rather the Spirit gathers them all into a community where they are all able to hear, to believe, to respond in praise. Their differences no longer divide, but instead are gathered into a new community of all nations. Baptists, however, find it hard to practice the way of Pentecost.

When we come together, we find it hard to allow differences to be expressed for fear that they will divide. I would like to suggest some reasons for this.

First, it is part of the genius of the Baptist way of church

that it is always local. We do not have a strong vision of the “universal” church. We think locally. That is a strength. It shows a commitment to live out our faith in practical, local mission. But that same strength can lead to narrowness and a lack of vision for God’s work in the whole world. In a sense we need the Spirit’s bi-focal vision, local and universal. And when we come together, we need to see how the Spirit is holding all this diversity in one wonderful body, the church. Similarly, because our Baptist way of being church calls for

us to be obedient and faithful, here and now, we are also tempted to think of the church as only existing in the present. Too easily we lose the vision of all that God has done in the past, the great cloud of witnesses who have gone before us, and also of the future and those who are yet to come. These dynamics can also narrow our vision and make us unwilling to see and embrace those of different experience and custom. The greatest difficulty, however, is with our temptation to think that we own the church. Our Baptist way of being the church

stresses the importance of being members. Each of us is called into the church; we are baptized into the church and equipped with a gift for the church. But that can too easily mean that we think we create the church and we own the church. We are the church, but we don’t own the church. It is fundamentally the body of Christ. It is his. It is the people of God, the creation of the Spirit. We don’t make it, own it, or control it. Therefore, when we come together in all our differences and

each of us with a gift, an identity, a story, a need, an opinion, all these things are secondary to our identity in Christ. We must therefore come together with a prayer on our lips and in our hearts and our heads:

Living God,

community in whom differences do not divide,

by the grace of your Spirit enable us, too, to be such a community, and in this way bring honor to Jesus our Lord

and bear witness to your gift and will for all the world.

If we prayed something like this, for each other as well as for

ourselves, we just might find that unity which allows us to differ, to the glory of God! Frank Rees is principal and professor of systematic theology at Whitley College in Melbourne, Australia.

REAL BAPTISTS PURSUE CHURCH UNITY By Steven Harmon

The experiences of many Baptists and the impressions of many

of their external observers run counter to the assertion made by this article’s title. Baptists have their origins in ecclesial division, and their subsequent history is marked by ever-increasing intra- Baptist divisions. Division is certainly a DNA sequence in the genetic code of “real Baptists.” Yet intertwined with it are genetic markers of an impulse toward ecclesial unity, and Baptists are being “real Baptists” when they allow that impulse to move them toward the full participation in the life of the Triune God and in the life of the body of Christ that Jesus prayed would mark his followers: “that they may be one, as we are one” (John 17:22 NRSV).

Baptists have a history of separating from what they

perceive as false churches that begins with the foundation of the earliest identifiable Baptist congregation in Amsterdam, in the Netherlands, in 1609. Co-founder John Smyth’s pilgrim quest for a true church fully under the rule of Christ led him to reject his baptism in the Church of England as a false baptism administered by a false church. He then identified with the Separatists and their congregational ecclesiology as a truer expression of church. But when eventually, in Amsterdam, Smyth reached the conclusion that no communion there could be considered a true church that administered a true baptism, he baptized himself and then the other members of his community. Smyth later questioned this action, having come to believe that the Mennonite fellowship in Amsterdam was a true church, and sought to unite his church with the Mennonites.

Baptists also have been quick to divide among themselves whenever some have become convinced

that others have

developed unbiblical or un-Baptist patterns of faith and practice. This happened in the earliest community of Baptists in Amsterdam, when a small group of its members, led by Thomas Helwys, insisted on the validity of their baptisms as administered by Smyth and, in 1611 or 1612, returned to England to establish Baptist ecclesial life in their homeland. Baptists ever since have often followed this precedent for division intra-Baptist in relations in local congregations, associations, national denominational organizations and even within the Baptist World Alliance. But the impulse toward unity is also discernible from the beginnings of the Baptist movement. Smyth did search for other “true churches” with which to find fellowship, lest his Amsterdam congregation be devoid of connections with the larger body of Christ. Baptist theologian Stephen Holmes characterizes Smyth’s action on the new conclusion that the Mennonite fellowship was indeed a true church in this fashion: “Smyth, perceiving a true church in existence, believed he had no option but to join it; separation from a true church was not an option” (Baptist Theology [T&T Clark, 2012], p. 17). That impulse manifests itself again in the origins of Baptist associational life. In their first half-century of existence Baptist churches began to form associations of multiple local congregations, in part out of the recognition that a single congregation did not possess in and of itself all the resources (Continued on next page)

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