I wrote this tribute on that day, and I’m republishing it here as part of the transfer of my content from the old blog site.

It is unlikely that his name will be mentioned on any news broadcasts, and he may not be known even among many Christians, but Dr. Robert Charles Sproul (best known as R.C. Sproul) has been a gift to the Church in our day. Some others besides me will be able to say much more about the far-reaching impact of his ministry and teaching, and it would be worth the reader’s time to learn more about R.C. Sproul’s life and labor. Dr. Sproul seemed a tireless theologian, pastor, and evangelist.

I am writing this brief post to pen my own personal gratitude and sorrow.

My gratitude for Dr. Sproul is beyond my ability to express at the moment. He has shaped my Christian development more than any other person. Those men I love and those who know me well, those men who have personally rebuked me and patiently taught me, many of them often pointed me to Dr. Sproul’s teaching in various forms. In this way, Dr. Sproul was even impacting me through the time and effort of others.

His books were my introduction to reformed theology (especially The Holiness of God and Chosen by God). His radio program and podcast (Renewing Your Mind) were my steady diet of Christian teaching, and I gorged myself on these for years. His annual conference (Ligonier’s National Conference) in Orlando, FL was the first Bible conference I attended. My good friend (Scott Richards) and I were giddy to watch Dr. Sproul and other great Bible teachers deliver such powerful and faithful messages.

Dr. Sproul’s teaching is the reason I know of Augustine, both his Confessions and his arguments against Pelagianism. Dr. Sproul is the reason I see Thomas Aquinas through rose-colored lenses, even though I am not particularly a fan of scholasticism. Dr. Sproul is the one who introduced me to Martin Luther and Erasmus of Rotterdam, John Calvin and Ulrich Zwingli. Dr. Sproul taught me the importance of the Protestant Reformation and explained the Westminster Confession of Faith in terms I could understand.

Dr. Sproul taught me about philosophy and helped me understand the consequences of various ideas. He took me from dust to glory in an overview of the whole Bible, introducing me to biblical theology (though I did not know it as such at the time). His voice narrates the Christmas hymns of my favorite album for this time of year, and Dr. Sproul has helped me pass along the Gospel to my own sons with his children’s books (my favorite is The Prince’s Poison Cup).

My gratitude is bursting, and so my sorrow is heavy. My sadness stems from two sources: the loss of someone so integral to my own spiritual growth and the loss of such a gift to the Church more broadly. The first is easy to understand, but the second may prove to be more lastingly painful.

While I am fully convinced of God’s providence and power, I also know that God raises up titanic men and women over the course of time who serve His cause more valiantly than most. Dr. Sproul was no doubt a heroic servant of Christ in this world. His wit and his theological depth, his acumen and his humble fidelity to Scripture, all will be sorely missed.

May God bless the Sproul family, and may God equip and raise up others to carry the torch that Dr. R.C. Sproul carried so brilliantly.

Finishing my afternoon energy shot and folding away my tattered copy of Martin Luther’s Bondage of the Will, I noticed a man sitting next to me reading a Bible. I stroked my beard and wondered, “Is he reading an acceptable translation?” Thankfully, I observed the ESV impression on the binding when he raised the book to give himself a closer look at the text.

The man realized I was eyeing his Bible, and, with an inquisitive look, he longingly asked, “Sir, can you help me know what this means?” Sliding his Bible over to me, he put his finger on the page, indicating his concern with the Apostle Paul’s letter to the Ephesians. He was particularly vexed by chapter 2, verses 1-10, so I made use of the passage.

Starting with verse 1, I scourged him for being a terrible wretch. The pitiable man tearfully agreed, and even admitted that he was worse than I knew. Resisting his emotional attempt to derail my exposition and draw upon my sympathies, I simply continued. But when I read verses 4 and 5, he rudely interjected, “Who is this ‘Jesus’?! And what does it mean to be ‘saved’ by ‘grace’?!”

As you probably figured, this story is entirely made up (except for the bitter coffee part… seriously, be a man). Evangelistic encounters probably never happen like this.

In fact, I am a pastor of a relatively small church in rural East Texas, and evangelism can be tricky in my neck of the woods. I only remember meeting three conscious non-Christian in the last eleven years (Royce, Courtney, and Kedrick). My hometown evangelistic conversations usually focus on gently pointing out the inconsistencies between the professions of faith I hear and the unfaithful practices I see. I often feel like quoting Inigo Montoya. “You keep using the word, ‘Christian.’ I do not think it means what you think it means.”

Christians should be evangelists, but sometimes the task can feel intimidating and exhausting. Here are four things I try to remember about evangelism so that I might be more faithful to the task. I hope these will be an encouragement to you.

One, evangelism is teaching the gospel with the aim to persuade.

I am stealing this definition of evangelism from Mack Stiles. His little book Evangelism is fantastic. Among numerous gems in this book, Stiles defines evangelism by writing, “Evangelism is teaching (heralding, proclaiming, preaching) the gospel (the message from God that leads us to salvation) with the aim (hope, desire, goal) to persuade (convince, convert).”^[1]

Each part of this definition is worth our time, and Stiles dissects it in the book, but let me stress the content of evangelism here. Don’t assume the gospel. The gospel is the power of God, but only if we convey the message from God that leads sinners to salvation in Christ (Romans 1:16). I try to remember that evangelism is happening when I articulate, explain, and apply the message of the gospel of Jesus Christ.

It’s that simple, and it helps if I don’t complicate it. Be encouraged, and just make the content, the description, and the application of the gospel part of your normal conversation. I sometimes run into a guy at my gym who will say to me, “Tell me something good.” Inevitably, I remind him that the holy God of the universe has reconciled guilty sinners like us through the life and death of His own Son. This is the best news of all, and you might be surprised at how easy it can become to include it in common conversations.

Two, if you’re a pastor, then preaching and teaching are your primary evangelism.

It’s good and right for church members to look to their pastors as exemplary evangelists, but this can sometimes be misunderstood. Pastors don’t usually work among non-Christians, and they typically spend the bulk of their time among their own church members and family. This means that pastors often do not have nearly as many evangelistic opportunities as their church members do out in the world. However, this does not mean that pastors are not regular evangelists.

There are several passages in Scripture which make me involuntarily shudder when I read them. The Apostle Paul’s charge to Timothy “in the presence of God and Christ” is one of those passages (2 Timothy 4:1-5). What a thrilling and serious charge! The responsibility given to Timothy is “preach the word” (v2). Paul describes that task by writing, “be ready in season and out of season; reprove, rebuke, and exhort, with complete patience and teaching” (v2). After Paul warns Timothy of the resistance he is sure to encounter, Paul urges him again, “do the work of an evangelist” (v5).

These charges – “preach the word” and “do the work of an evangelist” – are not separate from each another or disconnected. In other words, to be a preacher of the Scriptures is to do evangelistic work. I try to remember that the primary and profound work of every pastor is to teach the gospel among his own congregation by preaching good expositional sermons regularly. If you’re a pastor, then be encouraged that your preaching and teaching are your primary evangelism.

Subscribe now

Three, evangelism is life to some and death to others.

While every Christian has the privilege and responsibility to teach the gospel with the aim to persuade, its important to remember that not everyone will hear the message of the gospel with gladness. In fact, some will not respond well at all.

The Bible reminds us that the “aroma of Christ” is a “fragrance of death to death” for some (2 Corinthians 2:15-16). Of course, some will breathe in the gospel with pleasure, as a “fragrance from life to life” (v16), but this is not always so. I try to remember that some people will love the gospel and others will actually hate it.

If your evangelistic efforts are not well received, then be encouraged. It may be that you need to take a hard look at how you’re communicating - you may be harsh, unkind, or unloving. But even if you’re making the best effort, you cannot change any sinner’s heart - only God can do that. If you will simply be faithful in evangelism, you can trust God with the results.

Four (speaking of results), the results of evangelism are God’s alone.

If the aim of evangelism is to persuade, then we measure success by rate and frequency of conversion, right? Well, not exactly. Obviously, our deep longing is for the lost to be found, the dead to be raised, the unregenerate to be born again. Therefore, we do celebrate when someone responds to our evangelistic efforts by repenting from sin and trusting in Christ!

However, we are unwise to think that evangelistic encounters are only worthwhile if we can experience a positive response. The Bible buttresses our faltering confidence in the face of an undesirable reaction by reminding us that we may “plant” and “water” the seeds of the gospel, but “only God gives the growth” (1 Corinthians 3:7). I try to remember that faithful gospel conversations are always worthwhile, and I ask God to produce growth.

In ordinary Christian living, there are many and varying opportunities to bear witness for Christ in the world. If you are like me, then you may regularly feel a sense that you are not doing all you can or that you are not seeing the kind of results you’d like. And yet, we can take heart and be encouraged.

If we are faithfully teaching and talking about the gospel of Christ with fellow Christians and non-Christians, then we are doing the evangelism God has called us to do. If we are lovingly and prayerfully conveying this exceptionally powerful message, then some will love Christ and others will hate us. In all of this, we may be sure that our Chief Shepherd sees all, and He shall reward His servants with an unfading crown (1 Pet. 5:4).

Now, let’s go get a manly cup of joe and talk with someone about Jesus.

^[1]Stiles, J. Mack. Evangelism: How the Whole Church Speaks of Jesus (9marks: Building Healthy Churches) (p. 27). Crossway. Kindle Edition.

Authors

Nathan Chapman is an experienced practitioner and an accomplished professor of law, presently the Associate Dean for Faculty Development and A. Gus Cleveland Distinguished Chair of Law at the University of Georgia School of Law, specializing in constitutional law and the intersection of law and religion. Chapman also graduated (in 2006) from Duke Divinity School with a Master of Theological Studies, focusing on the convergence of law, religion, and ethics. Such a background and personal interest make Chapman a capable contributor to a conversation about the First Amendment and religious freedom in America.

Michael McConnell has a similar legal and academic history, and his personal interest in constitutional law and religious liberty is akin to Chapman’s, but McConnell is older and has served as a circuit judge for the United States Court of Appeals for the Tenth Circuit (2002-2009). Thus, his legal and academic careers are more extensive, and his experience as a practitioner more significant. At present, McConnell is the Richard and Frances Mallery Professor of Law and Director of the Constitutional Law Center at the Stanford School of Law, focusing on constitutional law, religious liberty, and the separation of powers in America.

Subscribe now

Neither Secularism Nor Religious Establishment

With this book, Chapman and McConnell provide readers with a legal history and commentary on the Establishment Clause of the First Amendment of the US Constitution. The authors’ thesis is, “the Establishment Clause is not a thumb on the scale for secularism in public matters… but a constitutional commitment for Americans to agree to disagree about matters of religion” (emphasis added).[1] Specifically, Chapman and McConnell argue that the Establishment Clause was an agreement to “refrain from using the power of government to coerce or induce uniformity of belief, whether that belief is Christian or non-Christian, secular or religious.”[2] Rather, “all faiths are free to flourish, or not, according to the zeal of their adherents and the appeal of their dogma – not according to the will of the majority, the power of elites, or the authority of the state.”[3] In conclusion, the authors eagerly welcome a return to the “freedom ensured by the Establishment Clause,” which they say “has facilitated the development of the most religiously heterogenous society the world has ever known.”[4]

Chapman and McConnell divide the book into two parts: Part One is a history of the Establishment Clause, detailing the circumstances and arguments surrounding its codification as law at the American founding, and Part Two offers legal commentary on the application of the Establishment Clause to modern controversies, beginning around the middle of the twentieth century. Both aspects of the First Amendment (i.e., contextual history and varying application) are critical to understanding what it means and how it has been interpreted by the Supreme Court (and lower courts) in America over the last two-hundred and fifty years. Religious freedom in America did not spring up from nowhere, and the present meaning and application of the Establishment Clause are directly affected by historical and legal developments.

Subscribe now

Disestablishment and Renewed Establishment

One major contribution of this book to the discussion of the Establishment clause is Chapman’s and McConnell’s effort to define religious establishment as the framers of the First Amendment understood it. The authors write, “though the details differed by jurisdiction, establishments [at the time of the American founding] all relied on an array of legal devices designed to bring about religious uniformity and discourage dissent.”[5] These legal devices included “laws restricting public office to members of certain religious groups; laws requiring church membership, attendance, or financial support; and prohibitions on dissenting forms of worship.”[6] It is important to understand, as the author’s note, that “at the founding, a majority of the states had these sorts of laws and Americans understood them to be the essence of religious establishment.”[7] This implies not only that the definition of religious establishment was clear and understood, but also that the American founders did not reject religious establishment wholesale.

Chapman and McConnell outline six elements or categories of law that form a religious establishment: “(1) control over doctrine, governance, and personnel of the church; (2) compulsory church attendance; (3) financial support; (4) prohibitions on worship in dissenting churches; (5) use of church institutions for public functions; and (6) restriction of political participation to members of the established church.”[8] These elements are recognizable in most of the states at the time of the American founding since nine of the original thirteen included state-established religion in their state constitutions. Thus, the First Amendment (and the Establishment Clause in particular) was not a repudiation of religious establishment in total, but a specific rejection of federal establishment. The authors write, “Most scholars… conclude that the phrase ‘no law respecting an establishment of religion’ does two things: It broadly prevents any establishment of religion at the federal level… and it protects state establishments from federal interference.”[9]

Over the course of subsequent decades, however, all the states dismantled their religious establishments. Americans and their legislators overwhelmingly agreed that religion was good for society, but they largely came to perceive voluntary religious participation as the optimal approach. Not quite one-hundred years later, in 1868, the Fourteenth Amendment was added to the US Constitution, and Chapman and McConnell “are persuaded by the historians who argue that the architects [of that amendment] understood Section One to apply the individual freedoms set forth in the bill of rights to the states.”[10] In other words, it was the original intent of the Fourteenth Amendment to apply the prohibition of religious establishment to the states as well. Ultimately, the Supreme Court formalized this interpretation in 1948 (see Everson v. Board of Education).

As Chapman and McConnell describe (with historical, academic, and legal detail), the Supreme Court of the United States has been inconsistent since the mid-twentieth century with its varying decisions regarding religious disestablishment, religious liberty, and separation of church and state. The language of “separation” itself has a thin grounding in history and legal argument, but it has become the dominant metaphor and rationale in jurisprudence on the matter.[11] Furthermore, courts have sometimes (often?) applied disestablishment and separation, especially in more recent decades, as a thumb on the scale for secularism in America.

Chapman and McConnell oppose this religious antagonism, registering warnings and distinctions, such as Justice Goldberg’s warning “of a brooding and pervasive devotion to the secular and… hostility to the religious,”[12] or Chapman’s and McConnell’s own insistence that “neutrality and secularism are not the same thing.”[13] And yet, the authors do not seem to acknowledge the depth or breadth of the divide between secularism and religion (especially Christianity) or the apparent inevitability that one will dominate over the other in any given society. Indeed, secularism is now a new religious establishment in America.[14]

Subscribe now

Where is the Agreement?

Chapman and McConnell write, “Our civil rights have no dependence on our religious opinions not because religion is irrelevant to civic life but because in a diverse liberal republic like the United States, our civil rights have no dependence on our adherence to any particular opinions, whatever they are” (emphasis added).[15] On this basis, Chapman and McConnell argue that neutrality is the key to unity in a pluralistic society, and they plead for a return to a proper understanding and comprehensive implementation of the Establishment Clause.[16] The authors write,

“If the Establishment Clause were properly understood and comprehensively implemented, its very existence would dampen the ferver of our extreme polarization, because it would guarantee that neither side can use its momentary political power to impose an orthodoxy and suppress disagreement. Each of us then could focus on living our own lives in accordance with conscience, expressing our beliefs to our children and to willing listeners, and evaluating public policies on their merits rather than on whether their adoption will empower ‘the other side.’”[17]

And yet, Chapman and McConnell seem at odds with the American founders and with epistemological logic. The American founders noted that our “unalienable Rights” are “endowed by [the] Creator,” and that “Governments are instituted among Men” to “secure these rights.”[18] Whatever one may argue regarding the definition of “Creator” in the minds of America’s founders, it is plain that they believed “rights” do utterly depend upon our adherence to a particular religious opinions, including at least the following: (1) that there is a creator, (2) that the creator has established a transcendental set of rights for humans in society together, and (3) that those rights are self-evident and securable by government. This is not necessarily religious establishment, but neither is this religious neutrality. One need not establish a church on these truth-claims, but one cannot unite with a citizenry who believes these truth-claims if they themselves do not share the same convictions.

Furthermore, Chapman and McConnell seem inconsistent with epistemological logic. They claim that neutrality on transcendentals or religious orthodoxy will allow citizens and legislators to evaluate public policies on their merits. However, merit is a question of goodness, virtue, and value, and such a question demands an ethical standard upon which to make an evaluation. Secularism has an ethical standard or rule (albeit a pragmatic and unstable one), and it is diametrically opposed to any religious standard (especially Christianity, which was the assumed standard at America’s founding). For example, there is no neutral position on abortion, since secularists believe that dependent human life in a mother’s womb is undeserving of dignity and protection and Christians (largely) believe that human life at every stage is worthy of dignity and protection. So too, secularists believe that gender is a social construct, independent of biological sex (indeed, many make the argument that biological sex must conform to one’s sense of gender), whereas Christians (largely) believe that sex and gender are inseparable features of God’s good and immutable design for humanity.

