Baptist Bites: Andrew Fuller, Theologian and Catalyst for Baptist World Missions

     A hundred years seems like a long time, but there was an amazing amount of revolution crammed into a single century.  If you think I'm writing about our century, you've got good reasons. But actually, I mean the 18th century. Think about it: the Industrial Revolution began in 1760's Great Britain and swept the world. The American Revolution started a tsunami in geopolitics; the traditional balance of power was upset, accelerating the shift from monarchies to democracies. The French Revolution followed in its wake, beginning in 1787.  Added to the technological, econonomic and political revolutions that took place, we covered the spiritual revolution called the First Great Awakening (1730-1755) last month. There was an additional, Second Great Awakening from 1790-1840. Taken together, you can see how so many of the old, familiar things about the Western world were suddenly tipped over, broken up and reassembled in surprising ways. The Baptist movement was in the middle of all that flux, contributing to it and being transformed by it.

     Simply gaining the freedom to meet and worship according to their Biblical convictions was a grueling, ongoing battle; we've covered some of this in previous months. But as their churches multiplied and enjoyed more relative peace, Baptists were able to shift their focus from survival to mission. The first step was to lay some theological groundwork: a compelling, scriptural challenge to take up Christ’s mandate for world missions. 

     English pastor, Andrew Fuller (1754-1815) was one of the most important theologians in Baptist history. In fact, the famous preacher Charles Spurgeon called him the greatest theologian of the 18th century.  Fuller is important for this discussion because his clear, reasonable exposition of Scripture helped English Baptists move past some of the hyper-Calvinistic teachings from earlier theologians. 

     For example, John Gill (1697-1771) was a great theological leader of the previous generation. He published a series of Scripture commentaries that most Baptist preachers used in their study. Many preachers today still benefit from his work. As a rock-ribbed Calvinist, however, Gill held forth the determinative sovereignty of God in salvation: that He has elected some people for salvation while destining others for condemnation. A corollary of this thinking is that Christ's sacrifice on the cross is only meant for the elect. The non-chosen (the reprobate) do not have access to Christ's finished work.

     This type of thinking leads to some troubling applications for evangelism. If God has already elected a certain group to salvation, and if the grace God extends to them is irresistible (another Calvinist precept), then there is no use for a preacher to urge the unbelievers in his congregation to come to Christ for salvation.  The elect won't need any urging, and the reprobate can't be saved, anyway. Christ didn't die for them, only for the elect. Andrew Fuller had grown up under preaching very much in the John Gill model, by a man named John Eve. According to Fuller, Eve “had little or nothing to say to the unconverted.” Nevertheless, the Holy Spirit undertook a direct work on Fuller’s heart, and he fell under a strong conviction of his own sin. Baptized in 1770 and maturing quickly as a Christian, the church recognized that God had definitely given him gifts for ministry. In 1771 Eve left for another church and Fuller was called to be their new pastor until 1782. He was then called on to pastor the Baptist church in Kettering, Northamptonshire. Kettering was the town in which John Gill had been born.

     When Fuller started his preaching ministry, he too practiced along the lines of Gill and Eve.  However, he’d always felt unsettled by the fact that there had been no appeal to him or other unbelievers to come to Christ.  He decided to do a deep study of some of the major Calvinist theologians, including Jonathan Edwards, John Gill, John Owen, and John Bunyan. (One wonders if it was required to be named “John” in order to be a theologian in those days!) Comparing these authors on salvation, he noted that both John Bunyan and John Owen urged preachers to extend a free offer of salvation to all people.  John Gill was opposed. He came to conclude that his former style of preaching, emulating Gill, was “anti-scriptural and defective in many respects.” He decided to make his stand that Christ had come to die for the sins of “whosoever will,” to put it in the way of John 3:16. The atoning work of Christ was offered to the entire world, and would only be applied to those who would repent and believe. The culmination of his study was to publish his first work, The Gospel Worthy of All Acceptation, published in 1785. The book’s major theme is that “Faith in Christ is the duty of all men who hear, or have opportunity to hear, the gospel.”

     Fuller’s works helped to foster a more moderate Calvinistic belief that still upheld a version of divine election, but left open the door for all unbelievers to hear and receive the benefits of the Gospel. And once the theological impetus was established, Baptists began to experience a deep passion to see the Gospel spread to the whole world. Fuller himself was a co-founder of the Baptist Missionary Society in 1792.  It was a voluntary association of Baptist churches to contribute resources and equip missionaries. Fuller made a continuous circuit of Britain between 1798 and 1813 to fire up Baptist believers and raise funds for missionaries. During this time he was away from his home about three months out of the year. The Baptist Missionary Society basically launched the Baptist missionary movement around the world. Cooperative missions is a major pillar of who Baptists are today.

