The Gospel and Baptist Identity: Cooperative Autonomy
The fourth traditional Baptist distinctive is often called local church autonomy, which is the idea that every church is free to determine its own agenda apart from any external ecclesiastical coercion. To say it positively, churches have the freedom to go in whatever direction they believe the Lord is leading them. Put more negatively, no denomination or convention or association can force a church to do something it doesn’t want to do.
Some Baptists, especially in North America, have stressed that local church autonomy means every church is independent of other churches and that any ecclesial relationships beyond the local church are undertaken for purely pragmatic purposes. For example, you often hear Southern Baptists argue something like this: “The local church is primary, but we ought to cooperate in associations or state conventions or the SBC because we can accomplish more for the kingdom when we work together than when we go it alone.” While I appreciate the self-evident fact that we can do more when we link arms with other churches, I’m not convinced local church autonomy necessitates this sort of strident independency.
Historically, both Particular and General Baptists in England embraced a view of autonomy that didn’t entail independence. Both groups valued congregational freedom, but they also affirmed a robust doctrine of the church universal that affirmed that Baptists were but one part of Christ’s visible church on earth. In fact, it would be fair to say that for the first couple hundred years of Baptist history most Baptists argued that individual congregations were visible expressions of the one church. Because of their ecclesiology, they affirmed the necessity of associational arrangements, not only for pragmatic considerations, but because cooperation is healthy and embodies the type of unity that will one day characterize Christ’s church. In other words, associational cooperation said as much about ecclesiology and eschatology as it did missions and fellowship.
This view of ecclesiology carried over into colonial North American, especially in New England and the Middle Colonies. The churches of the Philadelphia Association adopted a lightly amended version of the Second London Confession, including its affirmation of the universal church and associationalism. Jon Butler has demonstrated that Baptists in the Connecticut Valley went so far as to embrace a semi-connectional ecclesiology. Yes, these Baptists affirmed local church autonomy. But they didn’t affirm local church sovereignty, nor did they view cooperation as merely pragmatic. Local churches were free, and local churches needed each other as part of the wider church.
Most British Baptists continue to affirm the older ecclesiology, but during the course of the nineteenth century a majority of American Baptists moved in a more independent direction, especially in the South and Southwest. There are probably many reasons for this. The American emphasis on freedom and individualism certainly played a role—these themes were frequently applied to both congregationalism and local church autonomy. So did Landmark sectarianism, especially the frequent (but not uniform) denial of the universal church. Both liberalism and fundamentalism contributed to the trend—while the movements differed greatly on doctrinal matters, both were thoroughly modern in that they placed a high premium on personal and congregational autonomy, albeit unto different ends. The post-1925 tendency to equate cooperation with financial stewardship put the nail in the coffin of the older view.
Autonomy shouldn’t mean independence. Churches can and should cooperate with like-minded sister congregations so that they can do more together than any one church can do alone, but this isn’t the only reason churches should cooperate. Local churches don’t exist in isolation, but in most places they are part of a the body of Christ in that county, town, or city. Baptist churches in particular are that arm of Christ’s body that honestly believes their baptismal practices look more like the New Testament and better reflect the gospel than some of the other limbs. The fact is, we need each other. We need to sharper each other theologically. We need to come alongside each other when hurting churches have needs that can be served by sister congregations. We need to be humble enough to ask for help, selfless enough to serve sister churches, and biblical enough to heed the sound counsel of sister churches who point out errors and faults in theology or methodology.
In the same way my fellow church members contribute to my sanctification, so your church should contribute to my church’s sanctification, and vice versa. At the end of the day, congregational freedom is about gospel freedom—the freedom to advance a gospel agenda and the freedom to walk together with other local gospel communities. When Baptists are at our best, associations, state conventions, and national conventions help us to cultivate this sort of gospel-centered cooperative autonomy.
I know the vision I’m laying out here will strike some readers as distinctively un-Baptist, in part because it doesn’t sound like the way most North American Baptists think about autonomy and cooperation. But Southern Baptists in particular have the potential to embrace the older, healthier understanding of cooperative autonomy. The theological renewal that began with the Conservative Resurgence (including our renewed, though partial confessionalism) and the missional renewal of recent years ought to flow together in a healthier ecclesiology that champions autonomy without independence and cooperation without mere pragmatism. It will take unlearning some bad hermeneutical habits and denominational traditions, but I’m hopeful we can get where we need to be on this issue.