Chapman and McConnell claim (in their conclusion) that “The divisions between Baptists and Anglicans, Quakers and Presbyterians, New Lights and Old Lights… were every bit as intense as the divisions among far more diverse Americans today.”[19] It may be that the intensity of disagreement is similarly divisive in today’s American culture and society (including feverish arguments, political action, and social divisions), but given the facts on the ground, the comparison between Americans of the late eighteenth century and those of the early twenty-first century is laughable. At America’s founding, citizens divided over questions of secondary and tertiary theological matters – modes of worship, religious leadership, local church polity, and the role of institutional religion in public life (i.e., voluntarism or coercion). Today, Americans are divided over questions of fundamental theology and anthropology – the nature and dignity of man, the reality and knowability of a transcendent moral standard, the definition and value of marriage, and the virtue of societal norms.

Subscribe now

Conclusion

Americans used to believe that civilization was built upon shared transcendent convictions, and they used to believe that America was particularly free and virtuous in the world because her convictions and resulting societal structures were superior to other nations. It is not our neutrality or our diversity alone that made us unique as a nation, but our unity on matters of virtue and human dignity and responsibility despite our differences. If we understand the Establishment Clause of the First Amendment to the US Constitution to be a legal demand for neutrality on matters of religious belief (i.e., theology or metaphysics), then secularism will inevitably maintain and extend its present domination of American culture and politics. If, however, we understand the Establishment Clause to be a legal check on government-established churches only, then Christians in America may yet recover at least some of the transcendent beliefs and virtues that once made our nation great among the rest.

[1] Chapman, Nathan S., and Michael W. McConnell. Agreeing to Disagree: How the Establishment Clause Protects Religious Diversity and Freedom of Conscience. Inalienable Rights Series. New York: Oxford University Press, 2023. p. 6.

[2] Chapman and McConnell. Agreeing to Disagree. p. 6.

[3] Chapman and McConnell. Agreeing to Disagree. p. 6.

[4] Chapman and McConnell. Agreeing to Disagree. p. 188.

[5] Chapman and McConnell. Agreeing to Disagree. p. 10.

[6] Chapman and McConnell. Agreeing to Disagree. pp. 10-11.

[7] Chapman and McConnell. Agreeing to Disagree. p. 11.

[8] Chapman and McConnell. Agreeing to Disagree. p. 18.

[9] Chapman and McConnell. Agreeing to Disagree. p. 40.

[10] Chapman and McConnell. Agreeing to Disagree. p. 77.

[11] Daniel Dreisbach offers readers a compelling argument on Thomas Jefferson’s metaphor. Dreisbach, Daniel L. Thomas Jefferson and The Wall of Separation Between Church and State. New York: New York University Press, 2003.

[12] Chapman and McConnell. Agreeing to Disagree. p. 151.

[13] Chapman and McConnell. Agreeing to Disagree. p. 170.

[14] Secularism is a system of dogma (transcendent beliefs), ethics (behavioral standards), and categories of orthodoxy and heresy (including social, political, and economic penalties for heretics).

[15] Chapman and McConnell. Agreeing to Disagree. p. 48.

[16] Chapman and McConnell. Agreeing to Disagree. p. 189.

[17] Chapman and McConnell. Agreeing to Disagree. p. 189.

[18] “Declaration of Independence: A Transcription,” November 1, 2015. https://www.archives.gov/founding-docs/declaration-transcript.

[19] Chapman and McConnell. Agreeing to Disagree. p. 186.

In this post, I will describe the way church leaders might help a church rebuild on a healthier and better foundation. During this new season of church-life, pastors can also help church members recalibrate their expectations and make good use of their resources for years to come. In some ways, this is what it looks like to do ordinary pastoral ministry in the life of a healthy church. There is nothing fancy here, and every church leader might do well to apply the perspective and practices I’m outlining below.

Phase Three: Rebuilding and Recalibrating

In my experience, in my conversations with other church pastors, and in my reading of books and articles about church revitalization, I’ve noticed what seems to be three phases of this work. The first two are more intense in some ways, and a senior pastor (especially) is likely to experience a real sense of battles and respites, wins and losses. Just surviving and remaining faithful can feel like successful leadership during the early years of church revitalization. So too, the victories are often obvious - bad programs die, unhealthy membership practices cease, and the local church begins to display an orderly expression of love for Christ and love for one another. These mile markers are usually visible and effective in fostering church health.

This third phase, however, can feel far less intense and triumphant. Sometimes churches do grow numerically after having become healthier, but that’s not always the case. In fact, some churches become quite small, and they may continue to be so. Sometimes, after the busy church calendar becomes less demanding, church members and leaders can feel as though their church has become less active and/or effective. Sometimes the church budget becomes constricting and church-life can feel discouragingly monotonous.

During this third phase of revitalization, it is vital that pastors lead toward rebuilding with quality and also that they help church members remember and understand the purpose and benefits of the progress they’ve made. Pastors must lead the church in rightly evaluating their success and in stewarding well what God has provided. In many cases, church members still retain at least some of the assumptions that led to chaos and lacking health in the past. New members will also bring their own perspective when they join. Pastors must lead, and this responsibility continues after church health has been established (or re-established).

Subscribe now

Rebuild Church Programming

The most important labor of revitalization is the building or rebuilding of a church’s shared beliefs, biblical polity, and meaningful church membership (i.e., the three C’s - Confession, Constitution, and Covenant). But once pastors lead a church in addressing these matters, it is definitely time to rebuild, and it’s probably time to take a look at the church’s building(s) and property. We’ll consider the material resources below, but rebuilding should include a whole host of church programs and activities.

Now that your church is healthier, your church members are likely keen on getting back to the activities that once held their attention. In my own experience, during phase two of revitalization, our church-life had become focused heavily on defining who we are and explaining how we function. However, after we largely settled these matters, our church members were interested to rekindle their passions for evangelism, discipleship, benevolence, fellowship, and the like.

Each church will have to decide how they will structure their official church calendar and what activities they will leave to a kind of free market among church members. In my church, we have decided to maintain a mere church calendar so that church members will have great freedom to engage organically with one another and with friends and neighbors. Our official calendar includes: the main Sunday morning church gathering, weekly small groups (or Sunday school), a mid-week Bible study on Wednesday evenings, a monthly Sunday evening prayer meeting, a monthly potluck lunch, and bi-monthly members’ meetings. Everything else our members do is ad hoc and unofficial. This structure of our church-life is the result of our rebuilding a church calendar based on our priorities.

Subscribe now

Rebuild Church Budget, Buildings, and Property

Most churches that experience revitalization are older and established. They’ve been around for a while, and it’s likely that their resources (i.e., money and property) need to be rebuilt or renovated according to their newly recovered priorities. Over time, unhealthy churches often become indiscriminate in their use of funds and unsystematic in their care and maintenance of church property. When there is no clear leadership in the allocating resources and planning for upkeep, budgets and property tell the tale of various pet projects and areas of neglect.

Church budgets acquire line items for unnecessary or unwise expenses. Pastors must lead by taking responsibility for aiming church funds at those people and places they value most. In a healthy church, pastoral leadership, functional meeting space, and resources for basic church activities are paramount. Of course, partnerships for missions and church planting are also of great importance, but this is where money goes when there’s a surplus, and staff and property should not be neglected for the purpose of keeping a missions budget highly financed.

So too, church property can become ignored or unattended. Pastors must take responsibility for leading the church toward being a good steward of the building(s) and property they have. In fact, one way the community around a church evaluates the integrity and care of a local church is by assessing the building and grounds. Churches would do well to make plans and maintain their property as well as they are able. This will include both functional and cosmetic maintenance. Every building will need maintenance at some point, every parking lot will need resurfacing sooner or later, and every air conditioning unit (especially in Texas!) will need repair and eventual replacement.

Church size, maturity, demographics, and surrounding culture will all play a big part in a church’s resources and the prioritization of how money is spent. During this third phase of church revitalization, pastors must lead the rest of the church to make the best use of what they have for the good of the church, the good of Christ’s kingdom beyond, the good of the community around, and the glory of Christ.

Subscribe now

Recalibrate Expectations

If a church has become unhealthy, it is likely that one of the main culprits has been a misunderstanding of success and a mismeasurement of results. When churches measure success by the size of their budget, the number of their members, or the busyness of their scheduled activities, they can often lose sight of greater priorities. One of the main features of pastoral leadership during this third phase of revitalization is patient and charitable (and incessant) teaching on what it truly means for a church to be successful.

My own church has held steady at about the same level of church membership for the last five years. Some church members have gone, and some new ones have come, but we’ve basically stayed numerically the same. This lack of numerical growth can be discouraging for church members (and pastors too), espeically if numerical growth has been a measurement of success in the past. Pastors must become content with whatever the Lord provides in the way of numbers, and pastors must teach church members (by both example and word) how to be content as well.

While the tangible features of church-life have not changed or grown much for my church (membership, baptisms, budget size, etc.), the intangible features have improved quite dramatically. It is hard to observe growth in spiritual maturity, greater intentionality in evangelism and discipleship among church members, or the raising up of godly men who are both aspiring for church leadership and qualified to do it. However, pastors can help church members better recognize these qualities of church health and success, and church members need to learn how to see and celebrate them.

The overall mission of a local church is to make disciples of the Lord Jesus Christ by sharing the gospel, baptizing new converts into membership, and teaching everyone to obey what Christ has commanded (Matthew 28:18-20). God may give numerical growth to a local church, but He has not promised to do that. What we must do is aim for faithfulness to the task we’ve been given, and we will all benefit from a recalibration of how we measure success.

Subscribe now

Conclusion

I’ve tried to explain, with these three posts about church revitalization, that there seems to me three distinct phases of this labor. The first phase includes both winning and losing. This can take years, and it is often a trying time for all involved. But if pastoral leadership can survive those hard days, a better season of razing and building may come.

The second phase is when a local church leaves behind the unhealthy structures and practices that produced their failing health and constructs (or reconstructs) something new. When a church experiences this second phase, it can be a refreshing season for both pastors and church members. At this point, churches often become more genuinely united and more intentionally aimed toward Christian faithfulness and growth.

The third phase, as I’ve tried to outline above, is a time of rebuilding and recalibrating. Pastors offer a positive plan and strategy for maintaining church health over time. Pastors lead in rebuilding a healthy schedule of activities, a wise and prioritized use of church funds, and a responsible care for church resources (such as buildings and property). This third phase is not glamorous, but it is essentially the work of ordinary pastoral ministry.

I pray that the Lord will provide local churches with good men as pastors, men who will take up the responsibility of wise, humble, and faithful shepherding. And I pray that many more churches will experience the sort of health that God grants when the biblical priorities are embraced.

In this post, I will elaborate on what I believe is a common framework for understanding and for leading a church through the season that will almost inevitably follow the first. This second phase is the season in which church leaders help a local church to dismantle their unhealthy structures and practices and also help them replace such things with something new and healthier. For the longterm health of a local church, it is imperative that the church raze those features of church-life that produced failing health and establish (or re-establish) healthy structures and practices.

Phase Two: Razing and Building

During this second phase, you are likely to hear the common questions shift from argumentative and antagonistic toward inquisitive. Church members stop asking, “Pastor, why don’t you…?” or “Pastor, why do you…?” And they start asking, “Pastor, what do you mean…?” or “Pastor, what would that look like here?”

In my experience, most church members generally stopped arguing with me about what should be or shouldn’t be done around my fifth year as senior pastor. Of course, this is not to say that I don’t experience some criticism anymore. It is true, however, that the criticism today is not usually aimed at the foundation of our church polity or ministry philosophy.

Around the five year mark, some church members started asking me how we might implement the sorts of theological and practical changes I was advocating. In some cases, they even advocated for change themselves. With this shift, comes the responsibility to lead in a new way.

The time had come to begin taking action steps toward substantial change. Leading the church well during phase two requires an honest assessment and some hard work on the level of the foundation. In our case, and in many cases I’ve heard from others, this means establishing or re-establishing the church documents and resetting the church’s structure and function atop a sure footing.

This means addressing the three C’s of a local church - the Confession, the Constitution, and the membership Covenant. These three documents set the foundation of what a church believes, how the church functions, and how the members relate to one another. The goal is not merely to change the documents, but to publicly state what is true and to live accordingly.

Subscribe now

Confession of Faith

A church’s confession of faith makes explicit the doctrines and beliefs that every member can expect to learn, that every leader is expected to teach, and that will set the boundaries for what is right and good for this particular church. Every Christian and church can (and should!) claim the Bible as the ultimate authority, but when church members disagree about how to interpret the Bible (for example, on baptism, on pastoral qualifications, or on who can rightly partake of the Lord’s Supper) the confession of faith gives everyone an authoritative answer to those questions as understood by this specific church.

The good news is that most churches (especially older ones) probably already have a good confession of faith. You probably won’t have to rewrite it, but you will have to dust it off and teach it… a lot.

If you don’t have a stated confession of faith, then I recommend that churches adopt one that reflects the long-held beliefs of Christians who have gone before. Every denomination has at least a few historic confessions to choose from, and the benefits of using one of these are many. Your own pastoral leadership will gain credibility when you have the great-grandparents of your current church members on your side.

I also recommend that churches keep their confession of faith free from those doctrines that are not essential to Christianity or essential to maintaining basic unity among a specific church. Al Mohler wasn’t the first person to write on Theological Triage, but his article is quite helpful on this point.

Subscribe now

Constitution

A church’s constitution makes explicit the structure of how authority is delegated throughout the various functions of the church. Who decides whether or not to receive a new member? Who decides what line items make it into the budget? Who decides what programs a church will employ? And how will all of these decision be made? The answers to questions like this should be explicit in the church constitution.

If your church is older, then your constitution is likely to be a hodgepodge of various amendments and adjustments from years gone by. It may even be that your present constitution is self-contradictory (and this is more common than one might imagine). You will have to assess whether you need to modify what you’ve already got or to start with something completely new.

I recommend that a constitution be detailed enough to avoid confusion, but also general enough to allow for flexibility and practical leadership. A cumbersome and detailed constitution will usually become an obstacle and then a neglected artifact. But no one will care more about the constitution than those looking for definitive parameters to resolve a conflict when it arises. Clarity will help, but confusion will exacerbate conflict.

You may want to consult a lawyer in order to ensure that your church meets the legal requirements of your state. You will almost certainly benefit from borrowing at least a few constitutions from other churches who share your understanding of ecclesiology and missiology. Ask a pastor you respect to share his own church constitution with you (or a few of them), and you might be surprised by how much you can borrow from others.

Subscribe now

Membership Covenant

A membership covenant makes explicit what all members are agreeing to do in relationship with one another. It is a summary of the responsibilities church members are committing to take on as participants in the church. Of course, good membership covenants simply reflect the biblical commands for Christian living as taught by Christ and the Apostles in the New Testament.

For congregational churches, a membership covenant is essential to our lives together. Historically, Puritans invented this practice in sixteenth-century England, and their descendants (i.e., Congregationalists, Presbyterians, and Baptists) continued it (both in England and America). Like confessions of faith, there are good historic membership covenants for most Protestant denominations today.

If your church is older, then you are likely to find a membership covenant among the historic documents of your church. In my own context (a Baptist church, founded in 1919), the nearly ubiquitous Baptist church covenant was J. Newton Brown’s (published in 1833). It is wonderful (with the exception of just a couple of statements), and again the historic use of such a document will bolster everyone’s confidence that what you’re leading them toward is a recovery of the old ways and not a revolution.

Whether you are creating your church covenant for the first time or reviving an old one, it is important that every church member knows what is expected of him or her. It is also important that everyone knows what they can and should expect from one another. And consistently referencing and applying the church covenant in public and private will help a pastor invite the whole church to bear the burden of caring for souls together.

Subscribe now

Razing and Building

This phase of church revitalization will likely feel exhilarating, at least for those who know how significant it is to establish or re-establish a church’s foundational documents and practices. You may or may not be making obvious changes that are noticeable to the inattentive church member or casual visitor, but a lot is happening. If we were renovating a house, this phase would be akin to the foundation and frame work. You’re pouring new concrete, replacing faulty piers, pulling out rotting wood and installing quality beams and studs that will last.

In my own experience, this phase lasted about a year. I used existing structures of our church polity to address these three foundational areas - confession, constitution, and covenant. In our case, the confession and covenant were already pretty good. We had already been referencing and using these documents in various ways, and we were able to emphasize their importance and function all the more (in the membership process, small group studies, during members’ meetings, and when we observe the Lord’s Supper).

Our constitution was the hodgepodge I mentioned above, and it was indeed self-contradictory. It was also representative of a committee-led church polity, which we wanted to change. Desiring to move toward elder-led congregationalism, we borrowed from other churches (far and near, young and old) to create our own new constitution.

Three very significant moments that serve as climactic points of this second phase were voting to reject our old constitution and to affirm our new one (June of 2020), voting out of membership all long-time non-attending members (July of 2020), and voting to affirm three lay-elders as overseers/pastors beside me (August of 2020).

Again, these acts did not change anything at all about the weekly ministries of our church. However, these were huge moments that changed the fundamental reality of who we were as a church.

And these fundamental changes set the groundwork for phase three.

After about a year and half, however, it became clear that the organizational structure, the ministry philosophy, and the general health of the church were not (from my perspective) in good condition. I had already been preaching, teaching, building relationships, working to develop godly men among the church, and generally leading toward what I believe was and is a better way. But in 2016 there began some major difficulties in our church. To put it lightly, times got tough for most everyone.

