Americans are woefully ignorant about religion. Most
claim to be religious or spiritual in some sense but
they know little to nothing about various religious
groups that are all around them. Very few people
understand Baptists. Okay, maybe that’s expecting too
much. “Understanding Baptists” may take a lifetime. I’m
not sure I can claim that! But what I mean is very few
people realize how diverse Baptists are. There is no one
person or group that speaks for all Baptists—that would
go against the very nature of being Baptist. And yet I
meet people who think there must be a Baptist
headquarters somewhere. Even the local newspaper, in
this metro area packed with Baptists, occasionally
refers to “the Baptist church” even when it is referring
to all Baptists generally. I have tried to inform them
that no such thing exists. One can speak rightly of “The
United Methodist Church,” but one cannot speak rightly
of any Baptist group using the word “The” followed by
“Church” except the local Baptist congregation (as in
“The Baptist church on the corner”). Baptist
denominations are always only voluntary associations,
conventions, conferences, of local Baptist congregations
and have no authority over them (except to expel them in
which case the local congregation keeps everything and
can simply join another Baptist group).
Like many other movements and religious-spiritual
groups “Baptists” are a centered set, not a bounded set.
We (I include myself as a Baptist) are a group without
borders or boundaries. If someone thinks there are
boundaries around “Baptists,” I’d like to know what it
is. When they mention it (or them) I simply ask “Who
says?” There’s no magisterium to say; there’s no Baptist
pope to say; there’s no Baptist headquarters to say. As
a religious type Baptists have a history and all we can
do is talk about certain historical commitments common
to most Baptists and then admit there are always
exceptions. Of course, someone might say of the
exceptions “Well, they’re not true Baptists.” But they
can’t make that stick. All they can really mean, at
best, is “In my opinion that group of so-called Baptists
have wandered so far away from anything historically
recognizable as ‘Baptist’ that I don’t consider them
Baptists.” I will say that about some groups of
Baptists, but I can’t enforce it. Nobody can. After
saying that, I still have to admit that if they call
themselves “Baptists,” given the peculiar history and
character of Baptists, they are.
So let me illustrate with three groups of Baptists
about which few people are aware—including most
Baptists. Even most Baptists scholars, scholars of
Baptists, aren’t aware of them. But they should be.
First, Christianity Today recently reported
on a Baptist denomination (if any Baptist groups can be
called that this one can!) in the former Soviet republic
of Georgia (not the state of Georgia in the U.S.). It’s
called the Evangelical Baptist Church of Georgia and
mimics the Eastern Orthodox in some theology, church
leadership (bishops) and worship (incense and icons).
(See the on line article “The Baptist Bearing Robes and
Incense” dated June 22, 2013. “Google” it!) Fascinating.
Second, a group of Baptists in the Caribbean
(especially Trinidad and Tobago) is called “Spiritual
Baptists.” It exists in organized form in New York as
The Spiritual Baptist Archdiocese of New York. All one
has to do to see diversity among Baptists is “Google”
this group and/or watch some of their worship services
and ceremonies on Youtube. According to some scholars
who have studied them, at least some of their churches
have incorporated communication with the dead into their
services—not séances per se but the pastor receiving
greetings from recently deceased members and passing
them on to the congregation. Rumors of syncretism abound
about this group of Baptists and especially rumors about
the blending of Orisha beliefs and practices with their
Christianity.
Third, there exists in the Appalachian Mountains of the
U.S. a “sub-denomination” of Baptists called
“No-Hellers” by some observers. See scholar Howard
Dorgan’s book In the Hands of a Happy God: The
“No-Hellers” of Central Appalachia (University of
Tennessee Press, 1997). These are “Regular Baptists” who
do not believe in hell—fundamentalist universalists!
They have entire congregations that together constitute
a network although there is no headquarters as such.
There are at least “57 Varieties” of Baptists in the
U.S. alone and hundreds more around the world. What do
they all have in common beyond the word “Baptist” (and
in some cases even that’s missing!)? Well, that’s hard
to say. So far as I know, however, all 1) practice
believer baptism and not infant baptism, 2) deny that
water baptism is necessary for salvation but make it a
condition of full church membership, and 3) emphasize
religious liberty. Historically, all trace their roots
back in one way or another to the first Baptist
congregations in England (that sojourned in Holland for
a time) in 1610/1611 if not further back to the radical
Reformers, the Anabaptists.
So what lesson does this teach? We should be wary of
generalizing about any religious group; there is likely
to be more diversity than we suspect if it is old and
large. Baptists are among the most diverse of Protestant
groups. Baptists of all people should learn to
acknowledge diversity.
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Selected Comments
I remember seeing on the news a Baptist church that
practiced polygamy
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I've heard that there are some Baptist Buddhists
running around out there, too
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I wouldn't be surprised
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Many Baptist conferences, conventions, church
associations have statements of faith. Some function as
creeds within those particular groups. My point was that
there is no single document that all Baptists adhere to
other than the Bible (and they interpret it
differently).The Baptist Faith & Messages is a
distinctively Southern Baptist document; it does not
speak for other Baptists.
