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| Statue of Peter Waldo, founder of the Waldensian "Poor Preachers," at the Reformation Monument in Worms. |
Before I even begin to tackle the personal side of this question, let me clarify some of the terms we use around here. As I stated in the paragraph above, what it takes to be a member of Dove Mountain Church, is a confession of faith in Christ alone as our source of salvation, through grace alone and by no works of our own. There are no test questions on the Westminster Confession, Presbyterian polity, Calvinism, or the Five Solas.
However, there is an affirmation of those ancient formulae required of those who become officers. This past Sunday you saw the ordination of two new elders and five new deacons. As one of those men, I am affirming the tenets of those documents listed above...and much more as well.
In this blog I want to particularly explain one of the more subtle things that I am affirming, something different from what I believed as a Baptist. As I do this, remember that this is not a position to which members must agree, but it is part of what responsible Presbyterian leaders embrace as the heritage of our faith.
Baptist and Presbyterians are not both Protestants. I'll give you a second for that to sink in.
As an inquistive young person growing up in a Baptist church, I had many curious questions about church history. Baptists of that day and age were great about publishing literature for both morning classes (Sunday School) and evening classes (Training Union). These Bible-based curriculum guides (referred to as "quarterlies" in the vernacular, since we got new ones every thirteen weeks, year round) covered a wide range of topics. The morning quarterlies were strictly Bible exposition, and we moved steadily through the scriptures from Old Testament to New, rarely leaving out a single verse. The evening quarterlies covered a variety of aspects of the Christian life - from missionary stories to moral character development, from inspirational topics such as forgiveness, prayer, and faith to an occasional word or two about church history. Our dedicated lay adult leaders were often not much more informed on the topics than we were, so we studied the quarterlies together, seldom wandering much outside of what the quarterly had to tell us. If a question were deemed important enough, we could be referred to the pastor. Rarely did anyone's curiosity propel them to that extreme.
I can't resist an aside here about some of the peculiar topics taught in those evening training sessions. Using scriptural supports, I was drilled in Baptist "distinctives" which I assumed were either held by all Christians or defined other Christians as being in "error" if they did not hold to them. Among these distinctives were: the necessity of total abstinence from beverage alcohol, an extreme view of separation of church and state (which to this days often puts Baptists on the side with atheists in certain court cases), and the Baptist interpretation of "priesthood of the believer." The outworking of this latter principle was that no one could ever really tell a Baptist, with any authority, what any scripture means. The individual believer (regardless of age or education) was said to be perfectly competent to teach himself. It also meant that Bible studies usually consisted of "this is what it means to me," with no wrong answers - ever. By the time I was in college, I labelled this practice "pooling our ignorance."
I remember the day, as an eighth grader, that I discovered that the church had a library! In those pre-internet days, this was a great boon to my inquiring mind. Since I often spent long hours at the church on Wednesday afternoons while my mother was working in the kitchen as Church Hostess, the library became my refuge - a great source of information to me. At last I could get some answers beyond the rudimentary information provided in our age-group classes.
It was then and there that I discovered that Baptists are not Protestants. At least, not according to some leaders. [Remember that priesthood thing? No one ever has to agree on anything.] This view, called Baptist Successionism, essentially holds that there is an unbroken line of non-conforming Christians from the apostolic times in the first century after Christ all the way to the present. The historical basis for this assertion centers around some little known groups, such as the Albigensians of southern France and the Waldensians of northern Italy. The Albigensians claimed their heritage went all the way back to the first century, but there are no actual historic evidences of their movement prior to the eleventh century. The Waldensians can be proved to have appeared around the eighth century, although they also claim an earlier origin. Both groups were anti-sacerdoctal and were never a part of the Catholic Church. In fact, both groups were persecuted extensively by the Church over several centuries. The Albigensians, or Cathars, eventually died out in the fourteenth century, but the Wandensians persisted, many being absorbed into other non-Catholic groups. A Waldensian Evangelical Church exists in Italy in the present day. Back to Baptist Successionism: to those holding this belief, it is important that there is an unbroken line of non-Catholic Christians going back to the time of Christ, who were never part of the Catholic Church (which many of them still consider to be the Whore of Babylon). Therefore, those holding this belief consistently distinguish themselves from historic Protestants - those who protested the abuses of the medieval Catholic Church (which was their church at the time) and set about to reform the practices deemed to be non-Scriptural. To Baptist Successionists, their hands are "clean" - they never were part of the "whore."
"We believe that the Baptists are the original Christians. We did not commence our existence at the reformation, we were reformers before Luther and Calvin were born; we never came from the Church of Rome, for we were never in it, but we have an unbroken line up to the apostles themselves. We have always existed from the days of Christ, and our principles, sometimes veiled and forgotten, like a river which may travel under ground for a little season, have always had honest and holy adherents."
So to finish up this part of the story, as someone who as a child was better informed (thanks to the church library) than most adult adherents about Baptist origins and history, it was kind of a big deal when I accepted ordination on Sunday as an elder in an historically "Protesting" denomination, the Presbyterian Church in America. It means that I am accepting the laying on of hands by presbyters whose tradition and succession go back to the Church of Rome. While it is true that the Roman Church declared those Protestants to be just as heretical as the Albigensians and Waldensians (and therefore just as separate and condemned), there are some holdovers that betray our heritage as Protesting Catholics: paedobaptism, liturgical practices in our worship, communion as a sacrament, and a respect for the seasons of the liturgical calendar, among others.
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