress, come and cling to me. I am the one who will satisfy you and help you out of every need. Only let your heart cling to no one else.

. . . . Many a person thinks he has God and everything he needs when he has money and property; in them he trusts and of them he boasts so stubbornly and securley that he cares for no one. Surely such a man also has a go–mammon by name, that is, money and possessions–on which he fixes his whole heart. It is the most common idol on earth. He who has money and property feels secure, happy fearless, as if he were sitting in the midst of paradise. On the other hand, he who has nothing doubts and despairs as if he never heard of God. Very few there are who are cheerful, who do not fret and complain, if they do not have mammon. . . .

So, too, if anyone boasts of great learning, wisdom, power, prestige, family, and honor, and trusts in them, he also has a god, but not the one, true God. Notice, again, how presumptuous, secure, and proud people become because of such possessions, and how despondent when they lack them or are deprived of them. Therefore, I repeat, to have a God properly means to have something in which the heart trusts completely.”

- In The Book of Concord: The Confessions of the Evangelical Lutheran Church, translated and edited by Theodore G. Tappert (Philadelphia: Muhlenberg Press, 1959), 365-66.

New Article: Passing the Plate

Christian History online just put up an article I wrote on the history behind the weekly offering in America.  Here is a taste:

Religious disestablishment, which historian James Hudnut-Beumler calls “the largest instance of privatization in all of American history,” forever changed the way American churches did business. Churches and pastors could no longer look to the government for money. They had to come up with new ways to raise the funds they needed in order to survive and thrive in the free market of 19th-century American religion.

Churches used a variety of methods to raise money. For example, while some Christians today act like they own the pew they occupy each Sunday, many Christians in the 1800s actually did own their pew (or at least rented it). Some churches rented pews by auction each year, while others sold them to pay for the building and then taxed the value of the pew for annual revenue. The most expensive seats were in the front, and the cheap seats were in the back. Free seats were available in the back or the balcony, but a free pew carried a social stigma.

Read the whole thing.

A Peculiar Proposal

Adoniram Judson, the first Baptist missionary from America, married Ann Hasseltine on February 5, 1812. They boarded a boat 2 weeks after their wedding and headed to Burma. They had a rich marriage, and a fruitful ministry. A month after they first met, Adoniram wrote Ann a letter asking for permission to be her suitor (which was close to what we would call a proposal). She did not answer it for several days. When she finally did, she evaded the question, saying he would need to ask her parents first. Here is the letter Adoniram promptly sent to her dad:

I have now to ask, whether you can consent to part with your daughter early next spring, to see her no more in this world; whether you can consent to her departure, and her subjection to the hardships and sufferings of a missionary life; whether you can consent to her exposure to the dangers of the ocean; to the fatal influence of the southern climate of India; to every kind of want and distress; to degradation, insult, persecution, and perhaps a violent death. Can you consent to all this, for the sake of him who left his heavenly home, and died for her and for you; for the sake of perishing, immortal souls; for the sake of Zion, and the glory of God? Can you consent to all this, in hope of soon meeting your daughter in the world of glory, with the crown of righteousness, brightened with the acclamations of praise which shall redound to her Saviour from heathens saved, through her means, from eternal woe and despair?
–Quoted in Courtney Anderson, To The Golden Shore: The Life of Adoniram Judson (Valley Forge: Judson Press, 1987), 83.

A few things impress me about this letter. First, Adoniram Judson was bold and decisive in his pursuit of Ann. After knowing her only a month he proposed. I heard someone say recently, “You can’t just get married.” Actually you can. If you know what kind of girl you are looking for and you find her, be decisive and pursue marriage.

Second, Ann’s dad, John, impresses me. What a disturbing letter to get. When I met with my wife’s Dad I can assure you I did not emphasize hardships, sufferings, dangers, fatal climates, or violent deaths. One of John Hasseltine’s friends said he would rather tie his daughter to the bedpost than let her go across the world. But John told Ann it was her decision, and Anne married Adoniram and died in Burma. We need more parents who give their children to the service of Christ. How discouraging it is for a young man or woman to feel called to the mission field and have their Christian parents try to talk them out of it or forbid them to go. Will we raise our children and entrust them to God for His glory and the good of immortal souls?

