Baptists and Unity
Southwestern Journal of Theology
Volume 51, No. 1 – Fall 2008
Managing Editor: Malcolm B. Yarnell III
By Steven R. Harmon. Studies in Baptist History and Thought, vol. 27. Milton Keynes, U.K.: Paternoster, 2006. 275 pages. Softcover, $39.99.
In Towards Baptist Catholicity: Essays on Tradition and the Baptist Vision, Steven R. Harmon focuses on the relation of Baptist identity to the catholic tradition. Harmon aims to show how Baptists, particularly those in North America, can make a move toward catholicity and explains how such a move will better equip Baptist theology and worship for a postmodern setting.
Harmon describes Baptist catholicity as “a reclaimed consciousness that Baptists belong to what the Nicaeno-Constantinopolitan Creed confesses is the ‘one, holy, catholic (Greek katholike, “general” or “universal”), and apostolic church’” (3). A key word here is “reclaimed.” In several of his essays, Harmon tries to show that the use of tradition to construct Baptist theology and worship is not a new thing nor does it betray Baptist principles. Rather he contends there is much precedent, particularly among early Baptists, for a move toward the catholic tradition.
Among the different essays, Harmon identifies several resources for his proposed movement. These resources include tradition, particularly the patristic tradition, Trinitarian reflection, as well as biblical interpretation and worship informed by catholicity and the patristic “perspective.” In addition, the book includes essays showing how Baptists can benefit from this movement toward catholicity in areas such as biblical interpretation, worship, and even higher education.
Baptists could learn much from the author’s call to (re-)examine the connection of Baptist doctrine and practice to that of the early church and the wider Christian community. Moreover, he is right in stressing that Baptists must think about how they relate to the current cultural milieu. Finally, these essays do not simply identify problems; they offer a construc- tive approach to a solution.
Nevertheless, Harmon’s answer to the question of how Baptists do theology and worship in a postmodern setting is not sufficient. In the end, Harmon renounces too much in the name of ecumenism, adopts much that is postmodern, and offers too little that is distinctively Baptist. For example, he contends that Baptists should not baptize individuals who were baptized as infants in other traditions and later joined a Baptist church; evidently, for Harmon believer’s baptism is no longer a mark of what it means to be Baptist. This raises an important question that Harmon never really answers in his book: What does it mean to be Baptist? After reading the book, one is left with the impression that perhaps the only key Baptist distinctive is dissent. It seems that in his attempt to show how Baptists are like everyone else, he neglected to show how they are different.
To be fair, Harmon does address “What Keeps You from Becoming a Catholic?” in the final essay. There he states, “[t]he most significant personal reservation which I have about becoming Catholic or Orthodox is my support for the ordination of women to offices of pastoral ministry, which of course runs counter to the current ecclesial disciplines of the Roman Catholic Church and Eastern Orthodoxy” (200). Overlooking for the moment key theological beliefs, such as a regenerate church, it seems ironic that a man who argues so strongly for a Baptist theology informed and shaped in connection to “the ancient ecumenical tradition” ignores that same tradition and more importantly the Scriptures that shaped it when it comes to the ordination of women. Of course, this “personal reservation” as well as his negligible reservations for becoming Catholic suggests that Harmon’s reconstruction has at least as many roots in the modern egalitarian and ecumenical movements as it does in his concern to reclaim the catholic tradition in Baptist life and doctrine.
In the end, Harmon’s proposal is another description of a nonfoundational approach for reconstructing Baptist identity. Such approaches speak of the roles of Scripture, tradition, community, reason, and culture in doing theology, but ultimately the community becomes the true source of authority on which all the others depend.
