Download
1 / 70
710 likes | 885 Views
BAPTISTS AND SOCIAL JUSTICE. BAPTISTS AND SOCIAL JUSTICE. Introduction A. Content B. Notes on Baptists and Social Justice C. Baptist Issues D. Biblical Texts on Social Justice. William M. Tillman, Jr. and W. Andrew Tillman.
E N D
BAPTISTSANDSOCIAL JUSTICE • Introduction A. Content B. Notes on Baptists and Social Justice C. Baptist Issues D. Biblical Texts on Social Justice
William M. Tillman, Jr. and W. Andrew Tillman “Baptists have found themselves embroiled in their struggle for social justice regularly throughout history.”
Adam Taylor “Baptists' voices are expressing a growing desire to address the great moral issues of our time, including poverty, climate change, religious freedom, and HIV/AIDS. While real disagreements still exist, particularly around the differences between charity and justice or systemic change and personal transformation, momentum is growing favoring deeper and broader political engagement.”
Glenn Jonas “The Baptist World Alliance has never hesitated to speak out clearly and forcefully in areas where religious persecution exists and to lend its resources where relief efforts are needed.”
E. Glenn Hinson “From Baptist Ranks came two of the most perceptive and eloquent visionaries and prophets for a ‘social gospel’—John Clifford in England and Walter Rauschenbusch in the United States.”
Robert G. Torbet • 1. evangelism of the individual has been a primary concern • 2. the emphasis on separation of church and state results in less legislative efforts • 3. the decentralized polity has made for a scattered social effort • 4. a fear of the “social gospel” because of what are deemed liberal theological views
Charles Deweese 1. “First, some preachers, writers, and other Baptist leaders lack biblical courage; they remain silent on prophetic issues to defend their jobs or to promote peace and unity around inconsequential values.” 2. “Second, the prophetic word is rare because today’s potential prophets do not know the history of Israel—or the history of Baptists. That makes it impossible for them to identify covenant-breaking happenings in the Baptist heritage. Or they know some of the history, but choose . . . to rewrite it for personal advantage.”
Biblical Texts on Social Justice Genesis 18.19 Leviticus 19.15 Psalms 9.7, 33.5 Isaiah 32.1, 38.5, 61.1-2 Joel 3.2b-3; Amos 5.18 Micah 6.8 Luke 4.18
BAPTISTSANDSOCIAL JUSTICE • An Historical Overview of Selected Topics A. Baptists in the Seventeenth Century B. Slavery and Racism C. Socioeconomic Concern: The “Social Gospel” D. War and Peace E. Poverty and Hunger
E. Glenn Hinson “. . . Baptists started their journey with a two-sided Puritan concern for heart religion manifested in transformation of life and society.”
John BunyanThe Pilgrim’s Progress “This Talkative is not aware of; he thinks that hearing and saying will make a good Christian; and thus he deceivetly his own soul . . . .”
Thomas Lamb1660 An Appeal to the Parliament Concerning the Poor, That There May Not Be a Beggar in England
Bill J. Leonard “’Poor relief’ was a concern of most Baptist congregations. It was addressed by calls for public response, by special offerings, and by individual actions on the part of members.”
Richard Furman “Had the holding of slaves been a moral evil, it cannot be supposed that the inspired Apostles, who feared not the faces of men, and were ready to lay down the lives in the case of their God, would have tolerated it, for a moment, in the Christian Church.” African Americans “have their situation bettered by being brought here & held as Slaves, when used as the Scriptures direct.”
Bill J. Leonard “Proslavery supporters moved from St. Paul’s references to slavery in the Epistles to elaborate concoctions from the Old Testament including the infamous ‘mark’ of Cain and ‘curse’ of Ham. Opponents of slavery did not hesitate to raise biblical mandates in support of emancipation.” They “appealed to the spiritual truths implicit in biblical commands to love one’s neighbor . . . .”
Bill J. Leonard “. . . many Baptists opposed slavery in principle and insisted that it should be abolished as soon as pragmatically possible.”
The General Baptist Assembly England In 1787, the General Baptist Assembly declared that the slave trade was “‘inconsistent with every rational and humane principle.’”
Robert Robinson 1788Slavery Inconsistent with the Spirit of Christianity “The doctrines and the ceremonies of Christianity attack injustice and cruelty in their strong holds, depraved passions, and consequently if a slave trade be the effect of such passions our religion goes to subvert the whole system of slavery. Feel its influence, and the work is done.”
Terry Carter “The anti-slavery voices became the loudest among the Baptists of England.”
The Baptist Union of Great Britain2007 “We offer our apology to God and to our brothers and sisters for all that has created and still perpetuates the hurt which originated from the horror of slavery.”
The Baptist General Committee of Virginia The Baptist General Committee of Virginia, in 1785, “declared slavery to be ‘contrary to the word of God.’”
The Forks of the Elkhorn ChurchElkhorn AssociationKentucky The church excluded a slave women from its membership in 1807 when she declared that no Christian would own slaves, saying “she believed there was Thousands of white people Wallowing in Hell for their treatment to Negroes.”