Third, I am impressed by the single minded commitment of the Judsons to the cause of Christ. Adoniram was not exaggerating, or being dramatic in his letter. Going to live in Burma was a very dangerous mission, and they both knew it would probably end in death among strangers. Ann struggled with her decision, but eventually decided to marry the man she loved. Soon after deciding to marry she wrote to her friend:

I feel willing, and expect, if nothing in providence prevents, to spend my days in this world in heathen lands. Yes, Lydia, I have about come to the determination to give up all my comforts and enjoyments here, sacrifice my affection to relatives and friends, and go where God, in his providence, shall see fit to place me.
–Quoted in Anderson, To The Golden Shore, 84.

The Prayer of Five Widows

One year after the Auca Five (Jim Elliot, Nate Saint, Ed McCully, Peter Fleming, and Roger Youderian) were martyred by Auca Indians, their wives wrote a prayer that was published in Christianity Today, (January 7, 1957, pp. 6-8). They prayed that Christ would be glorified in their own lives:

Our hearts are filled with gratitude for the privilege He gave us in beings the wives of men who were chosen to be slain for His sake.  None of us is worthy.  It is all of His grace, but we know that the Lamb is worthy, a thousand times, the lives of our husbands and of us.  He chose to glorify Himself in their death–may He now glorify Himself in our lives.

Then, in what I think is the most powerful part, they prayed for their children:

Not only do we ask that Christ be glorified in the Aucas and in us, but also in our children.  Most of them will have no recollection of their fine fathers.  But our Lord gave His word, ‘All they children shall be taught of the Lord, and great shall be the peace of they children.’  We ask for His wisdom in training them, for His Spirit in us, that they may be as obedient as their fathers.  How wonderful it would be if He should prepare one or more of them to go to the Aucas!  We would give them to Him for his use, asking that they come to know Him as Savior and Lord at an early age.  Far be it from us to withhold from the Lord the lives of these little ones, children of the men who did not withhold their own lives.  May they sing from true hearts,

Faith of our Fathers, Holy faith
We would be true to Thee till death.

A Day in the Life of William Carey

Lately I’ve been working to become more efficient and to accomplish more each day.  Somehow I don’t think I’ll ever match William Carey’s efficiency:

[From an 1806 letter, Carey describes his typical day of work at the Serampore mission] “I rose this day at a quarter to six, read a chapter in the Hebrew Bible, and spent the time till seven in private addresses to God and then attended family prayer with the servants in Bengalee. While tea was pouring out, I read a little in Persian with a Moonshi [a native assistant or secretary] who was waiting, when I left my bed room. Read also before breakfast a portion of the Scriptures in Hindoosthanee.

“The moment breakfast was over sat down to the translation of the Ramayuna [a classical Indian epic] from Sangskrit, with a Pundit … continued this translation till ten o’clock, at which time I went to [Fort William] College, and attended duties there [teaching Bengali, Sanskrit, and Marathi] till between one and two o’clock — When I returned home I examined a proof sheet of the Bengalee translation of Jeremiah, which took till dinner time.…

“After dinner translated with the assistance of the chief Pundit of the College, greatest part of the 8th Chap. of Matthew, into Sangskrit—this employed me until six o’clock, after six sat down with a Tilingua Pundit … to learn that Language. Mr. Thomas [an acquaintance] called in the evening; I began to collect a few previous thoughts into the form of a Sermon, at Seven o’clock, and preached in English at half past seven … the Congregation was gone by nine o’clock. I then sat down to write to you, after this I conclude the Evening by reading a Chapter in the Greek testament, and commending myself to God. I have never more time in a day than this, though the exercises vary.”

This edited version comes from Christian History and Biography, Issue 36.  You can read the entire letter in multiple locations, including here.

Baptist Studies Online, and 2 Book Reviews

Baptist Studies Online is a good resource for anyone interested in Baptist history.  The site is run by some church history professors–Keith Harper and Nathan Finn–at Southeastern Seminary.  It went up about two years ago, and was given a face lift a few weeks ago.  Check it out.  They have a great page of links for Baptist history.  The best part of the site is The Baptist Studies Journal. This is a new, entirely online, peer-reviewed journal, devoted entirely to Baptist history.

The newest volume just went up last week.

See my review of James J. Thompson’s 1982 work, Tried as by Fire: Southern Baptists and the Religious Controversies of the 1920s. This is the only book that has dealt in depth with fundamentalist/modernist related controversies in the Southern Baptist Convention in the 1920s.  One of this journal’s distinctives is that they review important Baptist books from past decades, as well as new ones.   This is a good feature, I think, especially considering the paucity of good books written on Baptist history each year.

I also reviewed a volume edited by Larry McSwain, Twentieth-Century Shapers of Baptist Social Ethics.