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Note: This is the eighth post in an ongoing series on the relationship between the gospel and Baptist identity. Earlier posts in this series include:
The Gospel and Baptist Identity: Introduction
The Gospel and Baptist Identity: What is the Gospel?
The Gospel and Baptist Identity: Pondering Baptist Identity
The Gospel and Baptist Identity: Four Categories of Baptist Beliefs
The Gospel and Baptist Identity: Covenanted Gospel Membership
The Gospel and Baptist Identity: Confessor Baptist by Immersion
The Gospel and Baptist Identity: Christocentric Congregationalism
3 Responses to “The Gospel and Baptist Identity: Cooperative Autonomy”
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Nathan A. Finn serves as Associate Professor of Historical Theology and Baptist Studies at Southeastern Baptist Theological Seminary in Wake Forest, North Carolina. He's a husband, father, elder, baseball enthusiast, and Broadway musical fan. He's still trying to figure out why we drive on parkways and park on driveways.
Nathan,
I can understand better the justification for specifically Baptist associations on the ground of pragmatic cooperation with other like-minded churches, since cooperation with not so like-minded churches may be rather complicated, and unproductive, at times.
However, if the reason for association is as a local expression of the wider body of Christ, is it biblically justifiable to limit this type of association to those who believe like we do on “Baptist distinctives”? Would not the essentials of the gospel be a better dividing line?
That is not to say that we should not share practical unity with those like-minded churches with whom we associate for pragmatic cooperation. Of course we should. But this practical unity should not become a substitute for fellowship (not necessarily cooperation) with other non-Baptist, yet otherwise gospel-centered churches.
David,
I’m completely in favor of trying to find ways to express our unity with other evangelical believers. But I’m choosing to focus specifically on Baptist cooperation in this post because I think there ought to be a greater unity among like-minded local Baptist churches than we sometimes communicate in the way we couch local church autonomy.
For example, while all the Baptist churches in the Triangle are autonomous from one another, I think our church has a vested interest in the health of sister Baptist churches–we are not wholly independent of one another, nor should we be. I admit I’m still working through this–moreso than any of the other Baptist distinctives. But I can’t help but think that earlier Baptists and our British cousins, who *lean* a bit more connectional, are getting something that we’re missing.
So I’m emphasizing cooperation with other Baptists, but I do think we need to consider the ways we show unity and express brotherly disagreement with other believers in a given locale. When it comes to other Christians, I want our first instinct to be to emphasize commonality rather than to emphasize differences; the latter has often been our first response.
Muddled though this is, I hope it clarifies what I’m thinking–and still pondering, almost daily.
NAF
Nathan,
Thanks for the dialogue and the opportunity to think through these questions together. My thinking on this has been forged, to a large degree, through personal experience on the mission field.
In the area of Extremadura, Spain, in which we worked for 10 years (approximately 16,000 sq. miles; 1,100,000 population; 500 evangelicals spread out between 20 congregations) we had a very active Evangelical Council that promoted fellowship and unity between fellow evangelicals. The local Baptist Association covered all of Extremadura and Andalucia (total Ext & And. 40,000 sq. miles, 9,500,000 population; 800 Baptists spread out between about 20 congregations).
I often had to choose between attending (and encouraging the church I pastored to participate in) activities organized by the Extremaduran Evangelical Council or the Baptist Association of Extremadura and Andalusia. The Baptist Association meetings were usually 3 to 4 hours away, while the Ext. Evan. Council meetings were usually 1 to 2 hours away, sometimes less.
As much as possible, I tried to remain active in and supportive of both. But, when circumstances forced me to choose between one or the other, I normally chose the Evangelical Council activities, for the same reasons I am presenting here.
In the States, especially in the Bible Belt, as there are so many Evangelicals and Southern Baptists in most localities, the context is very different. The tendency, as you correctly observe, is toward greater local church independence. A greater sense of solidarity with fellow Baptist congregations is at least a step in the right direction.
In the long run, though, I feel fellowship (or practical unity) is based (or should be based) on agreement on the gospel, not the BF&M. Productive cooperation, on the other hand, may well need to be based on doctrinal statements such as the BF&M.
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