Defining Our Terms

Church revitalization is a phrase with varying meanings, depending on the context and the person using it. I'm using the phrase to mean something like reform or revivify or rehabilitate.

It’s also important to note that I’m not talking sheer numbers. Some churches are unhealthy and dying, even though their attendance and budget numbers at present seem to indicate vitality and growth. Whether a church is large or small, increasing its members or losing them, it may be healthy or unhealthy depending on a host of other factors.

For more reading on what a healthy church is, I recommend THIS BOOK by Mark Dever and THIS BOOK by Jamie Dunlop.

I will outline here what I have experienced as three phases of church revitalization. Having also heard the stories of many other revitalizing pastors and churches, I believe these three phases are common, maybe even typical. I'll call these three phases (1) winning and losing, (2) razing and building, and (3) recalibrating and renovating.

The reader should also keep in mind that I am writing from the perspective of a senior pastor in vocational ministry. There are certainly other perspectives to consider, not least are those of the church members and other staff. So too, bi-vocational pastors, volunteer church leaders, and other churches nearby will all be affected by a local church’s revitalization. Everyone will have their distinct experience and perspective. And yet, I think the perspective I offer here may provide a generally helpful structure for anyone to observe.

Subscribe now

Phase One: Winning and Losing

During this first phase, which may last for a long or short time, there are simultaneous wins and losses. I suppose that's true throughout the life of a local church, but I'm referring here to the peculiar sense that there are exhilarating advances and discouraging regresses (often occurring side-by-side). This phase is when there must be a lot of teaching on the fundamentals of what a church is and does. And there are bound to be some in the church who grow and thrive under such teaching, while others recoil and are frustrated by it.

In my own church, I used the existing calendar and took opportunities to explain why we do the stuff we do. By design and intention, some stuff did not get an explanation and defense because it was stuff we didn't need to be doing. However, there was a good bit of activity and function that many church members simply practiced out of habit, and some of it needed to be explained and embraced anew.

Subscribe now

Sunday Mornings

The main opportunity for teaching is the Sunday morning gathering.

I preached expositionally. This helped church members acquire a taste for sound doctrine, biblical familiarity, and pastoral application. The simple and consistent practice of lifting the Bible up as the chief authority and the place we go to discover what we are to believe and how we are to live is powerful in itself, regardless of the topic.

I prayed sincerely and publicly. This helped church members learn to prioritize prayer, grow in their understanding of what prayer is and how to do it, and gain a perspective of their pastor’s heart that they might not otherwise have.

I incessantly invited further conversation. I stayed long after the service ended, I invited church members to talk with me about questions and disagreements, and I encouraged them to be more involved in the lives of fellow church members throughout the week.

Subscribe now

Members’ Meetings or Business Meetings

Another built-in occasion for teaching is the regular members’ meetings.

For a congregational church, these meetings will already be part of the normal church calendar. However, these meetings are often be used to deal heavily with the minutiae and lightly with the more important matters. This is backwards, and it’s a big reason why a lot of church members don’t attend these meetings.

I began teaching on the important stuff during members’ meetings. When we had church members going in or out of membership, I taught on the importance of thinking carefully about what this means and why we vote on it. When we had a request for a “church letter,” I explained what the outgoing church member is asking us to do and why we ought to be more than a rubber stamp.

Members’ meetings are an opportunity to teach those members who are especially involved. The senior pastor can take 5-10 minutes of each meeting to teach on membership, church budget, ministry philosophy, conversion, discipleship, baptism, the Lord’s Supper, and a host of other fundamental church health topics.

Subscribe now

Personal and Mutual Discipling

Aside from the formal occasions, the next most important investments I made were among eager and teachable men.

I invited good men among the church to join me in thinking about, talking about, and considering more deeply what it means to be a Christian, what it means to be a church, and what it means to lead a church well. Over time, some of these men became my strongest co-laborers in the work of revitalization.

During the early months and years, these conversations centered around getting to know one another and introducing the concept of intentional pastoral leadership. For many unhealthy churches, there is an assumption of pragmatism. It is revolutionary for good men to start thinking about the ways the Bible already speaks to church priorities, church leadership, and church function.

Subscribe now

Winning and Losing

Not much change is likely to be visible during this period or phase, but the tectonic plates are shifting and the ground is shaking.

I remember having several conversations with frustrated church members who couldn't articulate what they didn't like, but they were sure they didn't like it. And yet, there were many other church members who seemed to feel a sense of eager anticipation for what they perceived to be a far more substantial and biblically-faithful ministry philosophy being implemented.

One particular Saturday afternoon (about 4 years into my pastoral ministry), 89 church members gathered for a special called members’ meeting to vote on whether or not I would be welcome to continue as their senior pastor. I was not being accused of any sin or misconduct. The cause of this meeting was simply that a sufficient number of members did not like the direction I was leading the church.

While church members deliberated in the fellowship hall, I was counseling with an 80-year-old woman in the lobby who stepped out of the meeting to talk with me. She was the mother of our church secretary, and she had become converted after years of her daughter (the secretary) patiently and consistently studying the Bible with her. The conversation was a great joy, praising God for His kindness in bringing her to faith. We baptized her into membership soon thereafter.

The vote was two-thirds in favor of keeping me as senior pastor, but that day was a microcosm of the sorts of joys and sorrows that often came side-by-side during those first several years. These were very hard days, and these were very good days, and the key to surviving this phase was simply deciding to stay.

If you are a pastor who is facing a season of hurt and despair, then pray for Christ’s help, and look around at all the good He is doing in and through you.

There are joys, brother, and the sufferings are not to be compared.

Introduction

Daniel Dreisbach is a professor in the School of Public Affairs at American University in Washington, D.C. He earned a Doctor of Philosophy degree from Oxford University and a Juris Doctor degree from the University of Virginia. He served as judicial clerk for the U.S. Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals during the late 1980s, under Circuit Judge Robert F. Chapman in Columbia, SC. Dreisbach is well-studied and a veteran practitioner of American constitutional law and history, with special emphasis on First Amendment law and church-state relations.

This is his third published book (counting those he authored alone), and it highlights Dreisbach’s expertise. With this publication, Dreisbach made a case that the constitutionalized interpretation of the First Amendment – creating a wall of separation between church and state – was novel and contradictory to the original intent. Dreisbach’s argument is complementary to Philip Hamburger’s, which Hamburger published the same year.[1] Steven Smith argued similarly, and he went further than Dreisbach and Hamburger (12 years later), claiming that religious liberty is actually threatened today by the invention and adoption of the new interpretation of the First Amendment.[2]

A Metaphor that Became Constitutional Law

Daniel Dreisbach summarized his thesis in his introduction. He wrote,

“The ‘wall of separation’ metaphorically represents [a] constitutional provision. The [First] Amendment, however, differs in significant respects from [Thomas] Jefferson’s felicitous phrase. The former prohibits the creation of laws ‘respecting the establishment of religion’ (excepting, perhaps, laws to protect religious exercise), thereby limiting civil government; the latter, more broadly, separates ‘church’ and ‘state,’ thereby restricting the actions of, and interactions between, both the church and the civil state.”[3]

Dreisbach was especially interested in describing the historical development of the “wall of separation” metaphor and demonstrating that the metaphor itself has overtaken and distorted the original Constitutional language and intent. He went on to say, “The separation principle, interpreted strictly, proscribes [e.g., forbids] all add mixtures of religion and politics, denies all governmental endorsement of and aid for institutional religion, and promotes a religion that is strictly voluntary and essentially private, personal, and nonpolitical.”[4] The difference between the two is stark, and American cultural, political, and legal practice is greatly affected by choosing one over the other.

Like Philip Hamburger, Dreisbach lays primary blame on Supreme Court Justice Hugo Black for “elevating” the Jeffersonian metaphor to the level of an “authoritative gloss on the First Amendment.”[5] It was Justice Black who wrote the majority opinion in Everson v. Board of Education in 1947. Black wrote in part, “the [First Amendment] clause against establishment of religion by law was intended to erect ‘a wall of separation between church and State.’… That wall must be kept high and impregnable. We could not approve the slightest breach.”[6] Dreisbach claimed, “Justice Black’s gloss on the metaphor (and the Amendment) has come to dominate modern political and legal discourse.”[7] Indeed, he said more overtly, “the Jeffersonian metaphor has eclipsed and supplanted constitutional text in the minds of many jurists, scholars, and the American public.”[8]

While supporters of the present application of the Jeffersonian metaphor insist that the state need not be indifferent or even hostile to religion, Dreisbach argues that it does in fact “separate religion and all civil government.”[9] Not only does the metaphor inevitably enforce a set of secular (i.e., anti-religious) presuppositions, it is also unwarranted in American jurisprudence. The case against the metaphor, according to Dreisbach, is (1) “the ‘wall of separation’ lacks historical legitimacy,” (2) “the ‘wall’ provides little practical guidance for the application of First Amendment principles to real world church-state controversies,” and (3) “the ‘wall’ is politically divisive.”[10] However, Dreisbach laments (in his concluding remarks), “once [the metaphor was] established in church-state jurisprudence and discourse, the ‘wall of separation’ ceased to provoke critical analysis and reevaluation.”[11]

Subscribe now

An Anti-Religion Religion

As Steven Smith has noted, religious liberty or freedom is threatened in America today. But the threat is not coming from religious zealots who aim to establish a new theocracy (whatever critics of Stephen Wolfe’s The Case for Christian Nationalism might say). Instead, the real threat and true antagonist to religious liberty in America today is the political and legal establishment of secularism. Those who assume a high and impregnable wall of separation between Church and State reject Christian rationale as a valid participant in civil discourse. Religious beliefs in a transcendent God, the inherent dignity and value of human life, and an absolute ethical standard of morality are rejected outright where matters of the state are concerned. In short, secularism has become an anti-religion religion. With its own ethical code, its own presuppositions (i.e., dogma), and its own judgments between orthodoxy and heresy, secularism demands that all other religions submit to its ultimate authority.

Subscribe now

Conclusion

Daniel Dreisbach offers the reader a historical, legal, and rational argument for rejecting Thomas Jefferson’s metaphor as a useful or authoritative interpretation of the First Amendment. Instead, Dreisbach invites the reader to reconsider the meaning of the Constitutional Amendment and to recover an interpretation that will encourage interaction between religion and the civil government. This was central to the genius of American civilization, and it will prove essential to the preservation of America as it’s been known for the last two-hundred and fifty years.

[1] Hamburger, Philip. Separation of Church and State. First Harvard University Press paperback. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2004.

[2] Smith, Steven D. The Rise and Decline of American Religious Freedom. Cambridge, MA: Harvard Univ. Press, 2014.

[3] Dreisbach, Daniel L. Thomas Jefferson and The Wall of Separation Between Church and State. New York: New York University Press, 2003. p. 2.

[4] Dreisbach. Thomas Jefferson and The Wall of Separation. p. 2.

[5] Dreisbach. Thomas Jefferson and The Wall of Separation. p. 4.

[6] Dreisbach. Thomas Jefferson and The Wall of Separation. p. 4.

[7] Dreisbach. Thomas Jefferson and The Wall of Separation. p. 4.

[8] Dreisbach. Thomas Jefferson and The Wall of Separation. p. 5.

[9] Dreisbach. Thomas Jefferson and The Wall of Separation. p. 125.

[10] Dreisbach. Thomas Jefferson and The Wall of Separation. p. 124.

[11] Dreisbach. Thomas Jefferson and The Wall of Separation. p. 128.

Subscribe now

Introduction

In 1994, Paul A. Basden was the senior pastor of Brookwood Baptist Church in Birmingham, AL. He is presently serving as the senior pastor of Preston Trail Community Church in Frisco, TX, where he’s been for the last 28 years. Basden earned a Bachelor of Arts from Baylor University and both a Master of Divinity and a PhD from Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary. He has authored and co-authored several books on worship and pastoral theology, and this one was his first.

Basden’s own pastoral and academic history is relevant, since it was during the 1980s and 1990s that the Southern Baptist Convention (SBC) was itself experiencing a dramatic shift. Those who celebrate the historic developments in those decades usually refer to this period as the apex of the Conservative Resurgence, when theological conservatives (prominently advocating for the inerrancy and infallibility of the Bible) recovered the SBC and its various institutions (especially the seminaries) from theological moderates and liberals (some denying miracles and the historical accuracy of Scripture). Basden’s departure from SBC institutions and his founding of a more broadly Evangelical and non-denominational church in 2001 both indicate that Basden’s perspective of Southern Baptist theological and institutional developments during the latter decades of the twentieth century were in the wrong direction.[1]

This brief essay is not an exhaustive summary or critique of Basden’s book-length assessment, but a specific address of Basden’s introduction and conclusion as well as two particular chapters written by contributing authors – chapter 8 on The Priesthood of All Believers and chapter 12 on Religious Liberty. These are most pertinent to my area of research. For a more comprehensive analysis of the book, I recommend John Hammet’s review which appeared in Southeastern Baptist Theological Seminary’s academic journal in 1996.[2]

Subscribe now

The Priesthood of All Believers

Reggie McNeal was the founding pastor of Trinity Baptist Church in Mount Pleasant, TX, in 1981, and he authored the eighth chapter, the one on the Christian priesthood. McNeal defined his terms by saying, “the doctrine of the universal priesthood speaks to the corporate responsibility for God’s people to live on mission for Him in the world.”[3] He explained, this doctrine focuses “on an individual’s freedom of conscience before God” and is the outgrowth of “individual privileges… based on who [the believer] is in Christ.”[4]

McNeal summarized his historical report of this doctrine with three conclusions:[5]

1. The priesthood of believers in its pure biblical sense is a design designation for the whole people of God, a corporate identity of calling and mission.

2. Baptist interpretation of the doctrine has included both the anti-clericism of the Reformation and the rugged individualism of Western philosophy and religious culture growing indigenously on American soil.

3. More recent attempts to rescue the doctrine from this interpretive grid have emphasized the doctrine’s implications for redefining ministry as the mission of the entire church.

McNeal represents a common paradigm in Baptist thought, at least typical from the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. His historical assessment and active promotion of his own perspective of this doctrine includes a heavy emphasis upon individualism. This is not a universal Baptist emphasis, but it became dominant during the twentieth century (through the leadership of Southern Baptists like E. Y. Mullins). McNeal’s lack of any description of the ecclesiastical exercise of the priesthood shows that he departed from a sizable number of earlier and contemporary Baptists who understood the doctrine as inextricably tied to church membership and local church autonomy (rather than individual autonomy).

Subscribe now

Religious Liberty

William M. Tillman, Jr. was a professor of ethics at Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary from 1981 to 1998, and he retired as the Directory of Theological Education with the Baptist General Convention of Texas in 2018. His contribution in chapter twelve of this book deals with the subject of religious liberty. Interestingly, Tillman notes at the outset that the “parameters of this chapter fall between remarks made over half a century apart by two pastors of First Baptist Church, Dallas, Texas.”[6] Those pastors were George W. Truett (1867-1944) and W. A. Criswell (1909-2002), and they each made clear statements of differing opinion.

Truett said, as Tillman recorded, “Our fundamental essential principles have made our Baptist people… to be the unyielding protagonist of religious liberty, not only for themselves, but for everybody else as well.”[7] Here Truett is echoing many Baptists who have indeed argued that religious liberty includes not only Baptists but also believers from other religions and non-believers too. Criswell, on the other hand, said, “I believe this notion of the separation of church and state was a figment of some infidel’s imagination.”[8] This reflects other Baptists (both past and present) who have argued that religious liberty is certainly a freedom of the church from state intrusion but not a freedom of the state from religious beliefs or ethics.

Tillman was right when he wrote, “In their early spawning, Baptist demonstrated and unprecedented conviction and articulation on behalf of religious liberty.”[9] However, Tillman revealed his one-sided understanding of the history and concept when he wrote, “Religious liberty, soul freedom, and soul competency are terms that resonate the same meaning.”[10] These phrases are distinct – with necessarily differentiated meanings – and “soul competency” was an idea that developed after Baptists had already been arguing for religious liberty for more than 250 years. Furthermore, Tillman was simply wrong when he said that Baptists have a singular “historic” perspective of “separation of church and state.”[11] No Baptist advocated for such a thing before the late decades of the nineteenth century, and those Baptists who received Thomas Jefferson’s assurances (in January of 1802) regarding a wall of separation did not seem to want it.[12]

Subscribe now

Conclusion

Basden ends his book with four “inescapable” conclusions.[13] Among these is his claim that “there is no single ‘true’ Baptist theology.”[14] This statement more than any other reveals Basden’s aim and argument for this book. Basden did not set out to uncover a core of Baptist theological convictions, and he did not demonstrate any fundamental changes to such a core. In fact, Basden denied that any core theology was present. In effect, Basden has given the reader a perspective of Baptist history so insufficient that it is inaccurate and of Baptist theology so undefined that it is malleable. This is the sort of history and theology that ought to be avoided by academics, pastors, and laymen everywhere.

[1] Preston Trail Community Church is a non-denominational church with no affirmation of the local church in their confession of faith, no affirmation of the inerrancy or inspiration of the Bible, and five of the eight people listed as “elders” are females. This is a substantial departure from historic Southern Baptist doctrine and practice, but it is reflective of the priorities of those who took a more moderate and liberal position among the SBC during the 1970s and 1980s.

