When Victory Is Failure
July 1, 2007
Reathel Bean

Despite what the Modern Testimony may lead you to think, I'm not going to talk about the war today, or even war in general. No, Independence Day is this week, and what better time for a good old Fourth of July oration - and I'm in a position to deliver it. So here goes….This great nation of ours, described in the immortal words of President Abraham Lincoln, as "conceived in liberty and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal" has a few problems. And I don't think I'll even try to list them. Some of you may have a rough idea of what they are already, and you might appreciate a little break. In fact, I think I'd rather talk about something else. Let's talk about us. That's always interesting.

The "us" I have in mind is the church. I don't mean just this church, but that might be a good place to start. Judson Memorial Church, for the sake of those of you who are new or visiting, of just haven't been paying attention, was originally, and still is, a Baptist church. For the last several decades, however, it has been dually aligned with the United Church of Christ, which itself is the result of a merger of the Congregational Church and the Evangelical and Reform Church, among others, that happened in the sixties. The United Church of Christ is easy to talk about these days. In fact, one of our members, Emily Jean Gilbert, preached a sermon a couple of years ago, in defense of the much maligned institutional church, in which she was able to talk about a recent vote by that denomination affirming gay marriage. And many of you know about the God is Still Speaking campaign and other progressive initiatives. I'm proud to be part of that denomination.

But I'm also proud to be a Baptist, even if I am one only because Judson is the church where I happened to end up. But being a Baptist, even an American Baptist, as opposed to a Southern Baptist, can be complicated these days. Now, as some of you know, many of the more active and knowledgeable people about things Baptist, past and present, including my wife, Holly, are in Washington, D.C. this weekend at the biennial convention of the American Baptist Church, the "ABC." So if I want you to know something about the ABC that you may not know, it's up to me. And I want to attempt it in order to set the stage for the main point I wish to make, which I should get to in about three minutes.

So a little Baptist history (this will be brief, since, as I think I've made clear, I don't know very much): There appears to be no clear timeline or actual founding moment for the movement that resulted in the Baptists of today. There is even some dispute about any direct relationship to the Anabaptist tradition in England, though there are many similarities. There are examples of early church movements in 17th century England, and there is the very important figure of Roger Williams in this country. That's why he's on the cover of today's bulletin.

One of the instances of Baptist beginnings in England concerned John Smyth (with a Y, of course) and his followers, who were Separatists, having broken away from the Church of England and moved to Amsterdam, where Smyth became convinced that infant baptism should be replaced by baptism of people who were old enough to make the choice. He then rebaptized himself and all his followers. Later, responding to criticism of his baptizing himself, he began talking to a group of Mennonites about being baptized by them. After a while, some of his followers got together and said, "If he's going to spend all his time talking to those Mennonites, we're going back to England." And they did.

A little later, there was a group in England that formed a new church based on the principle of baptism of believers, i.e. no infant baptism, but they were more typically Calvinists and maintained a belief in "particular" atonement, saying that Christ had died only for the elect. They became known as Particular Baptists and, according to A Baptist Manual of Polity and Practice, from which I got a lot of this information, eventually represented the main line of Baptist history in America and England. So I guess you could say we come from a long line of Particular Baptists. I like the sound of that, even if I'm not sure I like what it means.

All right. Enough. I just wanted to give you an idea of the kind of splitting apart and coming together that goes on constantly in the Church. I'm sure most of you would have a hard time getting too worked up about the issues involved. I grew up in the Disciples of Christ Church. Across town was the Church of Christ (not, heaven forbid, to be confused with the United Church of Christ) which had broken away from us when someone proof-texted their way into a belief that instrumental music in the church was wrong. And then there was the issue of one-cup communion verses the little tiny glasses we had our Welch's grape juice in. And there was the spiritual necessity of running water (a river) for baptism. And on it goes.

Back to the Baptists. Some of my reading has warned me not to assume that we're all that unique, and indeed the kind of divisions I've mentioned can be found anywhere. But the diversity among us can be remarkable. In an article written in 1998 called "Why I am (Still) a Baptist," Ken Sehested, who was then the executive director of the Baptist Peace Fellowship (and is still the brother-in-law of our own Abigail Hastings), wrote, "Needless to say, being a Baptist can be a confusing (and confused?) enterprise. Our tent stretches across everything from Jesse Jackson to Jesse Helms, from Marion Wright Edelman to Jerry Falwell, from Martin Luther King Jr. to John D. Rockefeller (not to mention my Aunt Len). You have to wonder if this is a confessional tradition or a three ring circus."

