Book Review: Baptist Political Theology
History is messy, politics too, and Baptist political theology is especially so.
Thomas S. Kidd, Paul D. Miller, and Andrew T. Walker, Baptist Political Theology (Nashville, TN: B&H Publishing Group, 2023).
Introduction
Thomas Kidd, Paul Miller, and Andrew Walker have provided readers with a compilation of essays that each contribute to a historical narrative and several applications of a Baptist political theology in our present American context. The wide variety of authorship engages readers with some of the leading academic voices on relevant topics, some essential and others tangential to the Baptist view of politics and civil-societal activity. Those readers who are interested in joining this public discussion may benefit from considering the substance of what is presented and even argued here. B&H Publishing has certainly brought together many scholarly contributors, leaders in their various fields of expertise.
This book is helpfully divided into two main sections. The first draws from historical moments and people to provide snapshots of Baptist political theology as they appear in real history. If one is to understand contemporary Baptist political theology, they must first become familiar with Baptist history. The second main section of the book is a variety of independent essays on various topics applying Baptist political theology to several arenas of modern American life. Baptists have always been a people who do theology in an applied manner, not removed from the world as it is but actively engaged in it.
Book Summary
Part One
Dustin Bruce and Michael Haykin provide the opening chapters, which offer the reader a brief summary of Baptist origins. The Protestant Reformation was an earth-shaking time for nation-states throughout western Europe, and Baptists emerged from the religious and political milieu of the Reformation in England during the late sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries. It is not surprising that Baptists in colonial America were also influenced by the ideas shaping the new ecclesiastical and civil realities on the other side of the Atlantic. Baptists across the western world shared a great deal of theology and practice, though the civil and societal structures around them did contribute to the shaping of their ideas and actions.
James Calvin Davis, Casey Hough, and Brandon O’Brien authored chapters on important characters to the development of Baptist political theology, including Roger Williams, John Leland, and Isaac Backus. These men shared a Baptist identity in a society that generally looked upon religious dissent with suspicion and scorn, but the new world also increasingly embraced political dissent as a good and necessary response to the denial of innate freedoms and the right to representative government. Williams, Leland, and Backus, though distinct in their aims and arguments, each notably promoted the idea and practice of religious liberty, the central focus of Baptist political theology.
Malcolm Yanell, Kristina Brenham, Thomas Kidd, Tom Nettles, and Gregory Wills each contributed to essays focusing on particular moments of American history which helped to shape Baptist theology and their engagement with politics. John Locke and his Enlightenment epistemology dramatically shaped the western world, and Baptists were not immune. In fact, Locke’s social contract and governing by consent seemed to align quite well with the Baptist principles of congregationalism and suffrage. Indeed, Baptists joined their own cause of religious freedom to the swelling American cause of civil freedom during the time of the American Revolution (both before and after).
This union of causes (American/civil and Baptist/religious) was both damaged and amplified during the Civil War. In the North-South divide, Baptists were on both sides, and each brand of Baptist tended to envision a divine affirmation and empowerment for their significance regarding America’s future. Particularly after the Civil War, Baptists in the North and in the South believed that their distinct cultures and priorities were the means by which God would advance Christian civilization in the nation as a whole.
A feature that is often overlooked or undervalued in Baptist anthologies like this one is the role of African American Baptists. Not only does this volume give attention to the African American Baptist tradition, but it also offers the reader no less than three chapters which are devoted to addressing a few particular influences that black Baptists had upon the broader group. Eric Washington, Kenneth Reid, and Daniel Lee Hill each wrote separate chapters that help provide greater perspective of historical developments. Obviously, slavery and the Civil War are major factors in the development of Baptists (both black and white), and so too did the social activism of progressive Baptists play a major part in the storyline. Two more chapters, from Gregory Wills and Aaron Douglas Weaver, describe some of the affects of the interplay between progressive and more conservative Baptists.
The last four chapters of this first section deal with the most recent era of Baptist history and political theology, leading up to the present moment. Jason Duesing and Jesse Payne explain the major influence of Carl F. H. Henry, a hugely important American figure in Baptist (and broader Evangelical) political theology. Cory Higdon described contemporary Baptist political theology by taking a sampling of several advocates, each from a distinct perspective of church-state relations. Nathan Finn told the story of the rise and convulsions of the “Christian Right,” from Presidents Regan to Trump, and Karen Swallow Prior offers the reader some interesting thoughts on the present Baptist witness in a post-Christian culture.