[2] Hammet, John S. “Has Our Theology Changed? Southern Baptist Thought Since 1845.” Faith and Mission, vol. 13, no. 2, Spr 1996, pp. 129-30. https://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&AuthType=sso&db=lsdar&AN=ATLA0000331065&site=eds-live&scope=site&custid=s8385080

[3] Basden, Paul A., ed. Has Our Theology Changed? Southern Baptist Thought Since 1845. Nashville, TN: Broadman & Holman, 1994. p. 206.

[4] Basden. Has Our Theology Changed?. p. 206.

[5] Basden. Has Our Theology Changed?. p. 225.

[6] Basden. Has Our Theology Changed?. p. 306.

[7] Basden. Has Our Theology Changed?. p. 306.

[8] Basden. Has Our Theology Changed?. p. 306.

[9] Basden. Has Our Theology Changed?. p. 307.

[10] Basden. Has Our Theology Changed?. p. 308.

[11] Basden. Has Our Theology Changed?. pp. 318, 320.

[12] For a book-length argument on this subject, see Philip Hamburger’s Separation of Church and State.

[13] Basden. Has Our Theology Changed?. pp. 329.

[14] Basden. Has Our Theology Changed?. pp. 331.

Since this was a decision not to act on a report to the CC, regarding Fielder Church’s public affirmation of female “pastors,” there is no warrant for the CC or the SBTC staff to make a public statement. Therefore, I believe that the only way this failure can be made known to the churches of the SBTC is for someone like me to “go public” with at least some of the details. That’s why I’ve written what I have here, and that’s why I’m publishing it online.

Subscribe now

Some Caveats and Clarifications

First, I am not aware of any confidentiality agreement for CC members. Of course, we sometimes learn details that should not be publicized without context or discretion, but nothing we talk about or decide is privileged information. It could be accessed by virtually anyone with the will to do it. Therefore, I do not believe it is a breach of trust or of any agreement for me to publish what I have here.

Second, I am not aware of any bad intentions or insincerity on the part of those involved. I have no reason to believe that members of the CC were acting in bad faith, and I do not in any way intend to impugn their character or motives. If any or all of the other members of the CC wish to counter my narrative or argument, then I do not begrudge them doing so. In fact, I welcome a public discussion of this matter. Sunlight is the best disinfectant, and SBTC churches deserve to know what happened and why.

Third, I have my own biases and convictions, and I understand that others may disagree with my conclusions. However, no one can dispute the facts I’m presenting here. And, furthermore, I am hopeful that many SBTC churches and pastors share my convictions. This hope is a major motivation for my publication of this information. In fact, I encourage others to take a public stand for the convictions we celebrate as Southern Baptists of Texas.

Fourth, I have no ill will toward SBTC staff or my fellow committee members. As I understand it, disagreement and debate are no bar to friendship and cooperation. I made my disagreement known during the CC meeting (and in subsequent conversations), and it should be no surprise to those who were in the room with me that I have written what I have here.

Fifth and finally, there is much more to the backstory and the matter at hand than what I have publicized. If SBTC churches and pastors want to thoughtfully participate in the discussion and learn more about how decisions are made, then they may do so by contacting SBTC staff and/or CC members. The names of these individuals are publicly accessible in the SBTC annuals (HERE is the 2024 Annual).

Female “Pastors” and the SBTC

About nine months ago, I wrote a personal blog post (The SBTC Reaffirmed Complementarity… For Now), telling a story about how the SBTC publicly affirmed complementarity in the church (by excluding females from the pastoral role). For a few years (2022-2024), messengers to the SBTC annual meeting have affirmed a motion from the floor of the convention to formally clarify an operative interpretation of the word “pastor” in Article VI of the Baptist Faith and Message 2000 (BF&M 2000) and also in the SBTC Constitution.

The question on the table was (and is): Will the SBTC make female “pastors” a prohibiting factor for affiliation and cooperation?

For a while, the unofficial answer to this question was: “Yes, but…”

The SBTC would not affiliate with any church that has a female Senior Pastor, but any other kind of pastor (i.e., Children’s Pastor, Youth Pastor, or Women’s Pastor) would not prohibit affiliation and cooperation. In 2019, the Executive Board of the SBTC provided an interpretation of the word “pastor” to the Credentials Committee, narrowly focusing on the Senior Pastor alone. This interpretation was not publicized, but it was included in the information packet provided to CC members for the purpose of guiding their decisions.

However, starting in 2023, based on the overwhelmingly supported interpretation by the messengers, the CC was to proceed with a broader focus on pastors of any kind (not just Senior Pastors). The messengers to the SBTC annual meeting in November of 2022 affirmed with a super-majority that the answer to the question – Will the SBTC make female “pastors” a prohibiting factor for affiliation and cooperation? – would now be unequivocally “Yes.” The motion adopted said, “the SBTC, for purposes of affiliation, interpret the language in the SBTC Constitution, article IV, section 1, to refer not only to the titles of senior pastor or lead pastor, but to any role designated by the noun, ‘pastor’” (emphasis added).^[2]

This interpretation was affirmed in November of 2022, and it applied to all churches requesting affiliation from that point on. However, its implementation was delayed for presently affiliated churches until January of 2025. While the churches of the SBTC were clear about their convictions, they were also willing to be patient with those churches that may have needed some time to move in the right direction. And yet, in direct contrast to the Baptist General Convention of Texas, the SBTC intentionally drew a stark line on this issue – we would not affiliate with churches who have female “pastors” of any kind. On this we were resolute.

Fielder Church’s Public Affirmation of Female “Pastors”

On April 8, 2025, a report was made to the Credentials Committee of the SBTC that Fielder Church in Arlington, TX, employed female “pastors.” Jason Paredes is the Senior Pastor of Fielder Church, which is affiliated with the SBTC. Paredes has expressly stated that he disagrees with and intentionally maintains practices contrary to the BF&M 2000. Specifically, he believes females should be placed in the office of pastor in a local church, and Fielder Church employs seven females as “pastors.”^[3]

For example, in 2023, when the Southern Baptist Convention (SBC) removed Saddleback Church in California from affiliation with the national convention for having female “pastors” on staff, Peredes explained to his own church that the action was a mistake. You can view Paredes’s brief address to his congregation HERE. It is obvious that Paredes was at odds with the SBC’s messengers, and he was at odds with the stated position of the SBTC as well.

Paredes soon published a follow-up message to his church. In this lengthier address, Paredes argued explicitly in support of female “pastors.” You can view Paredes’s message in full HERE. In short, Paredes and Fielder Church are convictional in their position and not merely pragmatic. Fielder Church holds a theological position that affirms female “pastors,” and they have publicly stated their convictional position.

When the CC of the SBTC received this information, the committee decided to confront Paredes and the leadership of Fielder Church about their violation of the BF&M 2000 and of the SBTC Constitution. A member of the CC was designated to meet with Fielder Church’s leadership to discuss the matter and report back to the CC at the next meeting (in July). It was also anticipated that Paredes and some other leaders of Fielder Church may want to meet with the CC in person to make a case for Fielder Church’s continued affiliation with the SBTC (despite their contrary convictions and practices). This was not unprecedented, and it was perceived that a discussion might be illuminating for all involved.

The July Meeting and Failure to Act

In July of 2025, the Credentials Committee met for its second scheduled meeting of the year. During each meeting, the CC discusses various churches – some requesting affiliation, some with potential problems that may require further inquiry and/or removal, and some requesting removal for one reason or another. This meeting was no different, except that Fielder Church leaders would participate in a portion of the meeting to address the concerns of the report against them and any others raised by the CC members.

Jason Paredes and three other pastors from Fielder Church came to make their case. For about 15 minutes, Paredes reiterated Fielder Church’s position on female “pastors,” making some of the same points he did before in his public address from 2023. He believes Fielder Church is right to delineate between “elders” and “pastors” as two distinct titles for those with different pastoral responsibilities in the church. Paredes believes that those females who possess the title of “pastor” at Fielder Church are appropriately designated as “pastors.” In short, his personal convictions are no different today than what he stated two years ago, and Fielder Church embodies those convictions without apology.

Near the conclusion of the discussion, however, Paredes added that he and Fielder Church would be willing to change the title of all their “pastors” (male and female) to “shepherd” if this would alleviate the necessity to remove Fielder Church from affiliation with the SBTC. The rationale presented was: If the only problem is the noun “pastor,” then we are willing to make an adjustment to the noun “shepherd” as a title for all of our pastors.

When Paredes and the three other pastors of Fielder Church left the CC meeting, discussion ensued. A few of the CC members welcomed Paredes’s proposed change, and they advocated for a decision to maintain Fielder Church’s affiliation with the SBTC on the basis that they would no longer use the noun “pastor” to designate any of their female “shepherds.” In other words, they argued that the CC should take no action, since the problem (as they saw it) was eliminated. Those who argued this way particularly pointed to the formally embraced interpretation of the SBTC Constitution and the BF&M 2000. It says, “that the SBTC, for purposes of affiliation, interpret the language in the SBTC Constitution, article IV, section 1, to refer not only to the titles of senior pastor or lead pastor, but to any role designated by the noun, ‘pastor’” (emphasis added).^[4] They reasoned: the prohibited noun or title is that of “pastor,” not “shepherd.”

I raised a point of contention, arguing that the words “pastor” and “shepherd” are merely two English words that come from the same Greek word “ποιμην” (or poimén).^[5] I insisted that, if such a rationale were adopted, then any church could skirt the SBTC parameters by using virtually any other language on the planet. For example, the Hungarian word for “pastor” is “lelkesz,” and in Arabic it is “alqasu.” If we are playing a game of semantics, then there is absolutely no way to prevent the affiliation of any church that embraces female “pastors.” They could simply adopt the same word in a different language or adopt some other synonym in the English language – which is exactly what Fielder Church proposed to do.

When it came time to vote, it was an audible “yes” or “no” to either approve or reject the motion on the table. I don’t recall the exact wording, but the motion was in favor of taking no action to remove Fielder Church with the provision that they change the title of their “pastors” to “shepherd.” Some of the CC members may have abstained, but my voice was the only one I heard voting “no.”^[6] In my view, Fielder Church had made no meaningful change at all. The title was essentially the same as it was before the meeting, their stated convictions to affirm female “pastors” was definitely the same, and their intention to continue an inconsistent and contrary practice to the BF&M 2000 and the SBTC Constitution was the same.^[7] And yet, the CC failed to act on behalf of the stated expectations of affiliated SBTC churches.

Conclusion

The Baptist General Convention of Texas (BGCT, or Texas Baptists) has made it known that they do not believe female “pastors” is a barrier to cooperation in their convention.^[8] The SBTC has frequently set itself apart from the BGCT as a more conservative convention and a “confessional” convention for Baptists in Texas. That is, SBTC churches must affirm the BF&M 2000, and they must not engage in or encourage any other practice or conduct deemed to be inconsistent or contrary to the doctrinal statement of the Convention.

Fielder Church is a perfect test case on the SBTC’s ability to live up to its public statements, its confessional convictions, and its constitutional documents. Fielder Church not only engages in a practice that is inconsistent and contrary to the BF&M 2000, but they have also encouraged others to do the same in the form of a public argument to affirm female “pastors.” The Credentials Committee has failed the test (in my opinion), but the CC’s standing decision does not have to be the final word from the SBTC.

My own church is beginning talks about what to do if the SBTC does not act to remove churches like Fielder Church who publicly flaunt their contradictory practice to our confession of faith. I’m old enough to remember that semantics was the theologically liberal and moderate game played by those among the SBC who sought to undermine the inerrancy of Scripture during the 1970s and 1980s. Conservatives did not allow them to redefine “inerrancy” back then, and we shouldn’t allow anyone to redefine “pastor” or “shepherd” today.

It may be that the SBTC cannot be detoured from its current path toward pragmatic egalitarianism. If so, then my church may not continue cooperating with such a convention. I hope that this is not the case.

At this moment, I am still a member of the Credentials Committee. I am still a pastor of a church that cooperates with the SBTC. I am publishing this information in an attempt to encourage others who are like me among the SBTC and even those serving on various committees (here’s looking at those of you serving on the Executive Board) to push for more substantial unity and better cooperation.

Not every institution is worth saving, but conservatives must choose to fight for those institutions that are.

^[1] This is not the official statement of the Credentials Committee, but a citation of Article IV, Section 1 of the SBTC Constitution. https://sbtexas.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/07/Constitution-and-Bylaws-after-Nov-2020-changes_WEB.pdf By implication, the Credentials Committee did vote to affirm this statement, since it decided to take no action to remove Fielder Church after consideration of the church’s position and practice regarding female “pastors.”

^[2] https://sbtexas.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/04/2024-Annual-for-Website.pdf. p. 46.

^[3] Fielder Church has now changed the titles of all their “pastors” to that of “shepherd,” so these seven females are no longer titled as “pastors.” However, until August of 2025 these females did have the title of “pastor,” and the rest of this article explains why the title change happened and why it is no substantial change at all.

^[4] https://sbtexas.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/04/2024-Annual-for-Website.pdf. p. 46.

^[5] For a more exhaustive list of all the words used in the New Testament for church leadership, see this article: https://www.marcminter.com/p/what-is-a-pastor-and-is-a-pastor Also, Paredes makes this very same point at the 11:30 mark in his address, which was cited earlier. See the full video here:

^[6] It is possible that one other Credentials Committee member voted “no” audibly, but I did not hear another. One other committee member did raise similar objections to the ones I did during discussion, but I cannot be sure about the vote.

^[7] The unchanging meaning of the two titles (pastor and shepherd) can be observed by Fielder Church’s change for all of their pastors’ titles. They did not only change the title of their female “pastors,” but all of their “pastors” (male and female) to “shepherd.” Thus, Fielder Church is still designating their pastoral title (whatever they call it) for both males and females. https://www.fielder.org/staff/

^[8] https://www.texasbaptists.org/article/panel-finds-differing-views-on-women-in-ministry-not-a-barrier-to-collaboration-in-gods-mission

Introduction

Edgar Young Mullins was the fourth president of The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary (1899-1928), and from that post (spanning nearly all of the first three decades of the twentieth century) he exercised dominant leadership among the Southern Baptist Convention, as well as American Evangelicalism more broadly. In 1908, Mullins published his magnum opus (Axioms of Religion), and this book (Freedom and Authority in Religion) may be considered his underlying epistemological philosophy (or the method of reasoning) by which Mullins arrived at his axioms.

The task, as Mullins saw it, was to provide a basis for perceiving and depending on a true religious authority which would not undermine Mullins’s chief conviction that the individual soul is competent and free to experience direct access to God. The result was an academic engagement with the epistemologies of his day and a jumbled and incoherent argument for Mullins’s unique epistemological method.

The Problem of Authority

Mullins began by stating the “specific problem” which he aimed to solve:

“to indicate the origin of authority, its permanent necessity and value in religion as elsewhere; its peculiar characteristics in religion which distinguish it from other forms of authority; and, further to point out the relations sustained by the principle of authority in religion to our scientific and philosophic culture; to show how the principles of freedom and authority are implicated the one in the other, each being necessary to the realization of the other, and finally to indicate how in the Christian religion the ideals of freedom and authority meet and are reconciled by harmonious blending into the higher unity of the spiritual life.”[1]

In particular, Mullins rejected what he viewed as “the inadequacy of subjectivism” and the external ecclesial or creedal authority, which he believed was represented predominantly by the Roman Catholic Church.[2] For Mullins, truth is assimilated not merely by rationalistic inquiry and deduction, nor by an utterly subjective personal perception, but by “religious experience” wherein the individual submits his will to God and enters into fellowship with God, thereby entering “a world of new realities.”[3] Mullins said, “The only method of proof here is that of immediate contact with God, the immediate experience of the power we crave, the redemption from sin and its power we so much need.”[4]

He went on, “We make the will a prime factor in our theory of knowledge, and learn truth as we could not have learned it otherwise.”[5] In summary, he said, “Religious assimilation then is after its kind. It is verification through actual experiences of life. It is progressive and cumulative in the individual life and history.”[6]

Defining “knowledge,” Mullins said it is “(1) That which is self-evident in the nature of reason. (2) That which is immediately given in experience. (3) That which is cogently inferred from the given.”[7] Thus, Mullins asserted that “Christian experience” is a method for arriving at “real knowledge” that is superior to that which can be deduced from the scientific method or from philosophical inquiry.[8] Even the Bible is insufficient by itself to acquire real knowledge. Mullins said the Bible “is the output, in its ‘divers portions and divers manners,’ of individual experience of God and his grace.”[9]

For Mullins, science and philosophy were not in conflict with religious experience as long as each epistemological method did not overstep its definitional boundaries. So too, the Bible and religious experience were not conflicting methods of knowing or combative candidates for the ultimate seat of authority, but complementary and mutually necessary. He said, “the authority of the Bible is… due to the fact that it preserves and brings to us in literary form the truths acquired by mankind in the free interaction of its individual units with God.”[10]

He went on, “The literature [of the Bible] arose then as the expression of life-adjustments and life-experiences.”[11]In other words, the authors of Scripture experienced God and adjusted their lives accordingly, recording those experiences and adjustments on the pages of Scripture. In a confusing jumble, Mullins claimed that “the literature is indispensable to the life… The rise of the life in turn always creates a demand for the literature… [and] only a literature could give us the original form of the revelation in its purity and distinctness.”[12] Mullins was not clear when he spoke of this “life;” at times he indicated that it was the life of Christ and at other times he was explicitly referring to the life of the individual experiencing Christ.