In the midst of all this diversity and, perhaps, confusion, however, the Baptist movement was based on and, despite some lapses that I'll mention in a minute, insists on certain principles of freedom for individuals and individual churches. Walter Shurden outlines these principles in a book entitled The Baptist Identity: Four Fragile Freedoms (Smith & Helways, 1995). One that has been frequently forgotten recently is what he calls "church freedom" -- the freedom of each local congregation to determine its own stands and ministry. Regional associations in the past several years have ignored it entirely and expelled member churches for being welcoming and affirming to gays. Thus we have bizarre situations such as Judson Church in Minneapolis (there is one) being a part of ABC's Rochester-Genesee Region in upstate New York. This is something we've talked about here before and will again, and though it's not today's subject, I have to mention it.

Another principle is, of course, "religious freedom," which Shurden describes as "…the historic Baptist affirmation of freedom OF religion, freedom FOR religion, and freedom FROM religion, insisting that Caesar is not Christ and Christ is not Caesar." This too is frequently ignored, and, Independence Day coming up and all, it's the one I want to focus on today.

A few years ago, I was at a luncheon, and a recently retired ABC minister was bragging about his grandchildren and the wonderful school they attended. "Great principal. We love him. He's always available to the kids-prays with them a lot." Someone said, "Oh, so it's a parochial school." The reply was: "No, it's a public school. He just doesn't bother about that stuff."

I don't know how you would have reacted, but in addition to the spit take with my iced tea, I was scared. That "stuff?" That's our constitution and 400 years of Baptist history you're talking about! And it didn't come easy. In the 17th century, it was a new idea. How can you have a state without a state church? But I keep thinking it's pretty well established now. Of course I should know better. Listen to this statement by former Chief Justice William Rehnquist in 1990: "The 'wall of separation between church and state' is a metaphor based on bad history, a metaphor that has proved useless as a guide to judging. It should be frankly and explicitly abandoned." Come on, Bill. Whatever you mean by that, think what you're saying!

Freedom of religion really is a fragile freedom, and I can think of at least a couple of reasons for that. One is the assumption, sometimes actually expressed as if it were a fact, that this really is a Christian nation. And anyone making that statement is likely to have a very specific idea of what is meant by "Christian." When I allow myself to remember my youth, I can understand that thinking. When I was growing up in Southern Missouri, the only question was whether or not you went to church. Everyone, except for the occasional smartass kid in high school, professed belief in pretty much the same thing.

And I was not that smartass kid. I was pained if someone planned something on Sunday night, knowing we had church. I couldn't believe the movie theater was open. I think I would have done anything to "bring them in." And my imagination was captured one summer by the presidential candidate for the Theocratic Party who made a stop in our town.. To feel any other way would have amounted to selling out. And I wasn't regarded as all that weird.

But that evangelical fervor can get scary when it is accompanied by some kind of power. That leads us to the second reason for the fragility of religious freedom, Shurden, whom I quoted earlier, lists a number of twentieth century figures who implored Baptists not to forget the Baptist witness to liberty for all. Then he says, "That message is much easier to hear and act upon when you are small and powerless. When a denomination gets large and powerful and courted for political reasons, the bells of freedom ring fainter and flatter." In other words, if that old time religion is good enough for me, it's good enough for everyone.

Imagine a large religious group being courted for political reasons. I wonder if that could ever happen here? Well, it has of course, each side thinking it was acting in its own self- interest when it was actually being used by the other. And even if, as I believe, this unholy alliance is about to crumble, there haven't been any winners. The Church has been allowed to raise up so-called "religious issues," meaning gay marriage and abortion, and the State has been allowed to pursue an insane war and other manifestations of arrogance. There's a lot of damage to be undone.

Well, believe it or not, I think we're about to begin that process. I think both the nation and the church are about to come to their senses. Diana Butler Bass, in her book, Christianity for the Rest of Us (Harper, 2006) tells about neighborhood churches that make sense and are growing. And our own Warrren Goldstein, our minister's husband and an observant Jew with a deep interest in the Church, has written that, "the demise of liberal Protestantism has been wildly exaggerated."

And I really do think, in spite of all the religious language thrown about in high places, the country is about to see that not everyone who says "Lord, Lord" means anything by it except "Vote for me." "Render unto Caesar the things that are Caesar's, and unto God the things that are God's." And if I had the credentials to translate that and thought I could get away with it, I'd have him add, "and for God's sake, learn to tell the difference."

At a revival meeting in my church in Missouri one summer, we hired a husband and wife team, and I remember him giving a final admonition to our little choir, before we entered one night, to sit up straight and pay attention. Then we had a quick word of prayer, from which I remember "Give us the victory, and we'll give you the praise." If I hadn't been such a good boy, I might have thought to myself, "Sure you will. And you'll raise your fee next year and pick up some other churches in this county."

But I mention that now by way of telling you why I chose Mark Twain's The War Prayer for today's modern testimony. It never hurts to be reminded of the horrors of war, but another message in that piece is "Be careful what you pray for." Maybe it would be better if we didn't pray for victory. Why don't we try to figure out what faithfulness means, and pray for that. It's just the Christian thing to do.

*****

Ancient Testimony: Luke 20:20-26

New Testimony: Mark Twain: The War Prayer