(Originally written on March 28, 2005, for the Convention of Philippine Baptist Churches, when I was then Associate Regional Pastor and Area Minister for the American Baptist Churches of New Jersey. I am reprinting the essay as I wrote it in 2005, and in the professional role that I had during that time. Featured photo is by Edwin Andrade on Unsplash)
Introduction
I am grateful to my colleague and friend, Dr. Lester Edwin J. Ruiz, Associate Dean at the New York Theological Seminary, for inviting me to be one of the writers of essays related to the CPBC’s “Autonomy Project.” He had asked me to write on, “Autonomy and the ABCUSA.” I hope that my attempt to address that here will help in the discernment that is now taking place in the CPBC and its leaders.
My interest in this is derived from several personal levels. The Baptist heritage of the CPBC sprung forth from ABCUSA missions through the life and ministry of its cross-cultural missionaries. My own Baptist identity was formed and nurtured by experience and exposure to a Filipino Baptist family 3 generations thick before me, whose Baptist vision of the world was shaped by a colonial past, world war, foreign occupation, and liberation. And so the fundamental roots of my own Baptist faith draw sustenance from this “contextualized” version of American Baptist missions. Additionally, I now have been in ministry in the ABCUSA for 25 years. The perspective I offer here is one seen from the vantage point of someone who has been traversing those two worlds.
My prayer is that this perspective may contribute to the journey that we all continue to take as we strive to follow Christ, seeking his “more excellent way.”
Some Important Methodological Considerations
The historian Carl Becker once said that if we are to have a good understanding of the inner spirit of any age, we should look for “certain unobtrusive words” of that age or era. Arguably, one of the “unobtrusive” words in Baptist life is “Autonomy.” It is, however, disingenuous in the least to pretend that any reflection on the meaning of Autonomy can legitimately begin solely on the terrain of Baptist life. Baptists did not invent the ideal of Autonomy.
The term “Autonomy” comes from the Greek word autos (“self”) and nomos (“law”). And so in its neutral linguistic context, the term is generally understood as that faculty which human reason, and the human will, possess as being its own lawgiver.
Just as important, it is essential to note that the ideal of Autonomy is directly linked to a monolithic shift in the self-understanding of human beings and their place in the universe, a decisive intellectual passage from the medieval world into modern civilization that ushered a radically new worldview. As far back in time as Confucius, Mencius, and Lao Tzu in the East; and Socrates, Plato, and Aristotle in the West, we already find the inseparable link between virtue on the one hand and, on the other hand, the rational, thinking individual as an “autonomous moral agent.”
One can argue, then, that the way Baptists have grown to understand the principle of Autonomy has been profoundly influenced by the legacy of the Enlightenment, or the Age of Reason. With the historical roots of the Baptist movement found on the soil of continental Europe, this may well be so. The historical strand of the Autonomy principle, therefore, that formed Baptist life and thought was the strand that took form as a revolt against authoritarianism. Nevertheless, this “revolt against authority” – this “awakening” – heralded the dawning of a new day, birthing innumerable expressions of individual human freedom.
And so the idea and meaning of Autonomy extends much farther historically from our Baptist location. While it is not the purpose of this essay to focus on this aspect of the topic at hand, it is important to acknowledge this reality. We do have enormous resources to draw from – both in western and eastern philosophy and history – should we need to examine the notion in its proper historical depth, and how it evolved and took its place in the history of Christian thought.
Lastly, it is not possible for any honest reflection on contemporary reality to not come to terms with its historical antecedent. We cannot, for example, give an adequate reflection on postmodernity without coming to terms with the learnings we have gained from our confrontation with modernity.
A Brief Acknowledgement of History
The Baptist movement came into being in the wake of the Protestant Reformation. Out of that era sprung forth “Separatist” congregations that sought purity of the faith, hence the label, “Puritans.” John Smyth (1554-1612), an English Puritan preacher who first served an Anglican church, then a Separatist congregation in Gainsborough, became the first English Baptist. Because of persecution, Smyth and a group of his followers fled to Amsterdam. In Amsterdam, Smyth encountered the Mennonites, descendants of Anabaptists, and became heavily influenced by their radical commitment to religious freedom and the baptism only of believers. Smyth reorganized his Separatist congregation which later on became the first English Baptist congregation in 1609.