On the whole, the reader is able to gain a fairly broad and diverse summary of Baptist history. Baptists have never been a monolithic group, and these essays collectively demonstrate the similarities and differences among Baptists throughout the centuries. As with present Baptist historians, Baptists of the past did not see themselves or the world around them in exactly the same way. Nor did historical Baptists interact with the civil structures around them in an identical manner across the board. History is messy, and Baptist history is especially so.
Part Two
The second section of this lengthy volume turns from the pages of history and the development of Baptist political theology toward some present-day applications of it. Nine authors contributed essays in areas of their own interest and expertise. The subject matter in these chapters range from political and public engagement to ethical concerns related to war, economics, and the environment.
On the political and public engagement front, Jonathan Leeman argued for a kind of political involvement that keeps the church as center to the Christian life but also engages thoughtfully and vigorously in the public sphere. Andrew Walker invited the reader to reconsider the positive and effective use of natural law epistemology, claiming that this way of reasoning and arguing will help advance Baptist ethics. Walker also made the case that natural law arguments will help Baptists join with co-belligerents who may share similar ethical standards, even if they disagree with points of Baptist theology. R. Albert Mohler described challenges to religious liberty in America and offered some recommendations about how to promote the long-held American freedom.
On the ethics front, C. Ben Mitchell and J. Alan Branch tackled two of the more controversial issues of our day, bioethics and sexuality. These areas of ethical concern are becoming increasingly unmoored from the Judeo-Christian standards of America’s past, and Baptists in America still have opportunities to speak clearly for the dignity of human life and the goodness of God’s design for gender and sexuality. Mitchell and Branch offer the reader thoughtful ways to apply Baptist political theology in an effort to uphold ethical standards in these areas which are so fundamental to human flourishing.
Some of the stranger essay contributions are found near the end of this book, and they deal with environmentalism, economics, and just war theory. Andrew Spencer, Hunter Baker, and Paul D. Miller each wrote on these topics (respectively), though it is not clear that there is any consensus among Baptists that would support these authors’ conclusions about how Baptist political theology applies. The reader may wonder if this lengthy volume might have done better to exclude these chapters or to include at least a few more that could have provided a diversity of opinion about how Baptist political theology may apply here.
Historian Barry Hankins made his contribution near the end of the book, immediately preceding the conclusion. Indeed, there is a sense in which Hankins begins to conclude the reader’s engagement with the book as a whole. Hankins noted the amalgamation of Baptist identity with Evangelical identity at least since the time of E. Y. Mullins. Hankins also observed that David Bebbington’s “Quadrilateral” of Evangelicalism and Kristin Kobes Du Mez’s description of four emphatic features of modern Evangelicalism seem to represent “two poles on either end of a continuum that defines evangelicalism at this moment in history.”[1] Hankins argued that there seemed to be something of a convergence of these two paradigms for understanding Evangelicals (especially Southern Baptists) during the conservative resurgence of the 1980s and 1990s. However, the reality today, Hankins observed, is that there remains quite an array of convictions among Baptists who largely dwell somewhere between these two poles.
Andrew Walker and Paul D. Miller wrote the formal conclusion of this book, wherein they outlined two weaknesses and four strengths of Baptist political theology. The first weakness is the Baptist “intellectual predispositions,” namely “individualism, anti-structuralism, antinomians, [and] even quietism.”[2] Such epistemological grounds have produced incongruent practices for Baptists in the past and present, like “nationalism, racism, [and] imperialism.”[3] This second weakness, that of practice, stems from the first. The logical and historical consistency of this argument is valid, but it leaves out quite a bit of historical data and present Baptist argumentation that is actually averse to the intellectual predispositions articulated here. A whole host of Baptists have embraced and promoted an entirely different set of intellectual predispositions.[4] Indeed, many Baptists still do.