American Baptist Anti-Slavery Activities (1). 1821 Evan and Elizabeth Jones began ministering to the Cherokee Indians, urging them to resist slave-holding. In 1859 the Indians were led to form the antislavery Keetoowah Society. (2). In Burma in the 1830s American Baptist missionaries worked with the Karen minority who were virtually serfs, forbidden to own books and learn to read. The missionaries persisted in petitioning the Burmese King on religious and civil liberty. (3). In 1843 Baptists in the north formed the American Baptist Free Mission Society on an anti-slavery basis as a separate organization from the Triennial Convention. In 1868 the Society rejoined the American Baptist Mission Union. (4). In the 1890s American Baptist missionaries were among the first to protest King Leopold of Belgium’s use of slavery in Congo. (5). In 1911 the Free Will Baptist Foreign Mission Society which had strong anti-slavery views, united with the American Baptist Foreign Mission Society. (6). In 1919 American Baptist missionary Mary Ann Clegget traveled through Korea, Manchuria and Siberia documenting the locations of some 6,000 Japanese who were enslaved, about 5,000 of them in the sex trade. (7). In the 1960s American Baptist missionaries Paul and Elaine Lewis made public the plight of women enslaved in brothels in Thailand. Lauren Bethall (now a consultant with International Global Missions helped form the New Life Center in 1987 to rescue and care for these women.
Arguments for Separation of the Races The curse of Cain in Genesis 4 The curse of Ham in Genesis 9
Bill J. Leonard The “tensions between African American and Anglo-Saxon Baptists in the South continued well into the twentieth century. Sometimes there was cooperation; sometimes, distance and exclusion.”
Southern Baptist Convention 1995“Resolution On Racial Reconciliation” “We lament and repudiate historic acts of evil such as slavery from which we continue to reap a bitter harvest, and we recognize that the racism which yet plagues our culture today is inextricably tied to the past.”
John Dagg 1859 He had hoped to “’contribute a little towards allaying the feverish excitement which so fearfully threatened the peace of our country.’”
Modern Slavery “This year [2007] marks the 200th anniversary of British Parliament outlawing participation in the African Slave Trade. However, from labor camps in Palatka, Fla., to brothels in Cambodia, slavery still exists. Between 600,000 and 800,000 people, mostly women and children, are trafficked across national borders while millions more are bought and sold within countries, according to the U.S. State Department's Office to Monitor and Combat Trafficking in Persons.”
Leon McBethon the “Social Gospel” The movement “addressed the social concerns of Northern industry laborers while largely overlooking social crises of the South such as racism and sharecropping.”
Walter Rauschenbuschon the Kingdom of God The Kingdom of God “is a dear truth, the marrow of the gospel” Jesus “lived in it, and from it looked out on the world and the work he had to do.” Indeed, “This doctrine [the Kingdom of God] is itself the social gospel.”
Leo Garretton Walter Rauschenbusch “Among Baptists he was regarded at the same time as ‘a bright ornament in the history of the Baptists’ and ‘a piece of ecclesiastical nebula thrown off by the Baptist denomination as it moved through time in its orbit to complacency.’”
Walter RauschenbuschWhy I am a Baptist Rauschenbusch said he was a Baptist by conviction because of four reasons: 1. the primacy of spiritual experience for membership and ministry, with a stress on morality over ritual 2. the embodiment of Christian social principles in church organization with a regenerate membership, congregational polity and autonomy, the separation of church and state, and the absence of a priestly caste 3. worship free of superstition, simple in its form, and tied to a Christ-like life and 4. A growing faith that places the Bible over creeds and confessions
Walter Rauschenbusch Christianity and the Social Gospel 1907 A Theology for the Social Gospel 1917
Robert Torbeton John Clifford Clifford “gave to Baptist leadership a scholarly and forceful pen which served well not only the cause of the denomination, but also the whole cause of nonconformity.”
Leon McBethon John Clifford Clifford “defined the nature and function of the Baptist World Alliance.”
Bill J. Leonardon John Clifford “Clifford refused to differentiate between evangelism and social action as Christian responsibility. He called persons to conversion and urged Christians to respond to the social and political issues of their times.”
E. Glenn Hinsonon John Clifford “His ardor for the social gospel never dimmed until death claimed him on 20 November 1923.”
John Clifford “’The business of a Christian Church is to find out the real needs of the people in the neighborhood in which it is placed and as far as it can, supply all that will make for brightness and joy, for strength and service, for manhood and brotherhood.’”
E. Glenn Hinsonon John Clifford Clifford placed a high value on education as the way “to supply a ladder out of poverty and social degradation.”
Martin Luther King, Jr. “The ultimate weakness of violence is that it is a descending spiral, begetting the very thing it seeks to destroy. Instead of diminishing evil, it multiplies it.”
Martin Luther King, Jr. “The church must be reminded that it is not the master or the servant of the state, but rather the conscience of the state.”
William M. Tillman, Jr.on Martin Luther King “Through his wide travel, fundraising, writing, and encouragement, King, a Baptist preacher, influenced the civil rights movement, and one of the most important American movements in the last half of the twentieth century found its leader. King’s unusual combination of intellect, articulation, and courage marked him as a person born for the time.”
Martin Luther King, Jr.“Letter from Birmingham City Jail” “’Just as the eighth century prophets left their little villages and carried their ‘thus said the Lord’ far beyond the boundaries of their hometowns, and just as the Apostle Paul left his little village of Tarsus and carried the gospel of Jesus Christ to practically every hamlet and city of the Graeco-Roman world, I too am compelled to carry the gospel of freedom beyond my particular hometown. Like Paul, I must constantly respond to the Macedonian call for aid.’”
