THE DIVINITY SCHOOL at WAKE FOREST UNIVERSITY
BT: And that happens both in local churches and denominational structures.
BJL: Yes, yes, yes. When you read Will Campbell's book, The Stem of Jesse, about the desegregation of Mercer University, you see that is exactly what I mean. It was like the admissions person who had been to Sunday school and said: "We've got to admit that if we are going to go Africa and evangelize black people, we can't tell them they can't come to Mercer University.” The guy in the admissions office being a dissenter against the whole Southern institutionalized racism in one institution - that's profound.
BT: I love asking historians to predict the future. Many of our readers identify with one or more of the Southern Baptist Convention, the American Baptist Churches and the Cooperative Baptist Fellowship. What do you see happening with those three groups in the immediate future?
BJL: I just wrote a paper on the future of Baptists and gave it over at Union University. Greg Wills from Southern Seminary gave another paper with another perspective. Particularly they wanted me to talk about the Southern Baptist Convention. There are several things I'd say. One, the current demographic state of the SBC illustrates that even inerrancy won't forestall demographics indefinitely. By that I mean the denomination is aging, most of their churches are plateaued or declining, and they are admitting that. Their baptismal rates have not kept pace with the population. If you start really scratching below the surface of how they count baptisms, they are not baptizing very many adult, first-time converts. If you take out preschoolers, elementary schoolers and multiple-baptized people, then first-time adult converts in the SBC, I suspect, would be relatively low. The fascinating thing about the Southern Baptists right now is they want to have it both ways. They want to say, "We have narrowed the boundaries; we got rid of the liberals; we put women in their place; we are dealing with what to do about public schools; we're the Republican Party at prayer; and we changed our confession of faith to narrow the theological boundaries - and we did that intentionally.” Then they turn around and whine because their numbers are declining. I would advise them, if I were still a Southern Baptist, to celebrate who they are - and say: "We set the boundaries much more narrowly because ‘narrow is the way that leads to life and few there be that walk on it,'” to quote the founder of a religion. "And we know who we are, and you have to be a disciple of Jesus to follow us - as we tell you. So we don't expect many people to come, and it's the fault of the liberals that we had so many in the first place.” But, you see, they have been culture dominant so long in the South that the loss of culture dominance is extremely painful to them. So they have a new president who wants them to be nice - because that's the only way people will listen to them again. They've been so shrill in the press for so long that they ought not be surprised that people don't want to fool with them - and they should celebrate that because they did it intentionally. So they are in an identity crisis internally. Then they have these bloggers come along, who are young turks on a different kind of post-modern journey, and they want voice - and they found voice on the Internet. They can't get it in the denomination, so they found it on the Internet and they are driving the old leaders crazy. And the old leaders are aging and dying, and they've not necessarily brought along a new group that either wants to or can sustain the old 19th century system they took over. It's a fascinating case study. Then they learned something else, some of them have. In American pluralism, there are things you can say in your congregation that will fill the congregation with "Amens” and "Hallelujahs,” because it's a statement of conviction. "God Almighty does not hear the prayer of a Jew” is the classic one. I suspect [Former SBC President] Bailey Smith had said that all over Oklahoma for years and everybody agreed with him. But here's what they learned: What sounds like conviction in your particular sect can easily sound like bigotry when it gets on CNN. And you don't get to control what you meant by it. They've done that for so long in the public square, once a year at least, meeting some place and beating up on some subgroup in American culture. And people can read the newspaper. In pluralism, everyone gets to speak. But once you speak in the public square you don't get to control the definition of what you say. So there are fascinating case studies on that level. But basically the whole system is coming apart and they don't know what to do about it. And we haven't even started the conversation about Calvinism as the new inerrant theology for people who have an inerrant Bible. So that's where they are. Is the Southern Baptist Convention going to vanish? Oh, heavens, no. But it's in big trouble - and that doesn't have anything to do with liberals or moderates or women.
BT: So you do think the Calvinist debate is significant?
BJL: Yes, because once you get an inerrant Bible you've got to have an inerrant theology that goes with it. Increasingly the Calvinists are saying the Calvinist vision of being Baptist is the only real vision. At Union, Greg Wills said the General Baptists were not real Baptists because they didn't practice immersion. I've never heard that in my life and was stunned by it. But it's a brilliant idea, which is to say: Therefore, the General Baptists weren't really Baptists. Therefore, we don't have a contradictory theology in Baptist life - and, therefore, we're the only real Baptists and the rest of you aren't.
BT: What about ABC and CBF?
