Here’s a great Reflections piece from a guy named Arnie Adikson who is at CBF’s General Assembly:
…But tonight, back at this year’s CBF assembly, I heard a man speak that always makes me think “I AM a Baptist.” His name is Bill Leonard, and he’s the founding dean of the divinity school at Wake Forest.
Bill Leonard is a historian, maybe the premier Baptist historian of our time. Okay, not maybe. I say he is. The first time I heard Dr. Leonard speak at Baylor University a few years ago, it was at a conference discussing among other things, how the Baptist influence has waned and the Christian light has dimmed at several traditionally Baptist schools, and Wake Forest was listed among them. This physically small man in a bowtie stood before the crowd and challenged the supposition that because a university no longer touts a certain line, it means that God has departed and the light has left. He basically said that he would wait right there for a few moments for an apology, and if one was not forthcoming he would return to North Carolina without delivering anything further of his speech. An apology was offered, and he continued, showing only grace and wisdom in the rest of his speech.
As a Baptist historian, he understands about the last 400 years since the first self-identified Baptists returned to England and opposed the state church there. (NOTE: Happy Birthday, Baptists.) Baptists have from the beginning been dissidents, who believe that religious liberty is not true of anyone if it’s not true of everyone. Baptists were kicked out of most of the colonies, tried and often killed as heretics. My forbears believed that the church was a local community of believers who were called to prophetically bear witness to the grace and love and liberty found in Jesus Christ.
When I hear Bill speak, I think that perhaps I am a Baptist.
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I’ve always found it interesting that the longest held Baptist distinctive isn’t even Biblical. Jesus and the apostles didn’t die for or encourage the proclamation of religious liberty. Maybe that’s why Baptists can’t seem to resist being involved in politics.