It is important to note at this point for the purpose of this essay, that even within Puritanism there already was diversity in theology. The group that emerged from John Smyth’s leadership was later on known as “General Baptists” that subscribed to Arminianism’s belief that the atonement of Christ was not limited to a predestined elect, but is open to all. Another band of Puritans who separated themselves from the Church of England founded a congregation in England in 1633 which later on gave birth to the Baptist group identified as “Particular Baptists.” This group held to a radical Calvinistic belief that only the elect were to be baptized.
The proper historical roots, therefore, of contemporary Baptists is found in Europe. Baptists, as we can imagine, made a profound impact on the religious landscape of Europe, and continue to do so today. But it was in the so-called “New World”, America, where the Baptist movement exploded and became the largest strand of American Protestantism. The English Baptist, Roger Williams, came to Massachusetts in 1632. But not long after that, the “New World Puritans” that became the dominant religious establishment of “New England”, forced him out of their colonies. Roger Williams fled to neighboring Rhode Island where he formed the first Baptist church in America in 1639.
The years after that saw the growth of Baptist congregations. But the majority of the early New England Baptists were too few and too widely scattered across the emerging colonies. But as early as 1670 – while very incipient and “primitive” – General Baptists in America, on the one hand, had already reached out to each other to form associations, or assemblies. On the other hand, the Particular Baptists in the middle colonies especially, started meeting informally with each other. In 1707, five Particular Baptist congregations came together to form the Philadelphia Baptist Association. This association was the first Baptist association that showed a formal structure and demonstrated a self-sustaining associational life. It became the “template” of associational life as other Baptist bodies that were formed after it followed the organizational pattern of the PBA.
The next 200 years saw tectonic shifts in the life of Baptists in America. Baptists in the North did not grow as rapidly as their counterparts in the South. Yet the impetus for community continued to find expression amongst Baptists. The American Baptist Foreign Mission Society was formed in 1814; the Publication Society in 1824, and the Home Mission Society in 1832. When one looks at the history of religious movements in a particular place and time, one also invariably sees the history of politics of that time and place. The American Civil War drove a cleavage into the life of Baptists in America and unleashed a schism in 1845, primarily over the issue of slavery and slave ownership, not only amongst church members, but among missionaries themselves. The Baptists in the north strongly believed that slavery and slave ownership were antithetical to the Christian faith. And so the south seceded from the main body of Baptists at that time to form the Southern Baptist Convention.
The remaining churches of the North, up until 1950, were called the Northern Baptist Convention. Theological diversity also evolved amongst the northern Baptists. The years leading up to that time saw more divisions as the Modernist-Fundamentalist controversies of the period between 1920 thru the late 1940’s caused the secession of other groups from the Northern Baptist Convention (the Conservative Baptist Association of America, and the General Association of Regular Baptists). In 1950 – primarily to come to terms with the changes in traditional geographical boundaries – the Northern Baptist Convention changed its name to the American Baptist Convention. And in 1972, the Convention evolved deeper in its understanding of its commitment to the notion of the local church as the “fundamental unit of mission”, and changed its name to what is now called the American Baptist Churches, USA.
In my own life journey with the ABCUSA, I have come to call the ABCUSA as a “remnant” Baptist denomination – a “leftover”, as it were, of a series of divisions in its history. But I say this with much affection because in this “remnant” identity that I have discerned in its inner life, in my view, lies the very sign of its distinctive faithfulness.
The Baptist family has many offspring and many expressions. And so the question, ‘Why I am an American Baptist?’ is best answered with the prior understanding that ‘Baptist’ and ‘American Baptist’ identities are not necessarily one and the same. It has been said that American Baptists have never been one thing, but many; and therein lies much of our distinctiveness. At the heart of the American Baptist self-consciousness are history and mission. Who American Baptists are today is, therefore, only the contemporary expression of a long history of particular persons who have responded to Christ’s call in the world in peculiar ways. And so, speaking for myself, my identity as an American Baptist is not rooted only in organizational structure, or confessional and propositional statements. Rather, beyond all of that, my identity as a child of the CPBC – and by extension, an offspring of the American Baptist Churches, USA – is grounded in the lives and ministry of particular people who have responded to God’s call in a particular way.
