Baptist Political Theology, edited by Thomas S. Kidd, Paul D. Miller, and Andrew T. Walker. Brentwood, TN: B&H, 2023. 774 pp. $59.99.
To establish one’s right to be called a Baptist, one must appeal not merely to Scripture but also inevitably to history. Suppose a Baptist pastor comes to be convinced of the validity of infant baptism. Should he now regard himself—or be regarded by others—as a Baptist who believes in infant baptism? Surely not. His new position may be sincere. It might, in his judgment, be grounded in the Word of God. But whatever else his position is, it is not a Baptist position, because it is out of step with one of the most obvious marks of historic Baptist identity.
Baptists do not distinguish themselves from other Christians merely by their convictions about baptism. Another major historical boundary of Baptist identity has been political: to oversimplify, Baptists have opposed religious establishment by the state. In the present moment, as loud voices are insisting that the solution to the disintegrating Christian moral consensus in our culture is the establishment of an explicitly Christian government, Baptists in particular must attend to their historically distinctive voice on this subject.
Thus, while a book titled Baptist Political Theology could be expositional, theological, or philosophical, it is also fitting that it might be—as this volume is—chiefly historical. In addition to an introduction and a conclusion authored by the editors, Baptist Political Theology compiles 26 essays, each by different authors. The essays are divided into two major sections. The first 17 essays, accounting for roughly two-thirds of the book, are expressly historical, each with a focus on a specific figure or era of Baptist history. The final nine essays are topical, attempting to articulate a Baptist position on issues as diverse as religious liberty, gender, the environment, and just war. While this second section offers more exegetical arguments for its proposals, even these essays often need to appeal to Baptist authorities of the past to establish the Baptist position on this or that issue.
Some books compile essays such that, although each essay might have a different author, the book as whole speaks with a single voice. This is not that kind of book. Some of the contributors have a well-established reputation for being relatively conservative in both a theological and political sense: Michael A. G. Haykin, Thomas Kidd, Tom Nettles, Jonathan Leeman, and R. Albert Mohler. For most readers of this review, the essays by these authors will provide substance for deeper reflection on convictions already shared.
Other contributors are notably less conservative. The editors acknowledge this; although this volume is a product of B&H, “not all contributors affirm the Southern Baptist Convention’s Baptist Faith and Message 2000, and even…the editors…do not affirm every judgment and every conclusion found herein” (14). I do not believe it would be possible for any one individual to affirm all of the judgments and conclusions of this book.
The diversity precludes a simple evaluation of this compilation. Because identifying a Baptist view of any particular topic is unavoidably historical, an is/ought fallacy lurks: how many self-identified Baptists with a particular view or practice does it take to alter the boundaries of Baptist political philosophy? Can a self-identified Baptist enact a political philosophy that is, at root, anti-Baptistic? If so, how would we know? The editors acknowledge this tension in their concluding essay. They wish to distinguish Baptist theology from Baptist practice, so that not all errors of past Baptists can be attributed to their identity as Baptists (726).
The editors explicitly wish to distance Baptist theology from the scandal of Baptist defenders of slavery and racism. But this is/ought or “No True Baptist” (726) fallacy has application to all manner of issues. Because there has been a strain of Baptist identity that exalted soul liberty as the most—sometimes in effect the only—important Baptist distinctive, no credible history can ignore the existence (and at times the preponderance) of liberalism in Baptist institutions. This theological liberalism has often expressed itself in a much more robust advocacy of political engagement than is typical of more conservative Baptists.
Walter Rauschenbusch, the father of the Social Gospel, was a Baptist. Aaron Douglas Weaver, contributing an essay on the progressive Baptists, writes that “these progressive Baptists have been united through a shared belief in the Social Gospel and the conviction that Christianity must be an activist faith” (287). Should we conclude, therefore, that the Social Gospel is an important component of any truly Baptist political theology? One essay concludes by celebrating the election to the US Senate of Raphael Warnock (pastor of Martin Luther King, Jr.’s Ebenezer Baptist Church); his election is seen as an expression of “the continuity of African American Baptist faith and civil rights activism…that stretches back to colonial history” (259). Perhaps Warnock, endorsed by NARAL and Planned Parenthood, represents a Baptist victory in much the same way that Joe Biden’s advocacy of abortion represents the pinnacle of the Irish-Catholic American experience.
There are good reasons for allowing advocates of less-conservative positions to contribute histories of their own facets of Baptist history (as this volume does). If the boundaries of Baptist identity are determined by history, it would be dishonest to ignore liberal Baptist history. Further, it would also be both academically suspect and somewhat counterproductive to assign the essays recounting these eras and figures to historians who flatly oppose the ambitions of those about whom they are writing. The diversity of contributors to this volume mirrors the diversity of Baptist positions on politics. In the main, then, it is useful that the editors chose authors across the ideological spectrum; assembling all these essays in a single volume must be viewed as a gift.
All that said, the majority of contributions to this volume do reflect the theologically conservative stream of Baptist theology. Happily, this is especially true in the topical section of the book and the editorials, which are by their nature more prescriptive than the historical essays. Even conservative Baptists may not agree with every conclusion in these essays, but they will find that these contributions are grounded in shared theological foundations.
By definition, there will be no Baptist Magisterium who will be able to announce the definitive Baptist political theology. But no Baptist who wishes to speak meaningfully on these questions can do so without awareness of the shape of the Baptist convictions that precede him. Because these questions are of enormous contemporary importance, Baptist leaders and Baptist pastors should acquire this book and read these essays.
It is the reader who must evaluate the scope of Baptist history on matters political and to decide how those convictions will shape his own political theory and practice. And that, we must acknowledge, is appropriate for Baptists.