     When we resume our survey next month, we’ll look at Fuller’s deep friendship with, and the Baptist Missionary Society’s support of one of our first Baptist missionaries: William Carey. 

Source: The Baptist Story: From English Sect to Global Movement, by Anthony L. Chute, Nathan A. Finn and Michael A.G. Haykin. Nashville, TN: B&H Publishing Group, 2015.

Baptist Bites: Great Awakening and the Transformation of Baptist Churches

      As we've seen so far, our denominational tradition has sprung from a complex set of historical events and personalities. Not all of our ancestors were in perfect agreement on key points. The controversy between Calvinist and Arminian camps has been an example. But this month, we will introduce a powerful movement that profoundly shook up and re-shaped many religious groups. The Baptists were no exception.  The movement I refer to is the First Great Awakening, a major religious revival that swept both England and the Colonies in the 1730's and 40's.

     Almost nothing happens in a vacuum; there are reasons that revival was able to take such a dramatic hold on the people of the time.  First, think about the cultural context.  This was the time in history known as "The Age of Reason" or "The Age of Enlightenment." At this time, people began to see reason, logic and science as the true sources of knowledge.  You might guess that this would have an effect on the spiritual climate of the churches, and you'd be right.  Suddenly, doctrines which were held for most of church history were thrown open to question and ridicule. Many decried the doctrine of the Trinity as illogical and unbiblical.  They drifted back to Arianism, that old Christian heresy which denied the full deity of Christ and the Holy Spirit, for Deism (the "divine watchmaker" error held by many of our nation's founders), or for full-on Universalism (the substitutionary atonement of Jesus was thought unnecessary, because all would be "saved" regardless of their religion.) Luckily we had Puritan and Baptist theologians to defend orthodox belief, like Reformed Baptist preacher John Gill, but still, churches were becoming more cerebral, worship was losing its power under the weight of excessive formalism, and everywhere churches were dwindling and dying out. Baptist churches were part of that trend.  

     An environmental factor might be worth considering too, especially here in America.  We must remember that life at that time was hard and short. Diseases like tuberculosis and smallpox were rampant.  In rural areas, there was always the danger of attack by tribes of Native Americans. The colonists were surrounded everywhere by misery and mortality. It probably made early Americans think seriously about their standing before God and our fleeting lives on earth.  We can guess that people were primed for dramatic, cathartic religious experiences that emphasized eternal life over this life.

     This is the context which made English and American society ready to listen to an urgent call to return to the Lord, to throw off the heavy shackles of dead reason and look to the welfare of their eternal souls.  The Lord had prepared preachers to speak powerfully into this time: men like Gilbert Tennent (1703-65), Jonathan Edward (1703-58), John Wesley (1703-91), and George Whitefield (1714-70).  The common message of these preachers formed the basis of what we'd call Evangelical Christianity today.  They emphasized 1) the sin nature of all people; 2) the eternal doom of sinners to separation from God in hell; 3) the availability of salvation to all who confess their sins to God and rely on the grace made possible by Jesus' substitutionary atonement; 3) the necessity of being "born again," a direct and emotional experience of new life in Jesus and closeness to God; and 4) that worship should not be cold and formal, but more personal and emotionally powerful.

     We know that the First Great Awakening had a powerfully transformative effect on society and churches, but it also produced a shaking and transformation of churches. Some churches dwindled and died, while new ones sprang up and grew rapidly. The future of existing churches was pretty much determined by how they responded to the revival. Take the First Baptist Church of Boston for instance. The pastor at the time was Rev. Jeremiah Condy, a Harvard-educated man who definitely valued reason and order.  He listened to the dramatic, emotional preaching of men like George Whitefield, and witnessed the ecstatic religious expressions of the audience.  He was absolutely repelled, and forbade any such exuberance in his church.  He had several congregants who supported the revival; they were offended and went on the attack. They charged him as an "Arminian." This was a meaningless charge, since the preaching and fruits of John Wesley were quite powerful as well--the church members were simply Calvinists and couldn't think of anything more insulting than to call him an Arminian. At any rate, they left the church and formed another congregation: the Second Baptist Church of Boston.  But here's the interesting point to notice: the new, pro-revival Second Baptist Church grew rapidly, while the traditionalist, First Baptist Church went into a steep decline.