It begins with my own personal family history, with 3 generations of Filipino Baptists before me who were brought to the Baptist faith by American Baptist missionaries. This faith produced in my family church builders, pastors, and pioneers who formed my inherited and embraced Baptist faith – Alejo Familiaran, Restituta Gerona-Familiaran, Delfin Dianala, Moley Familiaran. And then farther out into the vast panorama of that Baptist history spanning the oceans, I see Obadiah Holmes, Roger Williams, Benjamin Randall, Mary Webb, John Mason Peck, Lott Cary, Luther Rice, Charles Journeycake, Joanna Moore, Dong Gong, Adoniram & Ann Judson – to name a few pioneers who represent my wider American Baptist ancestry. In more modern memory more saints crystallize this identity for me: Walter Rauschenbusch, James and Charma Covell, Helen Barrett Montgomery, Martin Luther King, Jr., Orlando Costas, Jitsuo Morikawa, Howard Thurman, Margaret Prine, George Peck, Prathia Wynn – to name a few, but saints and all! Why am I an American Baptist? The answer lies in the mighty stories of faith embodied in these people. For me their lives and ministries have carried forth the American Baptist ‘DNA’ through the generations, and it is their ‘genes’ that continue to stir in my soul.
The Contemporary Scene
Baptists in general around the world share some fundamental convictions. Perhaps one of the most defining of these – and formative to its very identity – is Religious Freedom or, as it is sometimes known, Soul Liberty. It can be argued that most of these fundamental convictions (Local Church Autonomy, Church-State Separation, Believer’s Baptism, the Gathered/Regenerate Church) find their roots in this core conviction. Throughout history, the foundational belief that God has given every person the dignity and the gift of freedom has permitted Baptists of every persuasion to respond freely to the world around them and appropriate their faith in light of their own understanding of Scriptures. It is this bedrock ‘Baptistic’ belief that has given rise to the variety of Baptist traditions today. Yet Baptists have also sought out to be in fellowship with one another, primarily driven by an abiding call to be the “Body of Christ.” Just as abiding as its value on the independence of the local church is its commitment to the unity of the church. Some live with this “ambiguity” better than others.
The Baptist World Alliance (BWA) – of which the ABCUSA and CPBC are a part – is an international fellowship of 211 Baptist unions and conventions in 120 countries. In the United States alone, there are more than 21 Baptist denominations/alliances/fellowships. The ABCUSA is composed of 35 autonomous but interrelated judicatory “Regions.” The “Region” is analogous to the CPBC’s “Kasapulanan”. In and through these regional expressions is where the ABCUSA – and I submit the CPBC – seek to live out what it means to strive for “unity in the midst of diversity.” The “Regions” and the “Kasapulanans” are the visible means by which ABCUSA and the CPBC express their commitment to mutual respect and interdependence and, above all, their commitment to the “Body of Christ.” It is encouraging to see that even now there is concern about this issue in both the CPBC and the ABCUSA – that is, how to live in the crucible of the loving tension between autonomy and interdependence.
Yet this tensile bond has been stretched and tested through the years as competing social visions, conflicting biblical interpretations, and disparate cultural ideologies – rife in the stubbornly independent genes of Baptist thought and practice – strain at its points of connectedness. And the struggle continues. Today the ABCUSA is threatened once again by dissension and deep division – this time by the issue of homosexuality. The deepening controversy is bringing extreme opinions of a polarized dichotomy into a seemingly inevitable collision. From my vantage point, I find the critical points of disjuncture on fundamental differences in the understanding of sin, Christology (what does it mean to be centered in Christ?), biblical interpretation, and different visions of a Christian ethic on human sexuality. Within each of these “battlegrounds”, the sought after loving tension between autonomy and interdependence is once again under assault in the ABCUSA. And as genes go, it will not be speculating to say that these same contemporary issues are vexing the CPBC as well.
As we invariably see in all church controversies, conflicting ideologies are often conflated as an ecclesiastical struggle. While doctrinal and theological differences take center stage in such controversies, it is perilous naiveté on the part of any serious observer to overlook the role that power and control play in the whole dynamic. We see strands of the politics of power and domination insidiously weaving themselves in and through the actions on both sides of the extreme in this current struggle. Extremists on both sides are now maneuvering to influence the denomination’s constituted “manner of acting” to favor their ends. Regions are threatening to withhold mission dollars, and a few are already poised to altogether withdraw if their demands are not met.