Subscribe now

A Subjective Answer to Subjectivism

Mullins repeatedly rejected subjectivism; indeed, he saw it as a foolish and inevitable loss of any objective truth or authority. However, Mullins seemed to have missed the contradiction of his own view in statements like this one: “Spiritual energies are at work in the soul of the Christian directly and immediately. This constitutes the most vital and fundamental fact for him.”[13] It seems that Mullins’s eagerness to retain soul competency, individualism, and voluntarism made him a self-contradictory and inept opponent of subjectivism.

In seeking to combat subjectivism he proposed an epistemological method and an authority which is both subjective and unalterable by outside claims of truth and authority. Mullins said, “For him” – that is for the Christian who has experienced the direct, immediate, and spiritual energies at work in his soul – “the Bible cannot be destroyed, since it performs a function in his life which the rational-critical process never touches at all.”[14] In other words, since such a one has experienced God and has had his life affected by such an experience, this knowledge which he has attained is impervious to rational arguments and critical analyses that might contradict his experiential knowledge. Such a man retains a belief in the Bible, but only in so far as his experience affirms it. A more subjective rationale than what Mullins proposed is inconceivable.

Subscribe now

Conclusion

In this huge volume (just over 400 pages), Mullins sought to reconcile science, philosophy, and religious experience as distinct-but-interactive ways of knowing. He believed that his epistemological method represented something superior to scientific methodology and philosophical reasoning, but something that was not in conflict with either one.

So too, Mullins repudiated what he perceived to be the solution offered by some of his contemporaries, a solution that pulled religious knowledge into the realm of pure subjectivism. However, Mullins’s argument arrives at a conclusion that is subjectivism par excellence. Mullins’s “objective and authoritative truth” was a “progressive discovery [of] its meaning through interaction with it.”[15] Thus, for Mullins, the highest form of objective truth and the chief authority in the life of a religious person is his own (very personal and radically subjective) experience.

American Evangelicalism is suffering today from the pervasive embrace of Mullins’s epistemology, and it is a deadly disease. What we need is a recovery of epistemological authority that stands outside of the individual experience. Mullins was right to denounce the Roman Catholic placement of such an authority in the priestly office of the church, but he was wrong to seat authority in the heart and experience of each individual who might claim to know Christ.

Many Protestants (including Baptists) before and after Mullins have offered us a better way – the chief authority of Christ as mediated by His word and through His people.

[1] Mullins, Edgar Young. Freedom and Authority in Religion. Philadelphia: The Griffith & Rowland Press, 1913. p. 6.

[2] Mullins. Freedom and Authority in Religion. p. 7.

[3] Mullins. Freedom and Authority in Religion. p. 162.

[4] Mullins. Freedom and Authority in Religion. p. 164.

[5] Mullins. Freedom and Authority in Religion. p. 165.

[6] Mullins. Freedom and Authority in Religion. p. 165.

[7] Mullins. Freedom and Authority in Religion. p. 259.

[8] Mullins. Freedom and Authority in Religion. p. 259.

[9] Mullins. Freedom and Authority in Religion. p. 342.

[10] Mullins. Freedom and Authority in Religion. p. 342.

[11] Mullins. Freedom and Authority in Religion. p. 345.

[12] Mullins. Freedom and Authority in Religion. p. 349.

[13] Mullins. Freedom and Authority in Religion. p. 360.

[14] Mullins. Freedom and Authority in Religion. p. 360.

[15] Mullins. Freedom and Authority in Religion. p. 401.

Alright, but that’s what we want to know. What qualities are distinctly male or masculine?

Is the only difference between a boy and a man the number of his age?

Are there any particular qualities we ought to teach our boys to embrace whether they seem to come naturally or not?

And should we teach our sons to be men any differently than we teach our daughters to be women?

I wonder if some of us might think that asking these questions is a waste of time. Some of us may think of manhood as a sort of innate or natural instinct that simply shows up in a boy as he gets older. Some might say, “Boys will be boys, until they are men, and this is a process that simply occurs naturally as time goes by and as opportunities arise for them to express their manhood.”

But I think others might read questions like I’ve asked above as simultaneously offensive and urgent. The state of affairs in our culture compels us to raise our guard when someone even implies that there are differences between males and females. So some (especially those under 30) may well feel a sense of fear and hostility even as I’m merely asking the question “What is manhood?”

And yet, while fear or anxiety may be a reality for some, often those same young people also seem urgently interested to learn just exactly who and what they are supposed to be. It is the pernicious nature of sin and rebellion to simultaneously undermine truth and offer nothing in return. One of the most harmful lies of our day is that you can remove the foundation without destroying the house. So many younger people in our culture are at once demanding the ability to define themselves and also desperately yearning to know who they are.

In simple and straightforward terms, I’m going to describe what the Bible says about manhood. And I’m going to urge every male to aim toward embodying the sort of qualities that the Bible distinctly attributes to men.

According to the Scriptures, manhood is distinctly selfless leadership: that is leadership (not passivity or laziness), and selfless leadership (not tyrannical or selfishly ambitious). Allow me to briefly defend and argue for this definition.

First, we learn that manhood is leadership from the order of creation. Adam was created first (Gen. 2:7), and Eve was created “from” Adam (Gen. 2:22). The New Testament says that this ordering (male-then-female) conveys something about the way in which males and females image the glory of God (1 Cor. 11:7-8).

Second, in the Genesis account, man “named” woman, and this was an act of divinely delegated authority (Gen. 2:23). In Genesis 1, think about how God named the “Day” (Gen. 1:4), “Night” (1:4), “Earth” (1:10), “Seas” (1:10), and “Heavens” (1:8); but God delegated this authority to man when Adam named the “livestock,” “birds,” “beasts” (Gen. 2:19-20), and “woman” (Gen. 2:23).

Third, the New Testament explicitly teaches us about male leadership in the marital relationship. The husband is to lead his wife and his children (Eph. 5:22-23, 6:4). The Scripture says that “wives” are to “submit to [their] own husbands,” and “fathers” are to “bring up [their children] in the discipline and instruction of the Lord” (Eph. 6:4).

Of course, “husbands” are to lead from a heart of “love” toward their wives, and they are to express that love in practical ways (Eph. 5:25-27). And “fathers” are to lead their “children” in such a way so as to refrain from “provoking” them “to [undue] anger” (Eph. 6:4).

In other words, manly leadership is selfless, for the good of those under their leadership, but there is a clear responsibility on men to lead.

Subscribe now

This is God’s good design for manhood, but since Genesis 3, men have been prone to veer away from God’s design. Most often this shows up as sinful truancy or tyranny. If we’re honest, we men are inclined towards either living as absentee men who run away from the responsibilities of leadership, or as oppressive dictators who force our leadership onto others. Neither is an expression of biblical manhood, and it is our responsibility to war against these tendencies in ourselves and to help boys and young men to do the same.

I confess my own sense of ineptitude and personal failure to live out biblical manhood, and I’m sure many men feel the same way I do. When I look at my own life, and I measure my thoughts, words, and actions against this biblical standard, I can easily see that I do not measure up.

On many occasions, I have shirked my responsibility to lead. I have let life happen to me, I have watched my wife or my children struggle under the weight of some difficulty or another, and (at times) I have given little or no effort to take the responsibility God has placed upon me.

I think sometimes I’m afraid to lead and fail, sometimes I’m not sure what to do, and sometimes I’m just plain selfish. I don’t want that responsibility, so I let others bear it.

Brothers, this ought not be.

We will certainly fail from time to time, and there will be many regrets on the last day, but (with God’s help) we must strive to be the men God has called and designed us to be.

At the conclusion of Paul’s letter to the Corinthian church, he especially commands men to “Be watchful, stand firm in the faith, act like men, be strong. [And] let all that you do be done in love” (1 Cor. 16:13-14).

May God forgive us for our failures, and may He help us in our efforts to selflessly lead those He has placed under our care. So too, may God grant us strength and courage to stand as men, so that we may even be a blessing to others around us.

[i] https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/manhood

[ii] https://www.britannica.com/dictionary/manhood

Introduction

Edgar Young Mullins was a prominent Southern Baptist, filling the role of president of the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary (1899-1928) when he published this short book summarizing Baptist doctrines. The Baptist World Publishing Company first produced Baptist Beliefs in 1912, and The Judson Press published an updated edition in 1925, as well as reprints 1977 and 2009. The 1925 edition is especially notable, since that was the year Mullins led the Southern Baptist Convention (SBC) to adopt the Baptist Faith and Message as its formal confession of faith during its annual meeting on May 14 in Memphis, TN.^[1]

Mullins was the president of the SBC from 1921 to 1924, and during the 1922 convention meeting, messengers voted to form a special committee (which Mullins chaired) for the purpose of drafting a statement of Baptist doctrine. By the early 1920s, what became known as the Modernist Controversy was at its height – theological liberalism (i.e., Modernism) came in direct conflict with traditional orthodoxy (i.e., Fundamentalism).

Southern Baptists were largely fundamentalist, but modernists had made significant inroads among Baptist academia and leadership. Mullins’s conciliatory personality, academic competence, and notable leadership made him the sort of man who could lead the SBC through controversy toward greater unity.

It is no surprise that Mullins’s preferred historic Baptist confession (the New Hampshire Confession of Faith, 1833/53) became the basic structure and substance of the Baptist Faith and Message. So too, one can easily see the shape and language of Mullins’s Baptist Beliefs both reflecting the New Hampshire Declaration and shining its own light upon the Baptist Faith and Message.

In this way, Mullins’s Baptist Beliefs served as a promoter and an explainer of the confession Baptists embraced under his leadership.

Subscribe now

Summary

In his introduction, Mullins affirmed, “there are a number of excellent Baptist creeds in existence already.”^[2]What he “proposed” in his short book was “not the setting up of another [creed], but rather a restatement and interpretation… [or] a general survey of the beliefs commonly held by Baptists.”^[3]

In other words, Mullins believed that his contribution to the creedal or confessional material of Baptist faith and practice was not novel. Rather, he believed he was merely articulating the basic and common convictions of Baptists everywhere.

However, because Baptists are not a monolithic group, and because Baptists have often differed on matters of soteriology, ecclesiology, and socio-political activity and responsibility, Mullins’s aim to unite all Baptists under a statement of general beliefs has proven problematic.

It is true that Southern Baptists continue to loosely affirm the Baptist Faith and Message (now in its 2019 iteration), but one can hardly say that this confession is a uniting force among Southern Baptists, much less other Baptist sects in America. In his own day, at least, Mullins did seem to foster a kind of unity among the SBC, but it is not evident that such apparent unity was a result of the substance of Mullins’s book or creed.

Subscribe now

Appeasing Everyone

Mullins’s affirmations follow the typical order of most historic Baptist confessions of faith, and nearly all of the articles he included are present (in one form or another) in the historic documents as well.

Like many Baptists before him (and many other Protestants, for that matter), Mullins began by affirming the sufficiency, certainty (or reliability), and authority of the Old and New Testaments. It is here, in divine revelation, that Baptists (indeed, all Protestants) find their ultimate source of faith and practice.

However, Mullins stopped short of defining what Baptists mean by claiming that the Scriptures are “inspired” by God. He said, “There are many ways of explaining the method of inspiration which men have adopted.”^[4] And yet, it was precisely here that modernists (i.e., theological liberals) could hide their spurious views of inspiration. It was not the word “inspiration” that usually distinguished modernists and fundamentalists, but the meaning of it.

It was the latter half of the twentieth century, in the SBC and its various institutions (especially in the seminaries), where the battle between theological liberals and conservatives came to a head over the precise definition of inspiration.

Mullins took a similar approach on the doctrines of God’s providence, God’s election of sinners unto salvation, and other doctrines related to soteriology (e.g., regeneration, repentance, faith, and the perseverance of the saints). For example, on election, Mullins affirmed “God’s choice of man is prior to man’s choice of God.”^[5] But then he spent the rest of this article defending the “free-will in man” and “man’s choice of God.”^[6]

Mullins’s chief concern in Baptist Beliefs (as with his magnum opus, Axioms of Religion) is the competency and freedom of the individual soul. In an effort to appease modernists and fundamentalists, as well as those Baptists who were more Calvinistic in their soteriology and those who were not, Mullins placed freedom, voluntarism, and individualism as the highest and best. He wrote, “The voluntary principle is at the heart of Christianity. The right of private judgment in religion is a right which lies at the core of Christian truth.”^[7]

Subscribe now

Conclusion

It is hard to overstate the influence of E. Y. Mullins on the Southern Baptist Convention, Baptists in America, and American Evangelicalism more broadly. With his leadership, the SBC survived the modernist controversy. Under his leadership, the SBC adopted its first and only convention-wide confession of faith. After his leadership, the SBC is still today a big tent in which Baptist churches cooperate together despite their theological and practical differences.

Baptist Beliefs represents a kind of doctrinal ambiguity (e.g., neither modernist nor fundamentalist) and a culture of convictions (e.g., prominent individualism, personal responsibility, and practical cooperation) that enabled Southern Baptists to rally around their shared culture more than any shared doctrine. A similar kind of loose cultural unity is observable among Southern Baptists today, but time will tell whether that’s enough to sustain them and their institutions.

^[1] See pp. 70-76 of the 1925 annual. http://media2.sbhla.org.s3.amazonaws.com/annuals/SBC_Annual_1925.pdf

^[2] E. Y. Mullins, Baptist Beliefs (Valley Forge, PA: The Judson Press, 1925). p. 5.

^[3] Mullins, Baptist Beliefs. pp. 5-6.

^[4] Mullins, Baptist Beliefs. p. 12.

^[5] Mullins, Baptist Beliefs. p. 26.

^[6] Mullins, Baptist Beliefs. pp. 26-27.

^[7] Mullins, Baptist Beliefs. p. 6.

Introduction

Edgar Young Mullins was one of the most influential Southern Baptists of the early twentieth century. He was born in Mississippi on January 5, 1860, graduated from the Agricultural and Mechanical College of Texas in 1879, baptized by his father at the then-named Corsicana Baptist Church in Corsicana, TX, in 1880, and entered post-graduate school at the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary (SBTS) in 1881.[1] Shortly after his graduation from SBTS in 1885, Mullins accepted an invitation to become the pastor of Harrodsburg Baptist Church in Kentucky and married Isla May Hawley. Over the course of the next several years, Mullins pastored in Kentucky, Maryland, and Massachusetts, and in 1899 he left the pastorate to become a professor of theology and the fourth president of SBTS.

It was in this academic and public denominational role that Mullins exercised his peacemaking leadership, and he became esteemed among Southern Baptists. He was eventually elected president of the Southern Baptist Convention and served in the office from 1921 to 1924. Mullins also chaired the committee that formed and published the Baptist Faith and Message (the twentieth-century confession of Southern Baptists), which the convention adopted in 1925. The influence of Mullins’s writing, speaking, and leadership is hard to overstate for twentieth-century Southern Baptists, and his book The Axioms of Religion might be his most significant.[2]

The Fundamental Principle

With The Axioms of Religion, Mullins aimed to present “a fresh statement of the Baptist position” to “enable the world to understand us better.”[3] The substance of the book came from a series of Mullins’s earlier addresses in which he “set forth in one form or another the principles” articulated and explained here in greater detail.[4] Mullins wanted to counter what he perceived as “a marked movement toward anti-institutional, anti-ecclesiastical, and wholly individualistic Christianity.”[5] He offered his axioms as a “cohesive principle strong enough to give unity to… religious bodies” in order to propel them in “their careers of usefulness.”[6]

Explicitly, Mullins wrote, “The aim of this book is to make this statement [of fundamental principles] from the point of view of the Baptists.”[7] Ironically, Mullins argued that individualism and voluntarism were the solutions to “wholly individualistic Christianity.”

For this titanic Southern Baptist leader, all the principles or axioms of Baptist belief and practice originated from the basic affirmation that the individual soul is competent to commune directly with God. Mullins wrote, “The sufficient statement of the historical significance of the Baptists is this: The competency of the soul in religion” (emphasis added).[8] And again, he wrote, “what we are maintaining is that the doctrine of the soul’s competency in religion under God is the historical significance of the Baptists” (emphasis added).[9] And yet again, he said, “as comprehending all the… particulars, as a great and aggressive force in Christian history, as distinguished from all others and standing entirely alone, the doctrine of the soul’s competency in religion under God is the distinctive historical significance of the Baptists” (emphasis added).[10]

There is no doubt what critical weight Mullins placed on soul competency.

From this “mother principle” (i.e., “the competency of the soul in religion under God”), Mullins contended, “six simple propositions” emerge as “branches from that one trunk.”[11] These six principles or axioms are as follows:

(1) The theological axiom: The holy and loving God has a right to be sovereign.

(2) The religious axiom: All souls have an equal right to direct access to God.

(3) The ecclesiastical axiom: All believers have a right to equal privileges in the church.

(4) The moral axiom: To be responsible man must be free.

(5) The religio-civic axiom: A free Church in a free State.

(6) The social axiom: Love your neighbor as yourself.[12]

Mullins confidently claimed these axioms are “self-evident” to all “who accept Christianity,” they are “the very alphabet of the Christian religion,” and they are “the great New Testament assumptions, which are the very basis of our Baptist faith.[13] Indeed, he said, “in America no member of any of those churches known as ‘evangelical’ will dissent from any of the principles enunciated in this list of six axioms.”[14] For Mullins, not even “the great multitude of unbelievers – men who reject Christianity… will [deny] these axioms.”[15]

The only ones, he believed, who would “repudiate” his axioms were those “who are wedded to the union of Church and State,” such as Roman Catholics and those Protestants who favored a “religious establishment” of one sort or another.[16] Thus, we discover where Mullins identified his own understanding of the divide – either established religion or Mullins’s religious and civic individualism.