     Another example was the experience of George Whitefield and his surprising friendship with Rev. Jenkin Jones of the Baptist Church in Philadelphia. An Anglican priest himself, Whitefield sadly found much rejection among his own kind. The Anglicans of that time favored formal, liturgical worship--that shouldn't surprise us. But in America, there were Baptist churches who were warmly supportive of the Great Awakening and the preachers who spread it.  These were the "New Light" churches, as opposed to the "Old Light" churches who held to tradition and formalism. Jenkin Jones enthusiastically invited Whitefield to come and preach in Philadelphia.  Whitefield had a background in acting which he put to good use.  He knew how to modulate his pitch and volume. During his preaching he would shout, tremble, weep as the occasion called for it and the people responded with powerful, emotional conversion experiences.  Jones proclaimed Whitefield a great blessing to the Church and openly prayed that God would prosper him ministry.  Whitefield knew where the winds of God were blowing; instead of the traditional churches we gladly "went to the Baptist and Independent meetinghouses, where Jesus Christ was preached." There were theological differences between him and Baptists like Jones, of course--Whitefield believed in infant baptism, and Jones didn't.  But still, Whitefield considered him a true brother in the faith.  He said that Jones preached "the truth as it is in Jesus," and that he was "the only preacher that I know of in Philadelphia who speaks feelingly and with authority."

     Jenkin Jones had an assistant pastor, though, named Ebenezer Kinnsersly. He was definitely an "Old Light" kind of preacher, who despised the emotionalism he saw in the revival.  In open opposition to his senior pastor, he reached out to Benjamin Franklin's Philadelphia Gazette to air his objections. He complained that the new converts were "filled brim-full of enthusiastical raptures and ecstasies, pretending to have large communications from God, to have seen ravishing visions..."  He denounced Whitefield's preaching style: "What spirit such enthusiastic ravings proceed from...they proceed not from the Spirit of God...Such whinings, such harangues, big with affected nonsense...operate on the softer passions, and work them up to a warm pitch of enthusiasm."  Jones called Kinnersly before the whole church and publicly censured him.  Eventually, Kinnsersly was excommunicated from the church.

     Clearly, the First Great Awakening produced a mixture of good effects as well as bad ones--Jonathan Edwards himself wrote to that effect.  Nonetheless, it is clear that God blessed these new, Evangelical churches with rapid increase.  The course of the Baptist churches in America was profoundly changed, and much of the results led toward our emphasis on world missions.  We'll turn to that subject soon.

My sources for this article include Baptists in America: A History by Thomas Kidd and Barry Hankins (New York: Oxford University Press, 2015); The Baptist Story: From English Sect to Global Movement by Anthony Chute, Nathan Finn, and Michael Haykin (Nashville: B&H Publishing Group, 2015); and "Great Awakening" (History.com editors, 9/20/19), https://www.history.com/topics/european-history/great-awakening .

Baptist Bites: Faithful Freedom vs. Antinomianism

     Last month, we covered the founding of Rhode Island and Providence Plantations as a colony by Roger Williams. We took special notice that religious freedom was fixed into the DNA of the colony from the beginning.  Each resident was to “freely have and enjoy his and their own judgments and consciences in matters of religious discernment.” [from the 1663 Charter] That’s a decent way of expressing a distinctive of Baptist belief—we call it “soul freedom.” This is the right and competency of each Christian to read, interpret and apply Scripture in the service of Christ. We believe that the Holy Spirit makes this possible. He teaches us the meaning of God’s Word, applies it to our individual lives, and bends our consciences toward a life of obedience.  It happens on an individual level, but while we hold this distinctive to be important, it opens us to complications and abuses that must be wisely navigated—especially in our current times.  But I’ll turn to history to supply a couple of good illustrations.

We’ve focused on the spiritual journey of Roger Williams for a few months, noting his evolution from Anglicanism, to Puritanism, to Separatism. His bold advocacy for religious freedom put him on a collision course with both Church and State in the Massachusetts Bay Colony and led to his banishment. He escaped to the land we now call Rhode Island and began the formation of a new colony.  Three years after his exodus, Williams acknowledged that he had developed Baptist convictions and formed the First Baptist Church in America. He had become convinced that believer’s baptism was specified by Scripture, so he asked a man named Ezekiel Holliman to baptize him by immersion (Holliman had been a lay leader in Williams’ Salem congregation). Williams then re-baptized Holliman and about 10 others.

