Baptists dealt with the challenges and the threat of Protestant liberal theology in a very interesting manner. The Baptists encountered the liberal theology after the civil war. It is worth mentioning that before the civil war, the Bible was the main religious, political, and social text that united the Americans, however, as an aftermath of the Civil War, the binding force of America on the Bible diminished.
Before the civil war, the Bible was referred to for Theology, personal issues, and spiritual disciplines and Pastors and Churches were looked up to as the final authority. This was engraved in the American culture but after the civil war the dynamics completely changed; the authority of the Bible began to weaken and doors were opened to secularism. Americans shifted towards pragmatism and materialism.
The liberal theology was already up-rooted in Europe in the 1860s, but the civil war set the stage and culture in the United States to receive liberal theology. During that era, the Protestant liberal theology was tainted by three major intellectual strands:
- Peyotism
- The Enlightenment
- Romanticism
I learned about the theories and approaches of Kent, Darwin, Schleiermacher, Lyell, and Toy towards liberalism, aside from the fact that it denies right to the truth of Christian orthodoxy. They gain force in the late 19th century and continue with conservative resurgence till the late 20th century, in the 1970s, 80s and 90s.
Protestant liberal theology is predicated on the Enlightenment assumption that there are two specific kinds of truths:
- Religion and faith
Religion theology is subjective and located in the individual’s heart that no one can question; it is his personal belief system.
- Reason and science
Science and reason are both dependent on logic and objectivity and are means for finding the truth.
To conclude, liberal theology is predicated on the enlightenment assumption, that there are two distinct kinds of truth; faith which is subjective and is personal; reason or science which is objective, is public, is open to scrutiny, just, falsifiable and verifiable.
Baptists are evangelical, especially the Southern Baptists. It was helpful to learn the following four theological categories of “evangelical”, defined by David Bebington:
- Conversionism
It is to call on men, women, and children to repent of their sins and to experience God’s grace by the new birth.
- Cruciscentrism
It teaches to keep our focus on the cross, as the central event in human history. One has to accept that the cross was the place where Jesus Christ died for us, as a substitute sacrifice for sinners. Jesus was Holy and righteous, but he offered His holiness, righteousness for us so that we may be saved.
- Biblicism
It is a high regard for the Bible, with complete submission to it as the final authority
- Activism
To practice the Bible, live by scripture, as missionaries or while undertaking up tasks of social reform
Slavery has been the greatest dilemma in America, which not only weakened the church but also divided White Baptists and Black Baptists into two groups. We see that even after the civil war ended, and slavery was abolished, African Americans largely abandoned white Southern Baptist churches.
African American Baptists established their own Baptist churches, denominations, State Conventions, publishing companies, Sunday school boards, and training institutes. The South was deeply divided by race.
It was encouraging to know that the white Southern Baptists advocated and actively opposed those who were supporting racism, which was indeed against the Gospel. We learned that the Southern Baptists lead the movement of condemning racism and Biblical racial reconciliation was made in 1995. It is indeed an unprecedented moment in American evangelical history, when the largest Protestant denomination in North America publicly recognized its complicity and repented for forgiveness from the African American brothers for the pain they had suffered from this legacy of racism.
