On the national scene, the role of the confession of faith in our Baptist cooperation has generated much discussion. Are Baptists primarily a confessional people or a cooperative people? Is the tie that binds us shared doctrine or shared mission? A case can be made from history that the answer is yes — both. Baptists came confessing, and Baptists came cooperating. We are a confessionally cooperative people. The two are beautifully interwoven on every page of Baptist history.
In 1609, John Smyth separated from the Church of England on the conviction of credobaptism, baptizing himself and several others, fleeing to the Netherlands under persecution, and organizing the baptized refugees into an autonomous church. Within months, Smyth authored a confession of faith hoping to cooperate with the local Waterland Mennonites. This attempt was as ill-fated as his own Baptist convictions were short-lived. However, Smyth’s pioneering convictional courage and confessional concern set the stage for Baptist confessional cooperation for centuries to come.
Several Baptist confessions were authored in the decades after Smyth’s, but perhaps the most notable came in 1644 with “A Confutation of the Anabaptists,” adopted by seven Particular Baptist churches in London in the formation of an association. While the confession was mostly an apologetic for Baptist doctrine, it was also a unifying document, unauthoritative but mutually agreed upon as a guide for association. Article 47 of that confession acknowledged both the ecclesial independence and missional interdependence of the churches.
With the passing of years and an abundance of Baptist confessions, our people became less rigid about one specific confession and more welcoming of churches holding to like faith and practice. Most Baptist churches’ doctrinal statements in the United States, and in South Carolina, are based on either the 1689 Second London Confession (later amended and circulated as the Philadelphia Baptist Confession) or the 1833 New Hampshire Confession (later amended and circulated as the Baptist Faith and Message). Both are faithful expressions of historic Baptist doctrine and helpful guides for inter-congregational cooperation. In 1821, the South Carolina Baptist Convention began its organized Great Commission cooperation without any reference to a confession of faith. In 1845, the Southern Baptist Convention organized likewise.
Even though neither the SBC nor the SCBC officially adopted a confession until decades after constituting, Baptist doctrine always guided and guarded Baptist cooperation. Baptists are today as they always have been — confessionally cooperative. But the specific role of confessions of faith in the various mechanisms of Baptist cooperation is not as historically standardized as one might think. Even though state and national conventions organized without reference to specific confessions, at the local level Baptist associations usually held associated churches doctrinally accountable, often using a confession as a tool for guiding and guarding associational cooperation. Larger Baptist bodies generally trusted the local associations with this responsibility, allowing them to focus their time and energy on organized Great Commission cooperation in their larger, periodic convenings (“conventions”).
It is a decidedly historic Baptist practice for autonomous churches to agree upon a confession of faith. It is a decidedly historic Baptist practice for those churches to, in some way, use that confession to guide and guard their Great Commission cooperation. But it is also a historic Baptist practice that the exact role of specific confessions of faith in different organizational levels of Baptist cooperation, particularly in larger Baptist bodies, is not as universally standardized.
The SCBC is distinct and autonomous from the national SBC, while convictionally and joyfully invested in it. We depend upon our national network for the expansion of our footprint in missions sending, seminary training, church planting, disaster relief ministry, public policy engagement, and much more. This gospel partnership is functionally interwoven even within our own in-state ministry model as our convention staff and associational leaders often work directly with SBC entity personnel for Great Commission advance in the Palmetto State.
I know, that’s a whole lot of historical survey for a monthly Courier article. What’s the point? My goal in this two-part Courier series is to give historical background (part 1) and contemporary context (part 2) to confessional cooperation the South Carolina Baptist way. It is no secret that our national convention is currently wrestling with the mechanisms of confessional cooperation. In South Carolina, we are not. The way we cooperate confessionally is congruent with, while distinct from, the SBC. And if I’m breathing the South Carolina Baptist air rightly, our kind of cooperation is good and healthy. Look for my article in the next issue for more on this distinction and for an explanation of the South Carolina Baptist kind of confessional cooperation.