Not a Church Newsletter

  If Baptists can say the Apostles' Creed, as I explored in the previous post, should they? I submit we should. First, a brief explanation of Baptist nervousness about creeds and statements of faith.  The first Baptists came to be in a time of state churches. Confessions of faith had the force of law. Presumed heretics were burned at the stake. Baptists in England were jailed for baptizing by immersion.  Such experiences made Baptists understandably nervous about coercion in matters of religion and passionate about religious freedom.  Even in the context of the history, Baptists still produced statements of faith. E.Y. Mullins, a prominent defender of what Baptists call "soul freedom," still believed such statements were "justifiable and may be of great value." You can find some of Mullins' rationale in the 1919 Fraternal of Southern Baptists  and the 1925 Baptist Faith and Message . Mullins was concerned to promote certain religious views.  Here are some r...

You might have noticed in worship, especially before a baptism, the congregation has been invited to say the words of the Apostles' Creed. For those that grew up Methodist, Presbyterian, or Lutheran, this probably felt familiar. If you grew up Baptist, you might have scratched your head. Baptists have been known for being anti-creedal, sometimes saying "no creed but the Bible!"  Is it un-Baptist to say the Apostles' Creed? At the founding of the Baptist World Alliance (BWA), a global body to which CBF belongs, in 1905 the great Alexander Maclaren invited the group to stand and confess the Apostles' Creed, "not as a piece of coercion or discipline, but as a simple acknowledgement of where we stand and what we believe."  In 2005, a group of Baptists theologians asked the BWA again to confess the Apostles' Creed . The BWA gather did confess together.  In both cases, the danger of creedalism was noted: the confession of the Apostles' Creed was not me...