Having rejected the authority of the Puritan church, however, Williams quickly ran into the same catch-22 that John Smyth had encountered decades before. He became concerned that his baptism was invalid because it was administered by someone outside the line of apostolic succession that the Anglican church believed they had.  Williams had been baptized by a mere layman, after all. Without the spiritual pedigree offered by his denominational roots, how could his baptism be true? He came to believe that his baptism was false, as was the baptism that he had administered to the others. It caused him such anguish and confusion that a mere four months after Williams had founded the first Baptist church in the New World, he left it.  He studied and sought any other church bodies that preached apostolic doctrine with legitimate apostolic authority, but of course he couldn’t find any religious body that met his standards. Williams remained outside any church membership for the rest of his life, observing the Lord’s Supper with his wife only.  You can see that when Williams broke from the authority of church hierarchy and embraced his own freedom to interpret Scripture, his Christian walk hardly became simpler. If anything, things became so complicated for him that he couldn’t find his way out of the maze he’d constructed in his own mind.  This shows the trouble we can encounter without the collective study and discernment of a fellowship prayerfully seeking the mind of Christ in a given area 

The second example is from the life of Williams’ good friend and fellow pastor, John Clarke. He founded and pastored the second Baptist church in America at Newport, Rhode Island. Upon arrival in the New World, Clarke joined with a body of believers in Boston and made friends who were embroiled in what was known as the Antinomian Controversy. Clarke’s friends included leaders of a movement which advocated “free grace.” Adherents of this theology believed that Christ’s grace in salvation was so all-encompassing that it did not depend at all on the believer’s outward behavior—our actions can neither save us nor keep us saved. Pastor John Cotton was the main preacher of this theology, and it seems that John Clarke sympathized with it as well.  Pastor Cotton was supported by a small band of leaders representing the clergy, laity, and even political authority. (The colony’s governor at the time, Henry Vane, was a supporter.) The biggest lightning-rod of this movement was a woman named Anne Hutchinson, a formidable woman with a strong mind and strong convictions. She taught, and probably preached, on behalf of the movement in her own home.  Under her leadership the movement grew, but in her boldness, she seemed to take John Cotton’s teachings farther than her pastor had intended. She took the “free grace” emphasis to the point that amounted to “antinomianism” in the eyes of prominent church leaders in the colony. “Antinomian” means “opposed to the law.” If they were right, it amounted to a violation of the command Paul gave in his letter to the Galatians (5:13) – “For you, brethren, have been called to liberty; only do not use liberty as an opportunity for the flesh…”

The free-grace movement was the minority voice in Massachusetts.  Most Puritan clergy agreed that Christ’s grace alone could bring salvation: we cannot make ourselves more worthy of it by our works.  However, they taught that after new birth in Christ, our natures are changed so that we begin performing works of righteousness in gratitude and service to Christ.  Indeed, those works are fruits that signify that our faith is genuine (Eph. 2:8-10; James 2:17-18). They saw these “Antinomians” (coined by them as a derogatory term) as a threat—and the traditional faction had the power in the Colony.  In 1637 Governor Vane was voted out of office and he returned to England in disgrace. He was replaced by John Winthrop, an ardent conservative.  Both Church and State officials united in purpose to break and banish the “Antinomians.” Trials were held, and harsh sentences were handed out to every leader and supporter they could find.  They were disarmed, deprived of voting privileges, excommunicated from the church, and banished from Massachusetts.  One of the most fiery and publicized trials was that of Anne Hutchinson herself, whose intelligence and confidence enabled her to carry on a verbal fencing match with her accusers for some time.  But as the pressure mounted, she admitted to another belief that she’d been teaching for some time: many of her teachings came by direct revelation from the Holy Spirit, and such revelations were of equal weight to the Scriptures. This was of course complete heresy to the ears of her tribunal, and Anne was excommunicated and banished forthwith.

Anne Hutchinson ended up in Rhode Island because of its religious freedom protections, and although John Clarke hadn’t been a central figure, he could see the writing on the wall: he would not be welcome in Massachusetts.  He also moved to Rhode Island, where he founded and pastored the church in Newport in 1644. He definitely led the church with the same sort of “free grace” emphasis, and he did give place to the leading of the Holy Spirit in church meetings. Believers were allowed to speak, or “prophesy” as the Spirit led. “Prophecy” did not mean predictions of the future, or secret information revealed by the Spirit (unrelated to Scripture) though: it strictly meant short exhortations on Bible passages to edify the church. People were allowed to speak on the Scripture under consideration, as the Spirit provided insight, and it was done in an orderly manner.

Clarke’s Newport Baptist church was the only congregation that arose in the antinomian controversy that thrived, and I think that’s because Clarke found a balance point between unrestrained “soul freedom” and faithfulness to Biblical authority.  He avoided the confusion Roger Williams encountered when he would not trust in the Biblical discernment of any group but insisted on his own—and he and his wife ended up isolated. He also avoided the bold autonomy of Anne Hutchinson, who came to believe the insights supposedly given to her by the Holy Spirit were of equal weight to written revelation.  Clarke nurtured a church culture that gave believers a chance to speak as the Spirit led, but kept it controlled and life-giving by insisting that it center on  the final authority of God’s Word.

