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Friday, Jan. 3, 2003
By Charles W. Deweese
BRENTWOOD, Tenn. - Creedalism creates a set of beliefs, demands uniformity to them, and punishes those who refuse to submit. Creedalism violates free faith. It contradicts voluntarism. It strikes against nonconformity. It subjugates liberty of conscience. It denies soul competency. It denigrates the priesthood of all believers. It counters individual interpretation of the Bible.
Therefore, creedalism overrides the heart-and-soul convictions of Baptists. It sets itself against key defining traits of Baptists. It disrupts the Baptist vision of liberty.
Baptists will turn 400 years old in 2009. For four solid centuries, the pivotal documents of their faith have opposed creedalism. All efforts to the contrary have either inadvertently missed the mark of what it means to be Baptist or have deliberately elevated confessions of faith to creedal status in order to control someone else's conscience.
Creeds and Confessions
Have Baptists ever used creeds? Honestly, some have - in two ways.
First, some have simply used the word creed as another term for a confession of faith, both meaning exactly the same and both advocating voluntary acceptance or rejection. For example, in 1678 some Baptists in England adopted the Orthodox Creed, but that was nothing more than a freedom-driven confession. That confession made perfectly clear that Baptists were not to ascribe undue authority to it: "No decrees of popes, or councils, or writings of any person whatsoever, are of equal authority with the sacred scriptures."
Most doctrinal statements described as creeds in Baptist literature of the 1600s-2000s fit into this first category. It is a case of two terms having identical meanings.
Is it okay to call a confession a creed? Baptists, being unpredictable at times, can call a confession whatever they want - as long as they do not violate the free consciences of persons to choose or reject it. However, to call a confession a creed runs the risk of assigning a negative creedalistic character to it.
Second, and more dangerously, other Baptists have intentionally converted confessions of faith into compliance-demanding creeds, thereby giving them an authoritarian status. The results have included forced faith, loss of doctrinal liberty and integrity, and violations of the authority of Christ and scripture. Lapses into this tendency have occurred from time to time in the unfolding Baptist story. Two examples follow.
In 1849 J.L. Reynolds, pastor of the Second Baptist Church of Richmond, Va., published his book Church Polity. In his discussion of creeds and confessions, he wrote, "it is the right and duty of a Church to interpret for itself the laws of Christ, and to enforce obedience, on the part of its members, to the system of faith and practice which it derives from the word of God. ... The use of a confession of faith ... insists upon a correct interpretation of the word of God, a cordial reception of its truths, and an entire submission to its directions."
Reynolds ascribed an unfortunate meaning to confessions - forced compliance. He was a creedalist, out of sync with Baptist ideals.
From 1979-2002 leaders of the Southern Baptist Convention (SBC) transformed the voluntary Baptist Faith and Message (BF&M) into a mandatory creed. Creedalism prompted, implemented and resulted from that move. Such creedalism is a Southern Baptist nightmare. It has resulted in the firings, early retirements and resignations of hundreds of seminary professors, missionaries and other denominational employees. They simply refused to adopt prescribed beliefs, claiming that their call came from God, not from man-made documents.
Recent SBC leaders typically do not use the term creed; however, they happily apply confessions in creedal fashion. They bypass historic Baptist principles in the process.
What is at stake?
What really is at stake in this discussion? Jesus rejected forced doctrine. The Bible opposes creedalism. Baptist confessions of faith have typically rejected creedalistic applications.
In sharp contrast, organized Southern Baptist Convention life today thrives on doctrinal intimidation. The preface to the 2000 Baptist Faith and Message says confessions are "instruments of doctrinal accountability." That is creedalism.
The president of the mother seminary of Southern Baptists described the relationship between the 2000 BF&M and his faculty: "We do not force anyone to accept the confession of faith, but those who accept employment here do so under these terms." That is creedalism.
The International Mission Board requires its missionaries to accept the 2000 BF&M. That is creedalism.
The key issue is control, forcing beliefs on others in order to control them for personal or institutional advancement. That is wrong. Baptist convictions reject all efforts to manipulate others' belief systems.
What is wrong with creedalism? It mocks academic freedom in seminaries; it denies basic rights of belief to missionaries; and it even questions the rights of Baptists at large to think for themselves. It applies a blowtorch to a foundational Baptist principle: God has gifted each individual in every church, association, convention, fellowship and mission field with liberty of conscience. No human authority - written or implied - has the right at any time or place to force beliefs on any Baptist.
Baptist history at large strongly opposes forced creeds or confessions. While some Baptists have recommended no creed but the Bible, the Baptist dream refuses even to hammer the Bible over people's heads.
In 1854 English Baptists published a monumentally important work, Confessions of Faith, and Other Public Documents, Illustrative of the History of the Baptist Churches of England in the 17th Century, edited by Edward Bean Underhill, joint secretary of the Baptist Missionary Society. In his preface to this major collection of formative Baptist confessions of faith, Underhill wrote: "The confessions of this volume were not creeds, compulsorily imposed on the members or churches of the Baptist body. ... No one was required or bound to subscribe to them, and if adopted by any church as the expression of its sentiments, all others were left free, and even a considerable latitude of judgment allowed in the bosom of the church itself. ... They ... left the phantom of uniformity to the unavailing search of an establishment."
More recently, William L. Lumpkin, noted authority of Baptist confessionalism (see, e.g., his Judson Press book, Baptist Confessions of Faith, 1959; revised 1969), claimed in 1958 in the Encyclopedia of Southern Baptists that "Few Christian groups have confessed their faith so freely as Baptists, but no group has been more reluctant than they to elevate these confessions to authoritative statements or creeds."
Dangers of creedalism
Using confessions of faith in creedal fashion is filled with potential dangers, weaknesses and inconsistencies.
Creedalism flies in the face of the Baptist spirit of freedom; for that reason alone, Baptists should fight creedalism at every corner and in every way possible.
The primary messages of the historic Baptist spirit includes voluntarism, nonconformity, liberty of conscience, soul competency, the priesthood of all believers, and freedom in biblical interpretation. Those messages dominate the essential literature of Baptists.
(EDITOR'S NOTE - Charles W. Deweese, a native of Asheville and a graduate of Mars Hill College, is executive director-treasurer of the Baptist History and Heritage Society in Brentwood, Tenn.)
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