Subscribe now

America: A Baptist State

Mullins represented an American Evangelical optimism about the civic experiment in democratic government and Baptist advancement in every arena of American society (as well as others abroad). He wrote, “We are approaching the Baptist age of the world, because we are approaching the age of the triumph of democracy.”[17] According to Mullins, America built its social and political structures on the foundation of Baptist principles (not merely generic Christian ones). He said, “we may regard American civilization as a Baptist empire, for at the basis of this government lies a great group of Baptist ideals.”[18]

He went as far as to claim, “One might in a certain sense say that the primary election which determined whether or not there should be an American government was held two thousand years ago on the shores of the Mediterranean when the little Baptist democracies assembled to worship.”[19] In other words, the manifestation of Baptist polity in the original Christian churches reverberated through history until the emergence of an American polity wherein civic leaders applied Baptist ideals to the political sphere.

To make his case on this point, Mullins believed each of his religious axioms had an American civic and political expression. He argued,

“The theological axiom, ‘A holy and loving God has a right to be sovereign,’ has its counterpart in the recognition of God’s sovereignty by this government in granting to the church the rights of an imperium in imperio; that is, in giving independence to the church.

The religious axiom, ‘All souls have an equal right to direct access to God,’ finds its political counterpart in the American axiom, ‘All men are created free and equal.’

The ecclesiastical axiom that ‘All believers are entitled to equal privileges in the church,’ finds its political counterpart in the American axiom that ours is a government ‘of the people, for the people, and by the people.’

The moral axiom that ‘To be responsible, man must be free,’ finds its counterpart in the franchise and in all our American practice in legal and criminal procedure.

The religio-civic axiom, ‘A free Church in a free State,’ has become naturalized in our speech until it is as much political as religious.

The social axiom, ‘Love your neighbor as yourself,’ has its political counterpart in our political axiom, ‘Equal rights to all and special privileges to none.’”[20]

“In short,” Mullins wrote, “the Baptist axioms of religion are like a stalactite descending from heaven to earth… while our American political society is the stalagmite with its base upon the earth rising to meet [it]. When the two shall meet, then heaven and earth will be joined together and the kingdom of God will have come among men.”[21]

It was Baptists, according to Mullins, who gave rise to religious freedom, which is the fundamental freedom for a free society. He wrote, “all forms of human freedom are ultimately grounded in religious freedom.”[22] He went on to say, “Democracy and its attendant blessings in the State in modern times has gone hand in hand not with sacramental and sacerdotal Christianity, but with the Christianity of free grace and the direct relation of the soul to God.”[23] For Mullins, it was this primary contribution of Baptists – soul competency in religion under God – that provided the essential rationale for all other freedoms. He said, “Individual freedom, freedom of thought, freedom of conscience, freedom of action, industrial freedom, civil liberty, these are all imperishable treasures of the human spirit, achieved as working principles… ultimately they all rest on religious freedom.”[24]

Thus, according to Mullins, religious liberty – a uniquely consistent Baptist contribution to the world (and especially to America) – is the fundamental freedom which itself depends on soul competency – the historic significance of the Baptists and the preeminent axiom from which the others spring. All American freedoms depend on the distinctly Baptist principle of soul competency.

Subscribe now

A Self-Contradictory Strategy

Mullins’s repeated and constant adversary throughout this book is coercion. He rejected coercion in religion, as he saw it, in the form of infant baptism and any religious establishment. However, Mullins did affirm that Christians should be socially and politically active. He wrote, “It is by means of regenerated individuals associated together as churches that Christianity becomes a leaven to transform the social order. This is primary and fundamental.”[25]

Mullins said flatly, “The Church ought to exert a powerful influence upon the State. The Church cannot take the State but it does take the citizens of the State into itself.”[26] Further, he said, “Christian men cannot hold themselves aloof from public questions and public service if they are to embody the principles of Christianity in their practical conduct.”[27]

The Christian, according to Mullins, is not to be a monastic, shrinking from public service, a mystic, satisfied alone in his own personal communion with God, or a moralist, seeking to obtain the fruit of morality without the roots of genuine conversion. Rather, the Christian is to be a missionary, “mastered by the moral and evangelistic impulse.”[28] Such a one is “an aggressive advocate of a saving gospel and of all morality and social righteousness (emphasis added).”

For Mullins, “The Christian who understands the meaning of his religion… will be a force for civic, commercial, social, and all other forms of righteousness. Thus Christianity in America will become the religion of the State, although not a State religion.”[29]

With all of Mullins’s emphasis on individualism and voluntarism in religion and civics, his practical application of intentional and communal Christian citizenship seems to be lost in the Baptist political theology and ecclesiology which resulted (at least in part) from Mullins’s influence. In 1959, another Baptist academic, Winthrop S. Hudson, wrote critically of Mullins’s portrayal of the doctrine of soul competency. Hudson said, “Not only did [Mullins] fail to provide detailed guidance on questions of church order… but [his axioms] also served to dissolve any real concept of the church, for it interpreted the faith as a one-to-one relationship between God and the individual.”[30]

In a condemning summary statement, Hudson wrote, “The practical effect of the stress upon ‘soul competency’ as the cardinal doctrine of Baptists was to make every man’s hat his own church.”[31]

Another Baptist academic, R. Stanton Norman, named (in his 2001 publication) Edgar Young Mullins as the origin of what he called the “Enlightenment” tradition, especially Mullins’s highly influential volume Axioms of Religion.[32] Norman believes that Mullins’s work on Baptist distinctives was “dominant” in its influence because Mullins “provides careful argumentation for the philosophical and biblical bases for Christian experience” and because “others regularly appeal to Mullins’s arguments as the authoritative precedent.”[33]

At least from Mullins onward, personal and individual Christian experience is the epistemological starting point for many Baptists, and this includes political theology.

Subscribe now

Conclusion

Once again, it is hard to overstate the influence and significance of E. Y. Mullins on the landscape of Baptist doctrine and practice in the twentieth century. His publication of Axioms of Religion has played an enormous role in the shaping of Baptist political theology and ecclesiology. The unfolding narrative has proven that Mullins did nothing to quell the rise of individualism in his day, but he seems instead to have encouraged and fortified it for the decades ahead.

For anyone wanting to understand the political and ecclesiastical landscape of the twenty-first century, Mullins is must-read. Mullins’s own contradictions – individualism to combat individualism and a completely separate Church and state for intentional Christian activism in society and politics – reveal an untenable strategy.

The wake of his legacy ripples through the sea of Baptist doctrine and practice (both in the Church and in the political world), and it is for present-day Baptists to recover and reclaim what Mullins obscured in the Baptist tradition.

[1] “Edgar Young Mullins.” https://sbhla.org/biographies/edgar-young-mullins/

[2] See R. Stanton Norman, More Than Just a Name: Preserving Our Baptist Identity (Nashville, TN: Broadman & Holman, 2001). pp. 41-63.

[3] Mullins, E. Y. The Axioms of Religion: A New Interpretation of the Baptist Faith (Philadelphia, PA: The Griffith & Rowland Press, 1908). p. 7.

[4] Mullins. The Axioms of Religion. p. 7.

[5] Mullins. The Axioms of Religion. p. 19.

[6] Mullins. The Axioms of Religion. p. 19.

[7] Mullins. The Axioms of Religion. p. 26.

[8] Mullins. The Axioms of Religion. p. 53.

[9] Mullins. The Axioms of Religion. p. 56.

[10] Mullins. The Axioms of Religion. p. 57.

[11] Mullins. The Axioms of Religion. p. 73.

[12] Mullins. The Axioms of Religion. p. 74.

[13] Mullins. The Axioms of Religion. p. 74.

[14] Mullins. The Axioms of Religion. p. 75.

[15] Mullins. The Axioms of Religion. p. 75.

[16] Mullins. The Axioms of Religion. p. 75.

[17] Mullins. The Axioms of Religion. p. 275.

[18] Mullins. The Axioms of Religion. p. 255.

[19] Mullins. The Axioms of Religion. p. 273.

[20] Mullins. The Axioms of Religion. pp. 273-274.

[21] Mullins. The Axioms of Religion. p. 274.

[22] Mullins. The Axioms of Religion. p. 295.

[23] Mullins. The Axioms of Religion. p. 283.

[24] Mullins. The Axioms of Religion. pp. 282-283.

[25] Mullins. The Axioms of Religion. p. 204.

[26] Mullins. The Axioms of Religion. p. 205.

[27] Mullins. The Axioms of Religion. p. 206.

[28] Mullins. The Axioms of Religion. p. 207.

[29] Mullins. The Axioms of Religion. p. 207.

[30] Winthrop Hudson, ed., Baptist Concepts of the Church: A Survey of the Historical and Theological Issues Which Have Produced Changes in Church Order (Philadelphia, PA: The Judson Press, 1959). 215.

[31] Hudson. Baptist Concepts of the Church. p. 216.

[32] Norman, More Than Just a Name. p. 41.

[33] Norman. More Than Just a Name. p. 50.

Introduction

Steven Douglas Smith is a graduate of BYU (B.A. 1976) and Yale (J.D. 1979), and he is a Warren Distinguished Professor of Law at the University of San Diego, CA.[1] His academic and legal interest in America’s concept and practice of religious freedom has spanned decades, and this book is a continuation of his work. In 1995, Smith examined the standard historical narrative, contrasting it with his own, in his first published book (Foreordained Failure: The Quest for a Constitutional Principle of Religious Freedom). Now, twenty years later, Smith has offered an alternative story (a revised narrative) that not only paints a different historical picture but also names an opposite pair of protagonists and antagonists on the American battlefield for religious liberty in the twenty-first century.

In the standard story, present-day religious fundamentalists are to blame for threatening the loss of religious liberty. In Smith’s revised narrative, the secularists themselves have taken up the fundamentalist position and methods, and they are culpable for undoing the nineteenth-century American settlement on the matter. According to Smith, coercion became toleration (in the eighteenth century), then toleration became neutrality and secularism (in the nineteenth century), and secularism has now become a new coercion (in the late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries). Of course, this is a rough tripartite division, and secular ideas (or Enlightenment ones, to avoid anachronism) were peppered in with the distinctly Christian arguments that grounded America’s religious freedom at the founding. However, the modern political and social landscape in America is defined not by intramural wins and losses (sometimes secular victors and sometimes religious ones) but by the singular supremacy of secular axioms (though inconsistently applied by courts) which stand over and against religious principles and rationale.

The Myth of Religious Freedom

Smith begins by summarizing the standard story of religious freedom in America, which he says includes five themes. First, Americans were “Enlightened innovators.”[2] The founders who framed the Constitution “committed themselves… to church-state separation and the free exercise of religion… [and they initiated] a novel and even radical ‘lively experiment.’”[3] Simply put, “American founders, freed up by the Enlightenment, boldly broke from [a] centuries-old pattern” of “political and religious authorities… [imposing] religious orthodoxies on their subjects.”[4]

Second, the First Amendment was “monumental” and “meaning-full.”[5] The “First Amendment’s religion clauses embraced sweeping commitments to preventing government from sponsoring or intruding in religion, to ensuring that citizens of all faith (or of none) would be treated equally, and to keeping government religiously neutral and secular.”[6] Smith says, in the standard story, these commitments “were in some sense contained or implicit in the First Amendment from the outset.”[7]

Third, though the founders were indeed enlightened, they continued for a time to live according to the older principles of religion and civics. The “principles embodied in the First Amendment were not realized overnight… [and] the new nation persisted for generations in practices that were fundamentally incompatible with constitutional principles.”[8] This was a “long, dark interlude” before the illumination could prevail across the land.[9]

Fourth, the modern (i.e., twentieth century) American court realized the implicit principles that had been previously contradicted or neglected. Smith says, “Beginning in the 1940s… and especially from the 1960s on, a now more courageously committed Supreme Court acted to redeem the constitutional promise of religious freedom.”[10] It was not that the modern courts were innovative, according to the standard story, but that previous generations of American legislators and jurists were self-contradictory for one reason of another.

Fifth, “conservative religious” citizens and activists in America are now retreating from those original constitutional principles.[11] Smith writes, “In recent decades, the so-called Religious Right has become active and politically influential, and the American political system has accordingly experienced a retreat from or even degradation of the constitutional principles of religious freedom.”[12] In the standards story, religious fundamentalists are to blame for modern American threats to religious liberty.

In response to this standard story, Smith writes, “In good conscience I can concede, cheerfully, this much: the oft-told, much beloved story of religious freedom in America is not wholly false… And yet a collection of partial truths can combine, as we know, to make up a tale that is, in the aggregate, profoundly misleading.”[13] However, Smith goes on say directly, “Aggregated, the standard themes add up to a story that is, if not flatly false, at least fundamentally misleading.”[14] Then he offers a “revised version” that he says is a “complement to and corrective of the standard story.”[15]

Recovering the American Tradition

In his revised version, Smith provides five counter themes of American religious freedom. First, “American religious freedom [was] a (mostly Christian, marginally pagan) retrieval and consolidation” of medieval themes – “freedom of the church” and “freedom of the ‘inner church’ of conscience” – and Enlightenment pluralism.[16] Thus, the founders may have been enlightened, bearing some marks of the philosophical developments of their day, but they argued (largely) on the basis of historic Christian reasoning. In other words, their rationale was Christian (not secular) – distinctly Protestant (not Roman Catholic).

Second, “the religion clauses of the First Amendment were understood at the time as doing nothing especially noteworthy.”[17] Rather, as Smith described, “the central purpose of the clauses was simply to reaffirm the jurisdictional status quo… [namely,] matters involving the establishment and exercise of religion would remain the business of the states, as nearly everyone agreed they should be.”[18] Thus, the First Amendment was not innovative at all, nor did it in any way intend to move toward religious disestablishment at the state level.

Third, “the revised story sees the [American] Republic’s first century and a half as the period in which the country’s distinctive and distinctively promising approach to religious pluralism… was worked out and progressively realized.”[19] During that time, “providentialist interpretations” and “secularist interpretations” of both religious freedom and the nation itself were left unresolved and open to contestation.[20] Thus, this period was not dark, but rather a particularly bright season of genuine religious liberty in America, wherein citizens with greater and lesser religious convictions could enjoy some features of American jurisprudence. No single group was a clear and comprehensive winner, but both claimed benefits and made concessions.

Fourth, “When the [Supreme] Court decided to intervene aggressively in the nation’s religious affairs… it in essence dissolved the principle of open contestation that had been central to the American settlement, elevated… the secular interpretation… to the status of hard constitutional law, and proceeded to impose that interpretation on the nation.”[21] Rather than maintain the undecided American settlement, secularists ascended the throne and condemned religious argumentation and rationale as heresy. Thus, this development was a reversal and not a realization of American religious liberty. Secularists declared victory over the religious and demanded that all play by secular rules in the arenas of civics and law.

Fifth, “the classic rationales for religious freedom, because they were and are theological in nature, are thought by many theorists and jurists to be inadmissible for purposes of public justification.”[22] Smith admits, as the standard story claims, that “the status of religious freedom is currently in jeopardy” in America.[23] “But,” he says, “the threat comes not so much from religious conservatives who reject constitutional commitments as, perhaps paradoxically, from secular egalitarians who purport to be carrying out the commands of the Constitution's (self-subverting) commitment to religious freedom.”[24] Thus, the secularists in America today are not the heroes of religious liberty, but the villains who are destroying it.

The Illusion of Neutrality

Smith’s revised narrative may be debated, and no doubt the standard story of American religious freedom has won the day. However, it would seem that Smith’s conclusion is indisputable: the “genuine neutrality” of government with regard to religion “is impossible.”[25] It is so, as Smith argues, because “the seemingly irresistible appeal of neutrality turns out to rest on a spurious promise” – namely that neutrality is “little more than a sort of political optical illusion.”[26] As Smith points out, “Neutrality itself “is consistent with some religious positions but inconsistent with others.”[27] So too, “many or most or maybe all laws and government policies… will be consistent with some religious (and secular) views but inconsistent with others.”[28]

As the Christianized culture of American civil order eroded, the Christian principles upon which secular neutrality relied from the beginning have become inadmissible in civil discourse and judicial argument. This has exposed the reality that there is no such thing as irreligious. The secularists may refuse to admit their own religion as such, but if it quacks like a duck, walks like a duck, and swims like a duck, then we must acknowledge the proverbial duck for what it is. Smith writes, “Under the constraint of professed commitments to neutrality… modern secular orthodoxies typically refuse to acknowledge their character as orthodoxies.”[29] In other words, if a group anathematizes some (or any) religious orthodoxies, then whatever you call the group doing the anathematizing, it is some form of competing religion.

The Religion of Secular Egalitarianism

When one honestly observes the principles and practices of secularism, it takes the form and function of a religion. Smith makes this very argument, and he lays out three features of “secular egalitarianism” as a “secular version of Christendom” (i.e., a secular version of the church-state merger).[30] First, says Smith, “contemporary proponents of secular egalitarianism view equality as the foundation of our legal political order.”[31] Egalitarian equality (as defined by secular axioms) is the dogmatic (i.e., religious) parameter within which all legislation and judicial judgment must reside.