These historical examples are important for us today, amid a postmodern culture where all truth is believed subjective.  There is no recognition of a universal standard of truth. In this climate we Baptists, with our emphasis on soul freedom, are constantly under pressure to fall to the spirit of the age. When “my truth” and “your truth” can be diametrically opposite yet seen as equally “true,” soul freedom can easily be confused with unbridled antinomianism.  If we make personal autonomy the end-all of how we judge what it true, the only possible outcome is to be blinded, lost at sea as we are “tossed to and fro and carried about with every wind of doctrine, by the trickery of men, in the cunning craftiness of deceitful plotting” (Eph. 4:14). God does not want us swept up in this hurricane of untruth—there have to be guiding stars which we can all see and navigate by. For Baptists, the North Star is God’s written revelation to us, the Bible. That is the final authority, the one fixed point that orients everything else. But we know that we have to understand it properly, not to take it out of context so that we end up at the destination we wanted to go all along. There are triangulation points we should heed. Baptists are locally autonomous; like Smyth and Williams, we look to no creed or magisterium to decide matters for us. But we also strive to remain interdependent between congregations. We have gatherings between our congregations for fellowship, equipping, discernment, and for accreditation of our pastoral leaders. In that way congregations influence one another to stay true to God’s Word. Within our own congregations, we believe that each believer can be given insight to the meaning and application of the Scriptures under consideration. We actively encourage those insights as the Spirit shares them among us. But we also trust in the Holy Spirit to lead us to the truth together, and agree that the plain meaning of God’s Word is the one standard that all teachings must adhere to. In this way we test every spirit, as the Bible instructs, and rely on the power of God the Holy Spirit to lead us unfailingly to the Truth, instead of conflicting personal “truths” that will keep us in the dark.  The Lord wants us to shine a light that is clear, not hazy, and to sound a trumpet with a certain note on central matters of the Gospel. Baptists must keep the proper balance between soul freedom and Biblical authority to maintain the witness that our culture so desperately needs today.

Note: my sources for this article include The Baptist Heritage: Four Centuries of Baptist Witness by H. Leon McBeth (Broadman Press, 1987), and Baptists in America: A History by Thomas S. Kidd and Barry Hankins (Oxford University Press, 2015)

Baptist Bites: Religious Freedom in Providence Colony

      Our story this months picks up in June 1636, when Williams and several followers met up and began to plan out a new colony: Rhode Island and Providence Plantations. To begin, they drafted a “compact” that would govern them until they were granted colony status by the King. Even in this early framework, you can observe the cardinal ethic that would guide them: religious freedom. We’ve seen that this is an historic hallmark of Baptist belief—it has remained with us since.  The compact clearly stated that ordinances would govern residents, “only in civil things.” As to the religious life of the people, the 1663 charter for the Colony  makes clear that:

No person…shall be in any wise molested, punished…or called in question for any differences in opinion in matters of religion…but that all…persons may…freely have and enjoy his and their own judgments and consciences in matters of religious concernment.

It should be noted that there was a long wait between the original compact (1636) and the official Colonial Charter from the King (1663). During the intervening years, Williams had much work to do, drawing on friendship connections he’d made with legal colleagues from his youth. His education, and their advice, give him important insights for drawing up a Charter that would be acceptable to the King. It took some campaigning on his part as well. In the early 1640s Williams traveled back to England in order to seek favor from the right people.  It was there that he composed his famous tract, The Bloudy Tenent of Persecution (1644). Though the wording was clunky, it remains one of the most powerful and stirring calls for religious freedom known to our country’s history. In the tract, Williams used Romans 13 to argue that God commanded a two-fold structure of authority: a civil state, with civil officers wielding civil weapons (law and force); and a spiritual state, with spiritual officers wielding spiritual weapons (2 Cor. 10:3-5, Eph. 6:10-18). He argued that the civil state only had authority to govern in the civic sphere, making laws governing lawful conduct and just treatment. To put it another way, he believed that the civil state was only given authority governing the “second table” of the Ten Commandments, all of which deal with our conduct toward others. The “first table,” or first half of the Commandments, deal with our relationships with and duties toward God. First-table matters were the exclusive jurisdiction of the Church, not the State.  He used the analogy of a ship to make this clearer: when a ship was out on the seas, the captain of that ship had all authority to set rules and judge infractions. Once the ship reached port, however, the captain’s authority vanished.  He himself came under the authority of the local magistrate.