For the vast majority who are living in the “middle”, the lessons from history beg for us to discern prayerfully these various elements in the inherent complexity of community-making. The “winner-take-all” environment that extremism breeds is pressuring all to take one side or the other. For the “moderates” who seek to lift up the unity of the church, who see community as a mandate of the gospel, who share precious friends and colleagues across both sides of the issue, the current situation is indeed heart-breaking. The temptation of reductionism and simplification is great. But, as such, its coming to pass always leads the community of faith to the destructive path of fragmentation. How can the love of Christ be preached in such a time as this?
A Personal Hope
The call to “strive first for the kingdom of God” is an abiding reminder for me that the primary task of the church is mission. Ours is the call to participate in God’s yet unfinished work of love in the world. In fact the church is mission. Herein lies the mystery: that it is in the giving of ourselves that we truly find our life.
As Director of Missionary Recruitment of International Ministries, ABCUSA, from 1997-2003, one of my major responsibilities was to be the moderator of the screening and selection panel of the agency. In that capacity I was heavily involved in regular personnel decision making. The panel has always desired to arrive at decisions by consensus. For the most part it did. But in the few times that there was no “consensus” it became clear to me that the method (like any one method, by the way), understood even in its strict egalitarian sense, can prove to be inadequate in certain pivotal decision-making situations. During those instances, I discovered that decisions were in effect stopped on its tracks when there was even one solitary dissenting opinion. This seems to be the dark side of consensus if “consensus” in this sense is understood as everybody thinking alike on a particular issue. Where one simply withholds assent, the whole process is “killed” and prevents it from moving forward. I have seen the noble intent behind the method of consensus being defeated in this context. Unchecked, in and of itself, the mechanism can become another manipulative tool for control and misuse of power.
My view is that “consensus” must not be understood as “uniformity.” In fact, this understanding contradicts the reality that ABC strives for – “unity in diversity, and diversity in unity.” Rather, “consensus” in the best sense of seeking the “mind of Christ” is about seeking “common ground.” Understood this way, consensus leaves room for disagreements around other aspects of an issue (as Baptists always do) but invites participants to coalesce around its vital center. Here a mechanism for negotiation needs to be in place that will provide for a systematic approach to analyzing the various layers of an issue, enabling all to sort out clearly what is secondary from the primary.
As a person of Filipino heritage and upbringing I tend to view the world as an organic whole composed of individual parts which are dependent upon each other. This is a context that has illumined for me in a special way the teachings of Jesus on the task of his followers and the nature of their mission. It is my hope that the CPBC, as Filipinos, will prayerfully and systematically engage this Filipino and Asian attribute to discern how God may be speaking through the “eyes” of our spirit. The individual parts have necessary roles to play, and together constitute the community. Philosophically, my sense of selfhood is bound to the notion of community or the family. To that extent, the pursuit of the community’s common good is a form of self-actualization for me. And so in ministry, and in the understanding of my call, I have discovered much synchronicity with Jesus’ nonhierarchical life. Additionally, I believe in the imago dei inherent in every person, which bestows in each one the capacity to see a vision of God’s desire for the world. Consequently, I have a deep commitment to the superiority of collective wisdom over individual achievement. And where individual achievement becomes necessary, it yet has to occur within the context and crucible of community. The methodological attitude that resonates with this reality is one of inclusion and community.
It is also important to note that in recent years the phrase, “Unity in Diversity” or “motto” (as some now describe it dismissively) has been seen with some cynicism by some sectors in the ABCUSA that see this issue as no more than romanticized platitude. I need to say this up front to frame the reality that I see facing the denomination in this area of concern because I believe that in the very location of the current dilemma lie the practical resources for our churches to reach this realizable hope and what I consider a gospel mandate. A clear-eyed and sober look at the community (never mind the world) around us reveals a radically globalized environment. In this environment peoples – and churches – have had to come to terms (or decide not to) with the many-ness and multi-layeredness of our communities and our world. Diversity and pluralism are the natural offspring of globalization and many say that the emphasis on “inclusiveness” in our denomination is primarily driven by politics and economics. An aspect of this viewpoint is correct; in that our faith needs to be appropriated in the community of relationships and it is in this community where politics and economics are essential realities of living. And it is true that our faith through history has always had to come to terms with its context and had to appropriate the faith within the particular age wherein it had to live. Consequently, in this our present age, churches and peoples are confronted with the stark reality of a pluralized world and it confronts even the unwilling.
