baptist polity: form leads to content?

Here's most of my weekly response paper for my Baptist Polity class... It's about whether Baptist Polity lead to any necessary content, or whether it's just a very flexible form...

In reflecting on whether historical Baptist principles point to any content beyond a form, any policies beyond polity, I’ve actually become gradually convinced that they do, especially when functioning as designed and proclaimed.
Consider the right of the individual to join a church, and to act as his or her own Biblical interpreter, his or her own priest. This is a pretty strongly anti-authoritarian polity, and the autonomy of the local church and the seperation of church and state act to reinforce its anti-authoritarian tendencies.
If Baptists have an anti-authoritarian polity, then I would certainly argue that it will (at least usually) lead to other anti-authoritarian policies, practices, and tactics. Hakim Bey, in Temporary Autonomous Zones, argues that once individuals have experienced life beyond the bounds of domination by some ruling authority, even in a small and/or temporary context, they learn about the possibility and desirability of such domination-free living.
This raises an obvious question: if Baptist polity leads to anti-authoritarian policies, why are so many Baptist churches so grotesquely hierarchical and authoritarian? Why do authoritarian governments thrive in the US, under the hearty support of so many so-called Baptists?
I think this contemporary failure of Baptist polity to be actualized in anti-authoritarian policy is partially the victim of the lack of concern for historic Baptist principles in most Baptist churches. Many of these churches have also used a single interpretation of the Bible as an authoritative break on the individual freedoms of their members.
However, I would point out that this polity is very strong, when it functions. It is not necessarily efficient, and it is often not simple. However, it is very difficult to take over, partially as a result of that lack of simplicity and efficiency. As such, once more and more Baptist churches (and others!) start practicing the freedoms that their forebears taught, it will in theory inspire additional Baptists to start similar churches, or to transform existing churches into places that are more averse to authoritarianism. That is to say, the second answer to the “Why are Baptist churches not actually like this?” question is simply, “Give us some time.”

every lament is a love song

In his book, 'Lament for a Son', (which I commend to anyone who wants to think about grief and God and love) Nicholas Wolterstorff tells us that 'every lament is a love-song.'

I wrote a song to accompany my final self-evaluation for my Clinical Pastoral Education program. It's pasted below.

Every lament is a love song: a song about cpe.

What kind of God are you that you want my worship
What kind of God are you that you want my prayer
Who am I to criticize your method?
Who am I to question your care?

Did you promise me abundance?
Did you promise me light?
I'm not getting a dawning.
I'm getting walking with me through the night.

I've been asking, all the old questions.
Children dying, all of the time.
I want you God, to get here and transform us
I want you God, to make the verses rhyme

I want you, to heal my patients
I want you to end the war
I want you, but that's not what you tell me
All you promise is that you will show up.

I've stopped looking to you for victory
I've seen too much pain, for a time
I'm not looking to you for abundance
O God my God I'm looking to you for enough.

Sometimes, I don't think you are trying
When the world seems like one big bruise.
But I believe that you cry the hardest;
This is some kind of awful good news

Bridgey stuff

One bed's laughing, one bed's cursing, one bed's crying
All together
One at a time

I believe you are there, in the blood, in the bread
I believe that you move, in the wind and in the wine

This world feels like missing a lover
This world feels like dancing in a cast
All I can give them is some love and space and presence
I just show up; I believe that's all you ask.

I can't offer them abundance
I can't give them any truth or joy or light.
Somehow, I just give them what you promise.
I show up, and walk with them through the night.

It's not much, this grace we have to share.
It's not much, but it's enough, it's enough.

(repeat last two lines.)

-I think there might be another verse in me, about how we show up, and a few other people show up, and they're never perfect, and often they're deeply flawed, but their showing up enables our continuing showing up. So, yeah. I'll put up a link to a recording if I ever get that together. I told Beth that you can just sing it to the tune of Yankee Doodle, but that was a lie.

love-and-lament,
david

David in Nicaragua #4: theoillogical

Three things about the Purple Church and its pastor, accompanied by photos that are not of either of these things: I really admire Rachael’s host dad. I knew the first day I met him that he was a great guy, and he continued to impress me with his warmth and gentle faith. We also get similarly excited about worship; we shared some giddiness as we discussed how best to celebrate Pentecost. (He doesn’t usually celebrate Pentecost in his church, but decided it would be cool since we do it in my tradition.) He also let me preach in his church.



So, I feel like the theology that I most often heard preached in this particular church is pretty simple. The words of comfort are powerful in their neatness: God will get you through the hard times, when you are sad, buck up and have faith.
This is very different from my faith life, at least lately. It’s not about that kind of certainty for me, though it is clearly sustaining and life-giving for many of those folks. I was talking to Rachael about it, as she talked about the difficulty of doing such difficult work and having so few resources to fall back on. I talked about sitting in front of the White House waiting to be arrested, and I talked about praying through the Good Friday Walk for Justice in downtown Chicago. Both times I was really cold, and in both of those, I felt something in the depths of that cold emptiness and mourning. People who study mystics talk about kataphatics and apophatics; mystics that seek a fullness in union with God, an overflowing overwhelming totality of God, and mystics who seek to empty themselves utterly, and meet God their in that bareness. This second part is the kind of faith I have lately been running with. The God who lives uniquely in the coldness of shivering despair and a pleading world. It seems like a much more difficult God. It doesn’t feel simple at all; usually it feels stupid. But that’s what I’ve got now.



Also, I preached. At this lovely purple church. Rachael translated for me. It was Pentecost, and a preached a liberationist, post-colonial Pentecost sermon. I talked about cicadas. I talked about the threat of people being able to understand each other, in their native languages. I talked about the dangerousness of it all. I felt a little ridiculous- me, a white guy from the US, coming to Latin America to preach liberation theology? That’s a little absurd. But afterwards a woman came up and said that she had heard a lot of sermons about Pentecost, but none that named that reason for the importance of Pentecost. (That Pentecost would enable the oppressed Jews living under Empire to united, to be in solidarity with each other.) So, there’s that. Huh.