Second, Smith writes, “the proponents of secular equalities often seem serenely untroubled by doubt.”[32] As much as any faith-filled religious devotee, secularists are quite committed to their fundamental assumptions without sensing any need to justify them. Secularists often accuse religious fundamentalists of believing in unjustified presuppositions, but it is the common secularist practice to do precisely this – for example, “equality” and “neutrality” are paramount for secularists, but they offer no consistent definition and give no rationale to justify their importance.

Third, Smith concludes, “secular egalitarianism… is not content to regulate outward conduct but instead seeks to penetrate into hearts and minds.”[33] Just like religious dogma, secularists demand both obedience and belief. One can observe same-sex marriage (in lieu of domestic partnerships) and hate crimes (considered more heinous than the simple crime itself) as examples. Secularists are not satisfied with equal treatment under the law for same-sex couples, they have required that every citizen adjust (as necessary) their belief about marriage to accommodate same-sex couples. So too, secularists are not satisfied to condemn a murderer for his crime, they require the exposure of his hateful motives, and they judge the intentions of the heart as more heinous than the crime itself (as is manifest in the legal penalties).

These three features of secular egalitarianism – doctrine, dogma, and devotion – seem obviously observable; therefore, it is as much a religion as any of those it aims to eradicate. One of the religious axioms of secularism may be that secularism is not a religion, but this is simply false. What is apparent is that secularists are effectively claiming religious superiority while simultaneously denying the status of a religion.

Is this a New Religious War?

With all of this insightful history and judicial analysis, Smith leaves the reader quite disappointed by offering no recourse or solution. He seems to indicate that traditional Christians and those who take a providentialist (rather than secular) view of American religion liberty ought to at least take comfort in the fact that the Supreme Court has inconsistently applied the secular doctrines in recent decades.[34] This is little comfort, however, when the high court is so easily swayed by the placement of a simple majority of justices. It seems only a matter of time before secular judges will more thoroughly and consistently apply the secular religion to American civics and law.

Smith also says that “the fate of religious freedom will likely depend to a large extent on the fortunes of ‘the church’” (i.e., Christianity) in America.[35] He considers, “if the church continues to be a vigorous and vital institution in society, religious freedom will probably be okay.”[36] However, Smith makes no mention of where Christian vigor or vitality should be aimed or how these might be exercised. Furthermore, many Christians in America are surely desirous of something better than “probably okay” regarding religious liberty. Such a sentence is laughable when one assesses the dangers facing traditional Christians in America right now – from job loss to political ostracism and from social condemnation to academic restraint.

If Smith is right when he says, “if the right to religious freedom in [a] jurisdictional sense [i.e., in the sense argued from an explicitly Christian perspective and rationale] is not secure… then all other rights will be likewise imperiled,” then providentialist proponents of religious liberty are likely to be far more aggressive in their fight and aim for something far more substantial than a religious liberty that is “probably okay.”[37] The stakes are too high. Christians may not only lose the freedom to live consistently as a Christian, but they may also lose their freedom to live as Americans – at least in any way resembling the American freedoms that marked the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries.

Conclusion

With this book, Steven Smith has given conservative and religious proponents of religious liberty an alternative narrative, reassuring them that the secularists are indeed the antagonists, and not themselves. Such an offering is sure to be warmly welcome, since it vindicates what many religious conservatives know in their bones and what some of them have discovered for themselves by reading from the primary sources. For this vindication, Smith is due a great deal of gratitude – indeed, his historical and judicial research and analysis are worthy of it.

And yet, what religious conservatives really want to know right now is what can be done. How can we preserve what religious liberty we have now? And how can we regain the ground already lost? Writers like Smith seem unable or unwilling to acknowledge the obvious – since neutrality is impossible, and since secularists “are not eager to accommodate religious deviations” from their own set of dogma, then it must be time for Christians to (without apology or hesitation) refuse accommodation to the secularists.[38]

The curtain has been lifted, and the fundamental conflict has been exposed. This is a new religious war. Therefore, all religious soldiers to their battlements (secular devotees and Christians), and let the fighting commence. God willing, it will be a bloodless battle, but a battle it must be.

[1] “Prof. Steven Douglas Smith,” September 8, 2017. https://fedsoc.org/contributors/steven-smith-1.

[2] Smith, Steven D. The Rise and Decline of American Religious Freedom. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2014. p. 1.

[3] Smith, Steven D. The Rise and Decline of American Religious Freedom. p. 1.

[4] Smith, Steven D. The Rise and Decline of American Religious Freedom. p. 1.

[5] Smith, Steven D. The Rise and Decline of American Religious Freedom. p. 2.

[6] Smith, Steven D. The Rise and Decline of American Religious Freedom. p. 2.

[7] Smith, Steven D. The Rise and Decline of American Religious Freedom. p. 2.

[8] Smith, Steven D. The Rise and Decline of American Religious Freedom. p. 3.

[9] Smith, Steven D. The Rise and Decline of American Religious Freedom. p. 3.

[10] Smith, Steven D. The Rise and Decline of American Religious Freedom. p. 3.

[11] Smith, Steven D. The Rise and Decline of American Religious Freedom. p. 4.

[12] Smith, Steven D. The Rise and Decline of American Religious Freedom. p. 4.

[13] Smith, Steven D. The Rise and Decline of American Religious Freedom. p. 3.

[14] Smith, Steven D. The Rise and Decline of American Religious Freedom. p. 6.

[15] Smith, Steven D. The Rise and Decline of American Religious Freedom. p. 12.

[16] Smith, Steven D. The Rise and Decline of American Religious Freedom. p. 7.

[17] Smith, Steven D. The Rise and Decline of American Religious Freedom. p. 8.

[18] Smith, Steven D. The Rise and Decline of American Religious Freedom. p. 8.

[19] Smith, Steven D. The Rise and Decline of American Religious Freedom. p. 9.

[20] Smith, Steven D. The Rise and Decline of American Religious Freedom. p. 9.

[21] Smith, Steven D. The Rise and Decline of American Religious Freedom. p. 10.

[22] Smith, Steven D. The Rise and Decline of American Religious Freedom. p. 11.

[23] Smith, Steven D. The Rise and Decline of American Religious Freedom. p. 11.

[24] Smith, Steven D. The Rise and Decline of American Religious Freedom. p. 11.

[25] Smith, Steven D. The Rise and Decline of American Religious Freedom. p. 130.

[26] Smith, Steven D. The Rise and Decline of American Religious Freedom. p. 130.

[27] Smith, Steven D. The Rise and Decline of American Religious Freedom. p. 130.

[28] Smith, Steven D. The Rise and Decline of American Religious Freedom. p. 130.

[29] Smith, Steven D. The Rise and Decline of American Religious Freedom. p. 137.

[30] Smith, Steven D. The Rise and Decline of American Religious Freedom. p. 153.

[31] Smith, Steven D. The Rise and Decline of American Religious Freedom. p. 154.

[32] Smith, Steven D. The Rise and Decline of American Religious Freedom. p. 154.

[33] Smith, Steven D. The Rise and Decline of American Religious Freedom. p. 154.

[34] Smith, Steven D. The Rise and Decline of American Religious Freedom. p. 158.

[35] Smith, Steven D. The Rise and Decline of American Religious Freedom. p. 164.

[36] Smith, Steven D. The Rise and Decline of American Religious Freedom. p. 164.

[37] Smith, Steven D. The Rise and Decline of American Religious Freedom. p. 169.

[38] Smith, Steven D. The Rise and Decline of American Religious Freedom. p. 156.

Introduction

Carl Ferdinand Howard Henry (1913-2003) was a leading intellectual, representing public engagement by Evangelicals in America throughout the twentieth century. He was a graduate of Wheaton College (B.A. and M.A.), Northern Baptist Theological Seminary (B.D. and Th.D.), and Boston University (Ph.D.). He not only advocated for greater Evangelical involvement in academia and politics, he embodied it.

He was the founding editor of Christianity Today in 1956, and he wrote more than forty books, largely focused on Evangelical theology, practice, and activism. For about a decade, he was a professor at Fuller Theological Seminary, and he taught and spoke widely at other institutions and public conferences. It would be hard to overestimate Henry’s impact and influence on American Evangelicalism.

Summary

The Christian Mindset in a Secular Society is a quintessential volume, representing Henry’s lifelong desires and strategies. In this book, Henry described the political, social, and academic landscape of America during the third quarter of the twentieth century. Henry believed America had become morally relativistic and philosophically humanistic, thus turning hostile against the very principles and traditions that had given birth to such a society. A full-throated and comprehensive Christian worldview was what had produced America as Henry knew it, and he believed that a recovery of this perspective and posture was the only solution.

Henry was especially interested in defending and promoting the fundamental democratic freedoms of American life, particularly religious freedom, not only at home but abroad. In order to be a force for worldly good, however, Henry believed that America needed to get her own proverbial house in order. He presented the picture of American culture and politics without “unqualified allegiance” or highlighting only the “weaknesses and vices.”[1]

Instead, Henry made his case in the form of three “maneuvers.”[2] First, he said, “we [i.e., Evangelical Christians] need to voice a balanced judgment on our troubled nation.”[3] Second, “the rampant moral iniquity of our era brings us perilously near a civilizational endtime.”[4] Here he warned of societal decline and demise. Third, “we need to get on with more effective evangelical engagement in the public arena.”[5] This third admonition summarizes the substance of Henry’s design for this book.

Overall, Henry urged American Evangelicals to wholeheartedly embrace and vigorously pursue a biblically grounded, an intellectually engaged, and an unflinchingly bold witness in the world. He wanted Evangelicals to challenge the assumptions and actions of their secular society and to influence it for the better, based on unapologetically theological (some might say, fundamentalist) convictions. Henry assumed the existence and the good of a “pluralistic arena” for ethics, politics, and religion in America, and he made a case for an “adequate rationale” underpinning “public justice and the good” in American society.[6]

This, it seems to me, was Henry’s weakness and self-contradiction.

Evaluation

Henry said that “the metaphysical grounds on which citizens affirm the content of justice is of high theological, philosophical, and apologetic importance but it is not a matter of political interest” (emphasis added).[7] Further, he said, “adjudicating between religions and philosophies is not the task of the civil government… Moral justification in the public order must be civil rather than theological, even though the civil is privately informed by the theological” (emphasis added).[8] In summary, Henry said, “the commitment to pluralistic government and to religious pluralism implies that public morality can be determined apart from affirmation of a specific religious belief” (emphasis added).[9]

And yet, Henry went on to say, “civil law is not… merely a matter of public consensus. Law retains its divine origin and significance even where the public may not perceive this sanction” (emphasis added).[10] Moreover, Henry argued, “only the balancing of human rights and duties on an objective transcendent basis will effectively challenge the modern isolation and fragmentation of rights” (emphasis added).[11] And where is the only place Henry believed that an objective transcendent basis could be found? He wrote, “God’s New Covenant and principles of social ethics, both divinely revealed, supply the norms and criteria of public policy.”[12]

For Henry, “The Christian knows that only in light of scriptural controls can modern ethical perspectives escape relativism,” but “the church’s mission to the mind and motives of nonbelievers is… a matter… of voluntary inner persuasion of what is right” (emphasis added).[13] Henry advocated for an explicitly Christian effort for evangelism (i.e., persuasion), but he argued against an explicitly Christian attempt to establish state legislation (i.e., coercion). Such a dichotomy condemns Christians to a muted public argument amid a cacophony of secularists and pagans who experience no such restraint.

Conclusion

Carl Henry was a titanic figure of his time. American Evangelicals owe him a great debt of gratitude for his public efforts and example. Present-day Evangelicals in America would do well to recover most of Henry’s vigor and strategies for civil and academic engagement. However, many Evangelicals today are also experiencing the inevitable marginalization which results from avoiding explicitly Christian doctrine and ethics as the only true basis for a coherent and virtuous public policy.

True pluralism (politically and religiously) is only propped up temporarily by relativism, since a particular deity and transcendent ethic is abandoned for the sake of civil argument and state legislation. Such a pluralistic society will eventually be overtaken by those making coercive policies based on their transcendent truth-claims, be they secular (i.e., atheistic), pagan (i.e., non-Christian), or Christian. In the end, we all bring our gods to the public square and to the legislator’s chair, and we ought to reject all demands for a pluralistic government or religious pluralism.

[1] Henry, Carl Ferdinand Howard. Christian Mindset In A Secular Society: Promoting Evangelical Renewal & National Righteousness. Multnomah Press, 1984. p. 12.

[2] Henry. Christian Mindset In A Secular Society. p. 12.

[3] Henry. Christian Mindset In A Secular Society. p. 12.

[4] Henry. Christian Mindset In A Secular Society. p. 20.

[5] Henry. Christian Mindset In A Secular Society. p. 21.

[6] Henry. Christian Mindset In A Secular Society. p. 116.

[7] Henry. Christian Mindset In A Secular Society. p. 115.

[8] Henry. Christian Mindset In A Secular Society. p. 115.

[9] Henry. Christian Mindset In A Secular Society. p. 122.

[10] Henry. Christian Mindset In A Secular Society. p. 125.

[11] Henry. Christian Mindset In A Secular Society. p. 140.

[12] Henry. Christian Mindset In A Secular Society. p. 132.

[13] Henry. Christian Mindset In A Secular Society. p. 124.

Introduction

Carl Ferdinand Howard Henry (January 22, 1913 – December 7, 2003) was a titanic figure of American Evangelicalism in the twentieth century. About five years after graduating from Northern Baptist Theological Seminary (at 29 years old), he published The Uneasy Conscience – something of a young general’s war strategy for engaging culture, academia, and politics. Henry was a leading voice for American Evangelicals, especially those with fundamentalist convictions.

For the next five decades, Henry put his strategy into action, and he urged and helped others to do the same – fostering the creation of the National Association of Evangelicals, Fuller Theological Seminary, the Evangelical Theological Society, and Christianity Today. While most of these institutions have drifted from their fundamentalist moorings, they were born out of conservative Christian convictions that sought to promote both personal relationship with Christ and public engagement for the common good.

Summary

In his foreword to the second edition of The Uneasy Conscience, Richard Mouw wrote, “Yes, the evangelicalism of the past half-century or so had failed in its intellectual and cultural obligations. But there was hope!”^[1] Indeed, Mouw said that Henry’s book was “an invitation to an evangelical cultural involvement that was based solidly on the kind of profound theological reflection that could only be sustained by a social program that was closely linked to a systematic commitment to the nurturing of the life of the mind… [reconnecting] grassroots evangelical activism and carefully reasoned theological orthodoxy.”^[2] In Henry’s own words, this book is “an application of, not a revolt against, fundamentals of the faith.”^[3] Henry believed Christians are certainly “pilgrims” in the world but “ambassadors also.”^[4]

Henry’s war strategy was an overall effort for Christians to apply their conservative (or “fundamentalist”) convictions in the world around them – both far and near. Henry wrote, “The church needs a progressive Fundamentalism with a social message.”^[5] He wanted his contemporaries to understand that a Christian worldview should embrace “world questions, societal needs, [and] personal education,” all rising out of the same Great Commission (Matthew 28:18-20) that motivates evangelism.^[6] While Henry argued that “the apparent lack of any social passion in Protestant Fundamentalism” was “more vocal than actual,” he also noted there was a “strand” of “pessimism” running through them.^[7] Henry wanted to promote the “Christian social imperative” while maintaining distance from liberal Christianity’s “Social Gospel.”^[8]

Throughout the book, Henry contrasts his vision and strategy with that commonly associated with Fundamentalists in his day. Speaking the language of Fundamentalists themselves, Henry called upon them to embrace the “theologico-ethical emphasis” displayed in the lives of the earliest Christians.^[9] “Fundamentalism in the main,” said Henry, “fails to make relevant to the great moral problems in twentieth-century global living the implications of its redemptive message.”^[10] In contrast, Henry argued, “No insistence on a doctrinal framework alone was sufficient [in apostolic Christianity]; always this was coupled with the most vigorous assault against evils, so that the globe stood anticipatively at the judgment seat of Christ.”^[11]

Henry’s solution to the contemporary perception that American Evangelicals were deaf and blind to societal ills was for those Evangelicals to urge “men and nations to come to terms with Jesus.”^[12] Of course, Henry called for a vigorous evangelistic effort, but he also wanted Evangelicals to publicly advance biblical ethics. For Henry, the fact that Christianity may not overtake the world until Christ comes was no reason to neglect “an effort to win as many [civilizations] as possible by the redemptive power of Christ.”^[13] Evangelicals could “engender reformation here, and overthrow paganism there.”^[14]

Henry advocated for “two great academic changes” for Evangelicalism in order to carry out his strategy.^[15] First, “it must develop a competent literature in every field of study, on every level from the grade school through the university.”^[16] Henry wanted Evangelicals educated well in their own worldview. Second, “evangelicalism must… press the Christian world-life view upon the masses.”^[17] Henry wanted Evangelicals to educate others in the only true and good worldview – namely their own.

Conclusion

More than seventy-five years have passed since Carl Henry called American Evangelicals to a vigorous engagement with society, not only evangelism but also social reform. The latter half of the twentieth century surely demonstrates that many of them heard and answered Henry’s call. From a position of apparent majority in America, Evangelicals created institutions, initiated programs, and even largely associated themselves with a particular political party for the purpose of pushing for policies that would forward their mission.

Henry’s strategy also prepared for a day when Evangelicals might not be the majority in America. During such a time, Henry called Evangelicals to “express their opposition to evils in a ‘formula of protest,’ conquering heartily in the assault on social wrongs, but insisting upon the regenerative context as alone able to secure a permanent rectification of such wrongs.”^[18] At the core, Henry’s strategy always emphasized the power of the gospel of Jesus Christ and the necessity of spiritual rebirth. Both in good times and bad, Evangelicals ought to be evangelists; but given the opportunity, Henry believed that Evangelicals ought also to be social reformers.

