Editor’s note: This year marks the centennial anniversaries of the Cooperative Program’s creation, the adoption of the Baptist Faith & Message, and the SBC’s ownership of Southwestern Seminary. To celebrate these 100 years of Southern Baptist cooperation, Southwestern has compiled eleven essays from key Southern Baptist leaders and seminary faculty for an original series on the ETC blog. The entire series, which will publish over the course of eleven weeks, will be available here.
Many Christians today are engaging in the age-old debate about the role of Christians in the public square. For Baptists, our position on the intersection of the church and the state is clearly addressed in the Baptist Faith and Message. We are most known for our posture on religious liberty—defending the right of the church to preach the Gospel with freedom and resisting governments that seek to pave over the conscience and coerce belief.
But Baptists have more to say about the culture. Article XV of the Baptist Faith and Message, originally adopted by the Southern Baptist Convention in the year 2000, entitled, “The Christian and the Social Order,” articulates a robust political theology that can help guide both individual believers and churches as we seek to steward our earthly citizenship.
All Christians are under obligation to seek to make the will of Christ supreme in our own lives and in human society. Means and methods used for the improvement of society and the establishment of righteousness among men can be truly and permanently helpful only when they are rooted in the regeneration of the individual by the saving grace of God in Jesus Christ. In the spirit of Christ, Christians should oppose racism, every form of greed, selfishness, and vice, and all forms of sexual immorality, including adultery, homosexuality, and pornography. We should work to provide for the orphaned, the needy, the abused, the aged, the helpless, and the sick. We should speak on behalf of the unborn and contend for the sanctity of all human life from conception to natural death. Every Christian should seek to bring industry, government, and society as a whole under the sway of the principles of righteousness, truth, and brotherly love. In order to promote these ends Christians should be ready to work with all men of good will in any good cause, always being careful to act in the spirit of love without compromising their loyalty to Christ and His truth.
Though faithful Baptists will disagree on specific applications and strategies, this comprehensive statement, which builds on similar articles in previous Baptist confessions, including the 1925 and 1963 versions of the Baptist Faith and Message, makes it clear that Southern Baptists today understand the importance of cultural engagement by living as salt and light in the country in which we live.
It is the very nature of our cooperation as a fellowship of churches that allows our social witness to have maximum impact. One congregation has a small voice in Washington and in the state capitols across the nation, but together as 47,000 churches, our voice on important matters such as those outlined in Article XV carries much more weight.
Furthermore, the Baptist Faith and Message not only urges cooperation within our fellowship of churches, but cooperation with others in common cause on issues of priority for Baptists. This includes both other Christian fellowships and denominations and even other groups of people who might not even share our Christian faith, but who share a concern on a particular issue of importance. Article XV states specifically:
In order to promote these ends Christians should be ready to work with all men of good will in any good cause, always being careful to act in the spirit of love without compromising their loyalty to Christ and His truth.
The phrase “work with all men of good will in any cause” defines what Francis Schaeffer labeled “co-belligerency.” This is the idea of limited, focused, and temporary political or policy alliances with others with whom we have other significant disagreements. To be “co-belligerent” means that we are joined with folks who are against the same things or support the same social ends, like the sanctity of human life.
Carl F. H. Henry, the towering Baptist intellectual and longtime editor of Christianity Today, urged Baptists and evangelicals to engage in this kind of work for the sake of advocating for issues that promote the common good, as informed by Scripture. Henry writes:
Cobelligerency will be a fact of political life in the decades to come . . . and not without frequently shifting alliances for preferred ends. Nothing precludes an evangelical and a secular humanist from standing together. … Nothing precludes an interreligious or ecumenical cooperative public witness against injustice or for justice.1
It’s important to recognize the limits and scope of such relationships. The last part of this particular phrase in Article XV reminds us that in the political fray we are still guided by both Christian demeanor and Christian doctrine:
always being careful to act in the spirit of love without compromising their loyalty to Christ and His truth.
Baptists in co-belligerent relationships should enter these conversations without giving up our distinctives as Baptists. Our demeanor must be “in the spirit of love.” In other words, those who don’t share our Christian faith cannot catechize us away from a life of holiness and devotion to Jesus. The political fray is often messy and tough, but we must resist the temptation to yield to sinful rhetoric and hatred of those God has called us to love. More importantly, we must also resist the temptation to let our temporary alliances shape our doctrinal convictions.
In advocating, for instance, on the sanctity of human life, it is often prudent to work with activists, lawmakers, and policy professionals who might practice different faiths or no faith at all. These political alliances should not be confused with ecclesial networks or replace our membership in faithful, Bible-preaching, local Baptist churches.
Politics in a democracy like ours requires us to build coalitions to advance policies that promote the common good. From the sanctity of human life to opposing racism to helping alleviate human poverty to the priority of the human family, Baptist social action, as outlined by Article XV, draws from a worldview that humans are made in the image of God and that “the world and everything in it” is God’s. The range of issues addressed in this statement demonstrates the diversity and scope of the Christian mission in the world.
The scope of this social mission will then necessitate differing co-belligerent coalitions, depending on the issue. At times, one coalition on behalf of one issue may involve interlocuters who might be opposed to the partners we temporarily engage on another policy matter. For instance, in the late ‘90s, Baptists teamed with feminists to call out pornography and exploitation of women. At the same time, they opposed feminists on abortion and found common cause with Catholics and Mormons. And on religious liberty, Baptists have often joined wide coalitions comprising almost every religious group.
Though unregenerate, unbelieving men and women can often recognize some of God’s laws both written on their hearts and woven into the design of the universe. Together, we can make arguments based on natural law that persuade the public and those elected to positions of power.
This kind of work need not conflict with our evangelism work. Not only is Article XV contained within the larger BFM confession which explicitly defines Southern Baptists as a Great Commission people, even within this specific article, it is expressed that our work in the public square is “rooted in the regeneration of the individual by the saving grace of God in Jesus Christ.”
In a 1970 essay for The Southwestern Baptist Journal of Theology, James Leo Garrett sees Gospel proclamation and social action as working in concert together: “Today’s need is for both evangelism and the social involvement of Christians, i.e., helping ministries and societal change. Christians must engage both in proclamation by word and enactment by deed. These must complement and cross-fertilize each other.”
In some instances, our co-belligerent cooperation may provide opportunities for evangelism. The presenting issues that demand our advocacy can often be a gateway for those outside Christ to explore the Christian story. We must not be silent in pointing our temporary allies to Jesus.
A quarter century after its adoption by the Southern Baptist Convention, the Baptist Faith and Message 2000’s articulation of Baptist engagement in the public square is both scripturally grounded and relevant in our contemporary moment. It reminds us of the importance of cooperation both within the Baptist family and cooperation with our fellow citizens as we advance civic righteousness.
- Carl F. H. Henry, “The New Coalitions,” Christianity Today, November 17, 1989, https://www.christianitytoday.com/1989/11/new-coalitions-evangelicals-can-count-on-having-to-join/. ↩︎