BJL: I'm a member of the oldest African-American Baptist Church in Winston-Salem, 1879, First Baptist Highland Avenue. We were, until Knollwood Baptist Church joined the ABC, the only ABC church in Winston-Salem. So I am, currently, officially an American Baptist. The American Baptists have a polity that was very loose, intentionally so, over the years. They had a very small constituency all along, maybe even in the 1980s or so, of 1.6 million. So they didn't have a lot of members to lose and they've divided over the homosexual question and the polity question. Polity meaning: Can you tolerate churches and associations that are welcoming and affirming [of homosexuals]? And they are just coming apart. It's real sad to see. There are multiple efforts to save it, and that still may be possible. But it's very difficult. All of these three Baptist groups, by the way, are impacted by the same common permanent transition in American religious life that we talked about earlier - the decline of denominational identity, the growth of the megachurch, the role of emerging churches, where there are multiple options for churches and individuals outside the old structures. CBF, from my point of view, has essentially become a society in the historic Baptist sense. It is a clearinghouse for different churches and individuals and interest groups that want to do ministry collectively as Baptists, but don't necessarily want to be collective in the elaborate old Southern Baptist Convention ways. And when it does that, I think it is anticipating postmodernism. But it also has its tendency, by some of its leaders, to want to be a denomination and step into organizational connectionalism. The recent decision to privilege four [theology] schools, among a whole group of them, probably had to be made. I celebrate the fact the CBF decided to do something. But it kind of parallels, you know, the SBC - which has six seminaries and the CBF has four. So you get into that old connectional system. Now they've got to decide what they are going to do with the other schools that educate students for CBF churches. They are not clear on that in my view. They've got a lot of work to do, but I think the willingness is there. I'm very encouraged by the work of CBF Global Missions. "[New missions coordinator] Rob Nash is one of my closest friends. So I'm very pleased with the potential he brings to that post. So I think CBF has to be lean and a little more hungry, and listen to the varying options out there in terms of connectional ways. If it does that, I think it will do well. But if it denominationalizes much more, it will be difficult.
BT: You have spent a lot of your life in theological education and most recently in the upstart of the divinity school here at Wake Forest. Moderate Baptists who left the SBC - with its six seminaries - have now created more than twice that many programs. Is theological education becoming localized?
BJL: Yes, theological education has become more local - or more regional is what I'd say. And that is the nature of Baptist polity. All these Baptist groups were free to start schools if they wanted to. They didn't coordinate that much so they've got to find a way to pay for them. That is a huge problem. And paying for theological education in the future is the most challenging thing for theological schools in this country, and for Baptist schools in particular. The ABC is a case in point with the difficulties their schools are having immediately. But the future is for everybody. Church groups are going to have to decide how they are going to fund theological education. And the schools are going to have to decide how they are going to go get money and if they can sustain the schools. New kinds of partnerships, I'm happy to say, are developing between churches and theology schools. We are partnering with local congregations in this region constantly. So I have great hope for new kinds of partnerships, with the decline of denominational connections, that will benefit local churches and students.
BT: Is the number of new theology schools that have arisen in recent years surprising?
BJL: There wasn't any coordinated effort in how many schools we were going to start. It just happened. And that is just the messiness of the Baptists. The other thing is that this generation has no memory of the controversy unless it came into their local congregation or their school. I used to say they have no memory of it. But many of them go to schools like Shorter or Belmont, so, sadly enough, we are dragging another generation into our 25-year-old disfunction - and I hate that. But on the other hand, they don't remember the details like we do and we have to let that go with them. But they have also discovered that they can go to the six SBC seminaries, or the new schools that have been related to CBF in some way, or they can go everywhere from Fuller Seminary on the West Coast to Yale on the East Coast. It's a buyer's market for them. The old connection that you've got to go from Mercer to Southern or Southeastern or Southwestern is not there anymore. It may still be with some of the SBC types. But they can go to Beeson as easily as they can go to Louisville, and they do. The other thing I'd say - and I don't mean to be hokey about this - at Southern, it was so huge and you had to be very intentional about getting to know students. At the same time, at Southern, students had multiple choices about who to take for particular courses. At the smaller schools, they pretty much don't have those choices and nothing gets diluted. We know our students, and we're keeping very close relationships with them as they go into ministry - and they give that back to us. That has been a great gift to me. They are extremely talented. I'm a little bit in awe of this generation of divinity school students. They are much more open on issues of race. Many are interested in preaching and liturgical diversity. And, by in large, the ones we see are very good students. Some of the best preaching I've heard from students is from this generation. I'm not exaggerating, because I've been listening to student preachers - good preachers - for a long time. I really have great hope for Baptists in particular and the church in general when I spend time with these students. They have multiple gifts for what they want to do in ministry whether that be parish ministry or community ministry. It has also forced us to deal with theological education in new ways. It has reinvigorated me for the classroom.
Baptists Today is an autonomous, national news journal based in Macon, Ga., providing unrestricted news coverage, thoughtful analysis and inspiring features.www.baptiststoday.org
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