Book Review: “Has Our Theology Changed?” Edited by Paul Basden
Insufficient history, lacking theology, and poor argument.
Has Our Theology Changed? Southern Baptist Thought Since 1845. Edited by Paul A. Basden. Nashville, TN: Broadman & Holman Publishers, 1994. 0-8054-1045-7
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]
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).
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]
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.