Yet beyond – and even prior to – politics and economics, the community called by Jesus is mandated to be inclusive; in fact, radically so. The nature of the church and of the Christian community in our biblical tradition requires its participants to be inclusive. “I am the Vine and you are the Branches”, Jesus said, clearly illustrating to the disciples that one of the characteristics of his community is one of interconnectedness of its participants with each other in spiritual intimacy. This requirement is radicalized by Jesus in his own prayer for unity of his disciples, “That they may be one as you and I are one.” In this personal intercession, Jesus equates and grounds this hope in the very nature of his own relationship with God. This mandate is pastorally crystallized by the apostle Paul especially in his letter to the churches in Ephesus, where he uses the “Body of Christ” metaphor (Ephesians 4) to illustrate the identity of the community of Jesus. Furthermore, Paul says that “In him the whole structure is joined together and grows into a holy temple in the lord” (Eph. 2: 21), because Jesus has “broken down the walls of hostility…he is our peace” (Eph. 2: 14 ff.). It is the very will of God to “gather up all things in him, things in heaven and things on earth” (Eph. 1:10). In his letter to the churches of Colossae, Paul reminds the fractious churches of the supremacy and all-sufficiency of Christ in the whole cosmos, “He is before all things, and in him all things hold together” (Colossians 1:17). Is unity possible in diversity? Not only is it possible in Christ, it is required by Christ. It is clear that Autonomy, as defined within the frame of western individualism, is a contradiction to the very teachings of Jesus. The pentecostal diversity of God’s people is one of the signatures of creation. Diversity is not merely a modern economic and political problem for the churches. Diversity itself is a gift from God.
The biblical model of the community of Jesus is counter-cultural to the materialistic vision of what community means. In Matthew 6: 25 and ff., Jesus understands the human preoccupation to the primacy of material wealth and security – expressions of an ethic of control. But there Jesus announces the priority behavior in the new community that he is calling: “But strive first for the kingdom of God and his righteousness, and all these things will be given to you as well.” The secular, materialistic vision of success presupposes the elimination of obstacles to its understanding of community as “stability.” Translated in the community of human relationships this means, among other things, creating and maintaining homogenous environments where everybody think alike, look the same, eat the same food, live around the same neighborhood, experience God in the same, exact way, etc.
And so from a biblical point of view, “unity in diversity” for American Baptists also says at the same time that there must be “diversity in unity.” In this understanding, one cannot be separated from the other and that both are made possible in the community of Jesus through the celebrated interdependence of the different parts of the body, united in Christ. Here is one of the visible signs of a spirit-centered community: its members are deeply aware of their interdependence precisely because they have seen the critical point where they are necessarily connected, and that is through a common call. The practices of love, justice, liberation, fidelity in relationships – life-blood of an ethic of inclusion – are conditions for community and the experience of the transformed life in Christ.
In the community of Jesus we are required and called to practice loving the one who we do not have much in common, or even the unlovable. It is a community that is living and breathing, alive and empowered by Agape and thus fearless enough to adjust to the newcomer and the different. In God’s incarnation in Jesus Christ, God’s decisive act of reconciliation is begun. In Christ, humanity is reconciled to God. The spiritual community, or the church, represents this unity in the world through the coming of the Spirit. It is in and through the church that the world comes to see the reconciling love of God in Christ. It is granted to us that it is in God’s kingdom of the Spirit where the cross’s dialectic of love dwells. I believe deeply that American Baptists are uniquely gifted to be witnesses to this love.
Jesus is the head of the church and is the future of the church. Autonomy is a gracious gift from God, rooted inextricably in the imago dei in each of us. And because it is a gift from God, its exercise and practice must not be for the aggrandizement of the self, but for the glory of God who calls us into koinonia. That freedom is lived out in the service of the work of the kingdom, and to glorify Christ and Christ alone. That call to koinonia is not only for Baptists, but for all. May the Spirit guide us all to the path of Christ in the world.
Elmo Familiaran 
Thank you, for this, Tô. A publishab
LikeLike