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Free church free stateBaptist wisdomFREE CHURCH FREE STATE Nigel Wright sets out to explain the ‘convictions and practices which distinguish Baptist Christians’. Wright sees only two broad categories to the church: ‘Catholic’ and ‘Baptist’, with everyone else coming somewhere in the spectrum. The Roman Church is the inheritor of the ‘style and position of the Roman Empire in the Western world’. It modelled itself on the imperial state and regarded itself as having ‘sacred and legal power over its members’. The year 313 is, for him, a bad year (as in many respects it was), but it has to be said also that, in the providence of God, the legalisation of Christianity in that year had many good effects for the consolidation of Christian thinking on vital matters such as the Person of Christ and the evangelisation of Europe. That said, he has much good to say about the advantages both to the state and the church of a clear separation of spheres. He prefers to trace the link between continental Anabaptists through to the General Baptists (that is, the Arminian variety). He has less interest in the Particular Baptist movement which grew out of the Puritanism and which shared the Reformational and Confessional ethos of that movement. Perhaps in over-reaction to the ‘sacred power’ he sees wielded in churches of the Catholic and magisterial traditions, he is resistant to any exercise of power in the local church or in the wider connection of churches. I’m not so sure that he wholly manages to escape the democratisation of the church. He argues that a community governed structure needs to regularly remind itself that is sits under the Word and is responsible to interpret the ‘mind of Christ’ in the areas where the Bible gives no specific guidance. He tackles long debated issues such as at what age to baptise children, when to admit children to Communion and the nature of leadership within a church structure that is committed to the priesthood of all believers. His comments on the conduct of church meetings are helpful. When speaking about the right of every believer to speak, he adds wisely, ‘though all have an equal right to speak, not all have an equal right to be heard’. There is much practical wisdom in this book, if read with discernment. Liam Goligher, © Evangelicals Now - March 2006 |