^[1] Henry, The Uneasy Conscience of Modern Fundamentalism. p. xi.

^[2] Henry, The Uneasy Conscience of Modern Fundamentalism. p. xiii.

^[3] Henry, The Uneasy Conscience of Modern Fundamentalism. p. xviii.

^[4] Henry, The Uneasy Conscience of Modern Fundamentalism. p. xix.

^[5] Henry, The Uneasy Conscience of Modern Fundamentalism. p. xx.

^[6] Henry, The Uneasy Conscience of Modern Fundamentalism. p. xxi.

^[7] Henry, The Uneasy Conscience of Modern Fundamentalism. pp. 2-3 n. 6.

^[8] Henry, The Uneasy Conscience of Modern Fundamentalism. p. 22.

^[9] Henry, The Uneasy Conscience of Modern Fundamentalism. p. 31.

^[10] Henry, The Uneasy Conscience of Modern Fundamentalism. p. 30.

^[11] Henry, The Uneasy Conscience of Modern Fundamentalism. p. 30.

^[12] Henry, The Uneasy Conscience of Modern Fundamentalism. p. 62.

^[13] Henry, The Uneasy Conscience of Modern Fundamentalism. p. 67.

^[14] Henry, The Uneasy Conscience of Modern Fundamentalism. p. 67.

^[15] Henry, The Uneasy Conscience of Modern Fundamentalism. p. 68.

^[16] Henry, The Uneasy Conscience of Modern Fundamentalism. p. 68.

^[17] Henry, The Uneasy Conscience of Modern Fundamentalism. p. 68.

^[18] Henry, The Uneasy Conscience of Modern Fundamentalism. p. 79.

Book and Author

Aaron Menikoff is the Senior Pastor of Mount Vernon Baptist Church in Atlanta, GA, and he is heavily involved today in church cooperation as well as pastoral training. His pastoral career (beginning in the early 2000s) was preceded by a brief political one, serving as a legislative assistant for the late United States Senator Mark O. Hatfield during the mid-1990s. Menikoff earned his Ph.D. in American Church History from The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary in 2008, and this book is the published version of his dissertation. It displays his solid academic research, his natural political interests, and his compelling ecclesiastical passion.

Correcting an Omission

With this book, Menikoff tells a side of the Baptist story that many historians have overlooked and even denied. It is widely understood that Baptists are a pietistic bunch, but Menikoff argues that the “story of politics and piety in Baptist approaches to social reform [particularly during the early nineteenth century] is… more complex. All [Baptists] agreed that true religion [i.e., Christianity] was necessary for the sake of society but not all agreed how piety should exert itself in public affairs.”[1] In his own observations of the historic material, Menikoff concludes, “To my surprise, I discovered that nineteenth century Baptists in the North and the South were social reformers… Rank and file Baptists cared about more than personal faith, they longed for a virtuous nation.”[2]

Menikoff mainly focuses on Baptists in America during the early nineteenth century and their efforts to combat social ills of their time – namely chattel slavery and intemperance. Of course, Baptists “prioritized the evangelism of sinners,” but, Menikoff argues, “they sought direct action as well.”[3] That is, Baptists also applied political pressure to achieve their social aims. As Menikoff articulates it, “all Baptists shared faith in the power of personal piety to indirectly reform society but many also advocated direct social and political action” (emphasis added).[4]

Menikoff also argues that it was neither a desire for social control nor a perfectionist vision of ushering in the second coming of Christ, but a natural “evangelical impulse” that motivated Baptists to apply their private pietism in the communities around them.[5] He says that the gospel has both “a spiritual and a temporal effect.”[6] “At bottom,” writes Menikoff, “[Baptists] believed that a virtuous nation, centered on the gospel, would prosper… [Thus], virtue was the essential link between piety, evangelism, and social reform.”[7]

Menikoff engages here in an ongoing and heated debate among Baptists (and broader Evangelicalism). His book offers a corrective to what he calls a historical “omission.”[8] While some historians perceive latter nineteenth-century Baptists as shifting from an earlier Baptist posture toward social and political action – namely an aversion – Menikoff compellingly argues that earlier Baptists took a similar stance. He says, “Baptists… did not merely wait for society to change as evangelism had its intended effect. They raised their political voices… and challenged their church members to support the state for the sake of society’s welfare.”[9]

Baptist Precedent

This debate is resurfacing in popular American culture today, especially among Baptists. Like nineteenth-century Baptists in America, those of the twentieth and the twenty-first centuries are not unanimous on the relationship of church and state or on the use of political action for the improvement of society.

Baptists have always prioritized evangelism and persuasion, underscoring their theological conviction that every man must be convinced in his own mind on matters of faith. So too, Baptists have universally believed that true societal improvement – the sort that is meaningful and lasting – will only result from changed hearts and spiritually-transformed lives. However, as Menikoff has demonstrated here, it is not un-Baptist to employ societal and political pressure in an effort to improve society. Quite the contrary. Among Baptists, there is rich and extensive precedent for it.

[1] Menikoff, Politics and Piety. p. 11.

[2] Menikoff, Politics and Piety. p. xii.

[3] Menikoff, Politics and Piety. pp. 2-3.

[4] Menikoff, Politics and Piety. pp. 2-3.

[5] Menikoff, Politics and Piety. p. 8.

[6] Menikoff, Politics and Piety. p. 8.

[7] Menikoff, Politics and Piety. p. 9.

[8] Menikoff, Politics and Piety. p. 196.

[9] Menikoff, Politics and Piety. p. 195.

Marriage is more than a partnership—it’s a sacred calling to reflect Christ’s love in the world. First Peter 3:1-7 (especially v7) challenges husbands to live in a way that honors God and their wives, showing the world what it means to follow Jesus as a Christian husband. Let’s dive into this call, exploring how understanding and honor can make your marriage a testimony of faith in Christ.

Living with Understanding

The Apostle Peter instructs husbands to “live with your wives in an understanding way” (1 Peter 3:7, ESV). This means knowing your wife—her needs, her feelings, and her limits—and leading her with care. God designed men to bear the weight of leadership and responsibility in marriage, but that doesn’t mean doing it alone or with a heavy hand. It’s about walking alongside your wife and considering her perspective, even when you make the final call.

In today’s world, it’s easy to fall into the trap of expecting your wife to carry the same burdens you do. Husbands can resent their wives for not handling stress or stepping up in the same ways that men do. But Peter reminds us that wives are different, not less, but different. Your role, as a Christian husband, is to understand those differences and lead with patience and love. Think of it like carrying a heavy load—God gave you the strength for it, not to pass it on to her.

Showing Honor to Your Wife

Peter also calls husbands to “show honor to the woman as the weaker vessel” (1 Peter 3:7). This phrase can stir debate, but it’s about recognizing that women face unique vulnerabilities that men do not. It’s not a put-down; it’s a truth to guide how you treat your wife. Honor means valuing her as a precious gift, an equal heir of God’s grace, and protecting her with your strength.

This honor goes beyond physical protection. It includes providing for your family, creating a safe and stable home, and leading with love rather than force. The world might see women as objects or competitors, but as a Christian husband, you’re called to stand against that. Shield your wife from stress and manipulation, cherishing her as God does. This kind of leadership shows the world you’re not just a man—you’re a man of Christ.

Application for Today

Husbands, you can start by asking God to give you a biblical perspective of your wife. Take time to listen to her, and consider what the Bible teaches about godly manhood and womanhood so that you will better understand what she needs to thrive.

If you’ve been harsh or resentful, confess it to God and seek her forgiveness. Step up as a provider and protector, not out of duty, but out of love for her and Christ.

If you’re single, prepare now by growing in patience and strength, praying for a wife you can honor and lead.

For all of us, marriage reveals our need for grace. Recognize and admit your failures (maybe by expecting too much or leading poorly), and run to Jesus. He offers forgiveness to the humble, and He gives us the desire and ability to improve. Trust that God’s plan for marriage, though countercultural, is good and brings joy when lived His way.

Conclusion

Husbands, your marriage is a platform to show Christ’s wisdom and power. By living with understanding and honoring your wife as a weaker yet precious vessel, you bear witness of your allegiance to Christ. It’s a high calling, but with God’s help, your home can shine as a beacon of godliness.

Let’s pray for the wisdom and strength to lead well, trusting that God’s design glorifies Him and blesses us all.

Marriage is a beautiful gift from God, and it’s also a powerful way to show the world what it looks like to follow Jesus Christ. First Peter 3:1-7 reminds us that our daily choices in marriage can point others to Christ, especially when we live with faithfulness and intentionality. Let’s focus on what this means for Christian wives, exploring how submission, respect, and trust can shine brightly in an often hostile world.

Submission as a Witness

The Apostle Peter starts by encouraging wives to “be subject to your own husbands” (1 Peter 3:1, ESV). This doesn’t mean being a doormat or losing your voice. Instead, it’s about willingly supporting your husband’s leadership with a heart that trusts God. Why? Because this is God’s calling for Christian wives, and this way of life can touch even an unbelieving husband, drawing him toward Christ through your actions. Imagine the impact—your quiet humility and faithfulness could be the gentle nudge he needs to consider the power of the gospel and to experience the grace of God in Christ.

In a culture that often pushes women toward independence and self-reliance, this call to submit stands out. It’s not about women as second-class; it’s about women living with courage and fidelity. Peter knows some wives might face husbands who don’t know or follow Christ. Yet, he says your conduct—how you live day by day—can speak louder than mere words. This is a high calling, one that requires patience and grace, especially when life gets tough.

Respect and Purity in Action

Next, Peter highlights the kind of conduct that honors God, conduct most becoming of Christian wives. Peter urges Christian wives toward “respectful and pure conduct” (1 Peter 3:2), teaching them to focus on inner beauty rather than just outward appearance. He’s not saying to neglect hygiene or health—those are good too—but to prioritize a “gentle and quiet spirit” (1 Peter 3:4). These are attributes God Himself commends. This inner beauty, marked by respect and purity, reflects a heart aligned with Christ.

Think about the world around us. Ads and social media often tell women that beauty is about the latest fashion or sensual attraction. But Peter points to something lasting—virtues like kindness, humility, and modesty. These qualities grow stronger with time, making a Christian woman more beautiful in God’s eyes and to those who matter most. For a Christian wife, this means treating your husband with respect, even when he’s not perfect, and living with purity that sets you apart from cheap worldly women.

Trusting Without Fear

Finally, Peter calls Christian wives to follow the example of holy women (like Sarah in the Old Testament), who trusted God and submitted to her husband Abraham (1 Peter 3:5-6). Peter encourages Christian wives to “do good and do not fear anything that is frightening.” This is where faith gets real. Submitting to your husband might feel risky, especially if he isn’t fulfilling his own responsibilities under Christ. You might wonder, “What if he takes advantage of me?” Peter’s answer is to trust God’s wisdom and provision. God sees all, and He will judge justly.

This doesn’t mean ignoring danger or staying in harmful situations—God calls us to wisdom and justice too. But it does mean letting go of fear and leaning on God’s strength. Sarah (like all women) faced vulnerability, yet she hoped in God. You can too. By living with courage and virtue, you can demonstrate that your security comes from Christ, not from controlling every outcome. This testimony can inspire others, including your husband, to seek the same hope.

Application for Today

What does this look like in your life? How are you displaying the virtues of Christian womanhood in your marriage?

You can pray for a heart willing to support your husband’s leadership. If he’s not a believer, you can ask God to use your respectful actions to draw him closer to Jesus.

You can focus on growing inner qualities—patience, gentleness, and love—that reflect Christ. And when fear creeps in, you can remember God’s promise to care for you. I recommend that you talk to a trusted friend or pastor if you’re unsure how to apply this in tough moments.

If you’re not married yet, then this is an opportunity to prepare. You can seek to develop these godly traits now, and pray for a future spouse who will honor God too.

For all of us, let’s confess where we’ve fallen short—maybe in pride or impatience—and run to Christ for grace. He loves us as we are and empowers us to live for Him.

Conclusion

If you’re a Christian wife, then your marriage is a stage to show the world your allegiance to Christ. By submitting without fear, living with respect and purity, and trusting God, you bear a powerful witness to those around you.

It is sure to be tough (sometimes overwhelming), but with God’s help, your life can shine brightly, pointing others to the Savior. Let’s pray for the strength to live this out, trusting that God’s design for marriage is good for us and that it brings glory to Him.

I’m not sure how we began to assume that wins could be achieved without hardship, losses, and pain. I don’t know of anyone making a rational or experiential argument that we should avoid difficulty in order to experience success. But it does seem to be the default assumption nonetheless.

So many people apparently perceive difficulty, obstacles, and danger as warning signs - “DO NOT ENTER.” A young man wants to get in shape, but the discomfort of soreness, the requirement of time-management and strategy, and the necessity of perseverance apparently create an uncrossable chasm between him and his goal. “If it is this hard for me,” he thinks to himself, “then I must not be meant to do it.”

The same could be said of a thousand aspirations, like spiritual maturity, academic achievement, career building, investing in marriage and family, property acquisition, and wealth accumulation. We feel the pain of failure, we sense the trouble of risk, we experience the weight of increased responsibility, and we give up. One way or another, we turn away from the hardship.

If any of this seems familiar to you, then I want to offer some hard advice. You probably already know it by intuition, but maybe you’ve made excuses or found plausible reasons to justify your lack of dedication. Christians can even use spiritual sounding language to rationalize their avoidance of hardship - “God closed that door” or “That must not be the direction I should go.”

The path of hardship leads to resilience and achievement.

Let me offer this hard advice in three truisms:

1) Hardship is not to be avoided, but overcome.

This world is full of hardship. Some people face the hardship of broken family. Others face the hardship of financial constraint. Some endure the hardships of abuse, neglect, or circumstantial instability. Everyone experiences the hardship of some flaw or weakness or ineptitude, and we often have many.

When hardship comes, we must resist the natural desire to avoid it. The only way we will learn to deal with future hardships (which are inevitable) is by learning to overcome the ones we face today. We must come to grips with the fact that hardship is not to be avoided, but overcome.

We must assess our hardships, looking straight at them with clear eyes and sober minds. We must consider strategies to deal with them, realistically weighing our abilities and our resources. We must put into practice those disciplines that will help us overcome the hardships that lie in front of us.

2) Persevering through hardship is the only way.

In our efforts to overcome hardship, we will be tempted to stop short. Dealing with hardship is… well… hard. This is the nature of the thing, and this is the reality we face. Hardships are not overcome in a day or by a brief burst of energetic action. Anything that can be quickly or easily overcome is (by definition) not a hardship.

When we are tempted to relent in our efforts to overcome some hardship, we must persevere. In fact, the only way to actually overcome a hardship is by persevering. Or, as I have phrased it in the heading above, persevering through hardship is the only way - the only path toward the destination of achievement or success.

We must acknowledge that hardships are difficult to overcome, learning to be content with the task as it is. We must commit ourselves to persevere, and we must keep on re-committing ourselves to do so. We must create an expectation in our minds and hearts that perseverance through hardship is the true goal, not hardship avoidance or alleviation.

3) Resilience overcomes hardship, and hardship produces resilience.

There is a passage in the Bible which speaks especially to Christians about their experience of suffering or hardship. As I’ve been arguing so far, hardship is to be overcome (not avoided), and perseverance is the only way to successfully travel the path of hardship. Christians can do this by remembering what they have at present (i.e., peace with God through Jesus Christ [Romans 5:1]) and by remembering what they will have in the future (i.e., the full glory that God has promised all who believe or trust in Christ [Romans 5:2]). And yet, there is an important lesson amid this call to remember.

Romans 5:1-5 (ESV):

“Therefore, since we have been justified by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ. Through him we have also obtained access by faith into this grace in which we stand, and we rejoice in hope of the glory of God. Not only that, but we rejoice in our sufferings, knowing that suffering produces endurance, and endurance produces character, and character produces hope, and hope does not put us to shame, because God’s love has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit who has been given to us.”

Note that the Apostle Paul (the author of this New Testament letter) says that Christians can “rejoice” in “sufferings.” This is not a masochistic interest in experiencing pain or hardship for the pleasure of it. No, this is a delight in what comes as a result of enduring or persevering through suffering or hardship. See it there in the text - “knowing that suffering produces endurance.” This is only one link in the chain of effects that come about by persevering through hardship, but it is a vital and valuable one.

It is a paradoxical and complementary reality that endurance or resilience is what we need in order to overcome hardship, and the very experience of overcoming hardship produces more endurance or resilience. We can observe this all around us in our daily experience. The carpenter who perseveres with his tools and materials grows calluses and muscular ability to wield those objects better and longer over time. The salesman who perseveres with his product and pitch becomes more successful as he grows the ability to hear ten rejections before his next big sale.

Of course, it is imperative that we understand that success is not measured by the financial, material, or practical results of our efforts. The goal is not ultimately success in our career, prestige, or accolades. The ultimate goal is maturity, character, and resilience itself.

We learn to be resilient by practicing resilience on the path of hardship.

May God help us to endure what hardships may come in our lives, and may He help us to become increasingly resilient. I also pray that those of us who are resilient will be better able to assist those around us who seem more easily overcome by the hardships they face. Our resilience, after all, is not to be wasted on ourselves alone.