Obviously, Williams was passionate about freedom of religion.  We need to take care not to read this with the jaded eyes of today’s postmodern society which will permit no absolute rule of truth.  Williams was no situational ethicist; he absolutely upheld the authority of Scripture and would not hesitate to condemn wickedness where he saw it and the Bible clearly defined it.  Williams’ stand on religious freedom was not an attempt to escape God’s truth and accountability to it.  Civil authorities were there to punish lawlessness, and the Church was there to rebuke error. At the same time, Williams’ had seen English Christians martyred for their faith in his boyhood, London home.  During his legal apprenticeship in his youth, he saw horrible miscarriages of justice -- persecution, banishment and executions -- against those who conscientiously disagreed with Church authorities.  He and his friends had experienced persecution for themselves in Massachusetts.  And though he firmly upheld God’s truth, he saw that the wickedness of men employing cruelty in the name of the Lord had to be stopped. Baptists have since held religious freedom close to their hearts.  We believe each person is free and accountable to worship and follow God in accordance with Scripture and the dictates of conscience.  But especially in our day, we see that a good thing can become a dangerous thing when carried too far.  Next month, I hope to share some thoughts on the need for Baptists to carefully watch the line between faithful freedom and antinomianism.

 

Your Brother and Servant,

Pastor Scott.

 

Note: my sources for this article include The Baptist Heritage: Four Centuries of Baptist Witness by H. Leon McBeth (Broadman Press, 1987), The Rhode Island Royal Charter of 1663 (https://docs.sos.ri.gov/documents/civicsandeducation/teacherresources/RI-Charter-annotated.pdf) and The Bloudy Tenent of Persecution by Roger Williams (https://www.gutenberg.org/files/65739/65739-h/65739-h.htm)

Baptist Bites: Roger Williams' Dangerous Ideas

When we last checked in with Roger Williams, he had left the Plymouth church, in 1633, and was made pastor of the church at Salem, Massachusetts.  But though he found the Plymouth church to be insufficiently “separated” from both the Anglican tradition and all those who remained in fellowship with them, his time in Plymouth had brought him into proximity with the Native American population of the area. Williams believed he had a Gospel responsibility to reach out to them, and so he began a course of learning their language. His work and writings in that area were quite helpful to other colonists; many unnecessary battles were prevented because of Williams’ primer on the language. Understanding what a stranger is actually saying is key to peaceful relations with him.  During his time with the tribespeople, however, Williams’ conscience was affected in the same manner as William Penn. He began to hold the conviction that English colonists could not lay claim to the land just because their King said so. The land belonged to the Native Americans, and if the English colonists wanted to acquire some land, they should be treating with its rightful owners.

For two years, Williams continued as pastor of the Salem church. But its proximity to Boston made him more susceptible to the attention of the ruling civil/religious authorities in the city.  In 1635, he was brought before the court to answer four charges. First was the matter we just discussed: who owned the land. Williams proclaimed that the colonists should repent of the notion that they could take the land from the Native peoples, just because the King said so.  This understandably ruffled feathers and made him some enemies. The second thing that made Williams unpopular was that he had been speaking against taking oaths to the civil authorities. He reasoned that many people in the colony were not true Christians, and that it was blasphemous to ask unbelievers to take oaths in the name of God. He did not believe that civil authorities should be bound by oaths to God in the first place; such vows should only be taken to God in service to His Own Kingdom. The third charge brought him into direct conflict with established church authorities: Williams preached that it was sinful to sit under the teaching of any minister connected with the Church of England. He further taught that true believers should also separate from anyone who would not separate from Anglicans themselves—even if it was a family member! And fourth: that the civil authorities only had sway over the bodies and property of citizens. When they attempted to make laws compelling the consciences and religious affiliations of its citizens, they were treading on ground that belonged only to the Kingdom of God. 

There was really no question as to whether Williams was “guilty” or not: he’d taught these things openly, and he made no attempt to disguise it.  The judgment of the court was that Williams would be exiled from the colony within six weeks; if he behaved himself and refrained from these teachings, they would give him until spring of 1636.  But by now we’ve come to understand how bold Williams was. He continued to meet secretly with his flock and teach them just as before. When authorities found out, they sent officers out to arrest Williams and place him on a ship bound for England. This was January of 1636.  But here is an interesting twist: apparently, Massachusetts Bay Governor Winthrop had some liking for Williams and sent word to warn him.  Williams fled to the wilderness.

For the better part of four months, Roger Williams had to face the brunt of a harsh winter.  He faced hunger and exposure to the elements; as he said, “…not knowing what bread and bed did mean…exposed to a winter’s miseries in a howling wilderness of frost and snow.”*  His choice to honor the Native communities by learning their language and addressing them as sovereign owners of their own lands, however, reaped a reward. It was their kindness that made the difference between life and death. It was a terribly uncomfortable experience, but Williams did survive.  Spring came, and by June of 1636 Williams had arrived at the place we now call Rhode Island. He and some followers from Salem worked to establish the colony of Providence Plantations.  He chose the name to give thanks to God, who had provided for his escape from his Massachusetts Bay persecutors and kept him alive through a terrible winter.  When we return next month, we’ll cover the colony and church he started, and the principles that made it truly unique for the time.  Many of those principles are still part of our DNA as Baptists.

*My sources for this article include The Baptist Heritage: Four Centuries of Baptist Witness by H. Leon McBeth (Broadman Press, 1987) and Roger Williams: New England Firebrand by James E. Ernst (The MacMillan Company, 1932)

Baptist Bites: The Good and the Bad of Roger Williams' Separatism

      We have been surveying the life of Roger Williams, the most prominent founder of the Baptist movement here in North America. We have covered his early life and strong religious zeal. As a law clerk, he saw the unjustly harsh treatment of the nonconformists who questioned the theology and practices of the Church of England. As he pursued his theological education further and took up his first clerical position, his own convictions led him in the Separatist direction. His zealous, outspoken tone no doubt hastened the disfavor he began to experience from the Anglican hierarchy, until in 1630 he booked passage with his wife aboard the ship Lyon to America. It seems that the radar of King Charles I had locked onto him. He would have soon been arrested by the order of Charles’ Archbishop of Canterbury, William Laud. Laud was England’s answer to the young Pharisee, Saul of Tarsus, who hunted down believers in Jesus and led them, shackled, to their doom.  Laud was very zealous for the high liturgy of the Church of England and demanded strict allegiance to its hierarchy. Those who fell out of line were often publicly whipped, mutilated, experienced facial branding, or exiled.  Williams had no desire for that treatment for himself and his beloved wife. But he left England with some resentment, writing to a friend that “It was bitter as death to me when Bishop Laud pursued me out of this land, and my conscience was persuaded against the national church and ceremonies and bishops.”* That backdrop is important for understanding what formed his mindset as he arrived in America.

 

His reputation for learnedness and zeal preceded him; he was promptly offered a position of teaching pastor at the prominent Boston church. Williams turned them down flat, and not in the most diplomatic tone. He judged the Boston church to be only half-hearted in their separation from the Anglican Church, and he communicated enough of that to them that the church was deeply hurt and resentful about it.  In spring of 1631 he was installed as pastor at the nearby church in Salem, but the civil/church authorities in Boston found out about it. They waged a campaign to discredit Williams and pressure the Salem church to turn him out. Williams then moved to Plymouth, where he took a position as assistant minister. The people in Plymouth gave him a warm welcome, but Williams stayed only two years. Again, he began to conclude that the Plymouth church was not “separated” to the degree he thought appropriate. Though they tried very hard to be supportive, he pushed his Separatist views to the extent that they too became hurt and pushed back. Elder William Brewster wrote that he was concerned that Williams might “run the same course of rigid Separatism and Anabaptistry, which John Smith…” had done. Brewster’s prediction turned out to be right on the money.

 

In 1633 Williams moved back to Salem, where he was appointed minister regardless of objections from his detractors in Boston. He remained there until 1635 as he progressed in his views of Separatism and religious freedom. He grew in his belief that political power should never be used to coerce the spiritual beliefs and practices of the people. When his time at Salem ended, it wasn’t because of church conflict. He had brought the ire of civil authorities. Thus began the series of events that led to his flight from Massachusetts and establishment of a new colony founded on the principle of religious liberty. It was there that Williams founded the first Baptist Church in America, though his Separatist mindset led him to pull away even from his own church. But we will discuss more of that in the future.

 

For this month, I’d like to conclude with a brief evaluation of this ever-separating impulse, held by Williams and others in Baptist history.  Protestants, and especially Baptists, have shown a keen ability for perceiving areas of belief which differ from others. This has led to many church splits and the formation of new denominations. But to what extent is this a healthy impulse? We have to be careful about evaluating historical events through the lens of modern sensibilities; our biases may cause us to dismiss people of the past too easily. We need to remember that there were principles involved in the Protestant Reformation, principles that were viewed as making the difference between eternal life and death. I would say that many reasons for the split from the Catholic Church could be viewed as true “essentials.” But Protestant groups have continued to splinter, and Baptists in particular have done so. At what point have we entered unhealthy territory? Baptists have had legitimate concerns. Believers’ Baptism is clearly attested by Scripture and Church history, and we have good reason to believe that immersion is the mode taught in Scripture. Baptists like Williams have rightly contended that belief must be freely led by independent study of the Bible, that personal conscience cannot be compelled by civil power. Williams was a true champion of this last point, and we owe so much to him and others like him who were willing to suffer persecution for these beliefs. There was much to the “good” side of the ledger for our Baptist founders.

 

But Williams is also an emblem of the factious spirit that plagued both historical and contemporary Baptists. We’ve read about why Separatists concluded there was still too much corruption and compromise in the Church of England. They believed that there could be no continued fellowship with the Anglicans.  However, Williams and other Baptists took this impulse too far. Not only were the Catholics anathema, not only were the Anglicans anathema because they would not separate from the  High-Church trappings of Catholicism – Puritans were anathema because they didn’t cut off all association with Anglicans. Even Separatist churches were the enemy if they weren’t separated enough, or even if they continued to associate with those who didn’t separate enough. Do you see the absurd and unhealthy places this can take us to, this spirit of factionalism run amok? Guilt by association is a diseased way of thinking that wounds Christ’s church. Eventually, Williams separated from the church he founded and he was all by himself. Baptists today need to learn from the unhealthy aspects of our history as well as the healthy ones. We need to learn that there is a difference between essentials and non-essentials. Baptists differ on some points from other denominations, and those differences are valuable enough to uphold. What we must not do is cast judgment upon other Christian denominations who agree with us on the essential points of orthodox belief but differ on some non-essential points.  Let us value and maintain the things that make us Baptists, but let us call biblical Christians in other denominations by their right names: brothers and sisters in Christ.

 

*Note: the direct quotations in this article are from Roger Williams: New England Firebrand by James Ernst (New York: Macmillan Company, 1932)

Baptist Bites: Roger Williams' Formative Years

     Last month, we considered the framework of intolerance and persecution of the Massachusetts Bay Colony. We need to keep this in mind, because it catalyzed one of our early American Baptist forebears, Roger Williams, to found the first colony that guaranteed religious freedom.  Williams later established the First Baptist Church in America, in Providence, Rhode Island.  But let’s look at Williams’ formative years, to understand how they forged Williams to take such bold steps in his adult life.

Roger Williams was born around the year 1603, to his parents James and Alice. His father was a successful tailor and merchant, always eager to get ahead. He provided well for his family and saw to it that they were faithful attenders at their Church of England congregation. Roger showed a lot of zeal for spiritual things early on, having a powerful religious experience at age 12. His zeal, though, would later develop along lines that his father wouldn’t anticipate.

Roger was quite serious about his education and became adept at writing shorthand. This skill was noticed by another man attending church, a prominent judge named Sir Edward Coke. He observed Roger swiftly jotting down every word of the sermon. He was so impressed with the boy’s skill that he gave him a job at his office. Coke turned out to be a valued mentor in Roger’s life. Being steeped in legal matters gave him important knowledge he’d use later, in requesting a charter for the colony of Providence Plantations (Rhode Island). Coke’s associates also provided Williams with a network of political influencers who would smooth the way for the charter’s approval.

As a law clerk, however, Williams witnessed first-hand the persecution endured by any who dissented from the teachings of the Church of England. It increasingly struck him as unjust that anyone should be oppressed for their convictions.  Sir Edward Coke sponsored much of Williams’ education, even arranging for him to study at Cambridge University. Williams completed his Bachelor’s degree, but dropped out before completing his Masters. It seems that the corruption he saw in the Anglican Church (the principles of the Church would have been a foundational component of his studies) ate at him until he couldn’t take it anymore. His dissatisfaction was a big part of his withdrawal from the school.

Williams became a chaplain to a private estate upon leaving school. He continued to show a great deal of zeal in his beliefs, and tended to show a lack of tact at times. That zeal definitely foreshadowed the future. After a failed romance and long illness, he formed a special relationship with his nurse, Mary Barnard, who was herself a minister’s daughter. They were married in 1629.

By that point, Williams’ beliefs had progressed beyond Puritanism to hardline Separatism. He was convinced that the Church of England was false and irredeemable. Only total separation from the Church would please God. Williams wanted to read the Bible for himself and come to his own convictions about what it required. But in the legal climate of England at the time, these beliefs set up Williams and his wife for almost certain persecution. Roger and Mary booked passage on a ship sailing from England to America at the end of 1630. It was a long, rough and stormy voyage getting to their new home. But not long after they arrived, Williams found that there were more storms ahead. Religious intolerance had already taken root in the New World. He would be required to take more bold stands, and more risks, until he and his family truly felt at home. We’ll turn to that story next month.