The four strengths of Baptist political theology are summarized as follows. First, Baptists “differentiate between coercive, arbitrary, and domineering manifestations of religion and those rooted in a broad and organic application of justice that aims to secure goods necessary for human flourishing.”[5] Second, Baptists recognize that Christians and non-Christians alike have a “legitimate right” to participate in society, because they believe “the government is not empowered with any redemptive mission in mind.”[6] Third, Baptists continue to affirm that the mission of the church and that of the state are distinct under God. And fourth, Baptist political theology is “neither secular nor sectarian;” it embraces a positive vision of religious influence upon the morality of society. Both the historical record and the application of Baptist political theology, as this volume chronicles, demonstrate these strengths over time and existing in practice today.
Critique
There are advantages to having multiple contributors to a book of this size and scope. No one person can be an expert on all the subjects addressed, and the book broadens its appeal to a wider swath of readers by including authors from different perspectives (including their views of Baptist political theology). No doubt, these were among the reasons why the editors and publishers decided to proceed with this method. However, the use of various authors with varying perspectives creates a disjointed historical narrative as well as a conflicting set of applications. The reader is left wondering about what exactly a comprehensive definition or description of Baptist political theology is. Is it defined by the four strengths listed at the conclusion of the book? If so, it would seem that some prominent Baptists have and continue to diverge from one or more of them.
Furthermore, one can hardly claim that Baptists have a unified perspective of the role of politics in the modern world or the importance of environmentalism. Just what relationship, if any, should the church have with the state? And what responsibilities do humans have to care for the environment? Such questions are sure to spark heated debate among Baptists, not rally them around a central point of agreement.
So too, there remains no small amount of disagreement among Baptists about how one should perceive the role of progressives (white or black) in the development of Baptist theology, political or otherwise. This is observable in the repeated attempts that some Baptists have made to reference Martin Luther King Jr. as a historical Baptist figure. Such attempts have only revealed a deep divide, and not a cohesive perspective of King or the movement he represented.
While a number of books have employed this method of using more than one author and from a variety of perspectives, it seems that the reader can often feel as thought he or she is thrown in one direction and then another. The whole of the book – its argument, its narrative, and its conclusions – suffers from the lack of cohesion. It is not clear that the advantages outweigh the disadvantages of such a volume.
Those books that purposefully engage the authors’ differing views (i.e., multiple views on a given subject, with various positive arguments and corresponding responses) seem the most productive way to collaborate with multiple authors. This book, however, only tips its hat (in the introduction) to the reality that there is variety and disagreement among the authors. Then it proceeds to unfurl an array of disjointed and sometimes conflicting stories and arguments. Using the analogy of the editors, who “hope this volume is a road map,” the roads are sometimes unconnected and the terrain quite diverse, and the reader is not provided with clear roadsigns to help understand why this is so.[7]
Conclusion
This large volume is a compilation of scholarly essays on various topics and people that shape Baptist political theology. As such, it is a significant contribution to the overall discussion among academics and students of Baptist history, Baptist theology, and both the historical development and practical application of these. Therefore, this resource will likely prove highly valuable as a meaningful occasion to interact with that ongoing public discussion. However, I believe that Baptist Political Theology will also likely prove a frustrating place for readers to begin an investigation of this topic. It would be better to start by reading from the historic Baptists (such as Roger Williams, Isaac Backus, John Leland) who forged the basic structures of Baptist political theology in America. These are the originals, and many other Baptists have simply added to them, modified them, and adorned them over time.
[1] Thomas S. Kidd, Paul D. Miller, and Andrew T. Walker, Baptist Political Theology (Nashville, TN: B&H Publishing Group, 2023), 700.
[2] Thomas S. Kidd, Paul D. Miller, and Andrew T. Walker, Baptist Political Theology (Nashville, TN: B&H Publishing Group, 2023), 727.
[3] Thomas S. Kidd, Paul D. Miller, and Andrew T. Walker, Baptist Political Theology (Nashville, TN: B&H Publishing Group, 2023), 727.
[4] See the “two traditions” described by R. Stanton Norman. Norman, R. Stanton. More Than Just a Name: Preserving Our Baptist Identity. Nashville, TN: Broadman & Holman, 2001.
[5] Thomas S. Kidd, Paul D. Miller, and Andrew T. Walker, Baptist Political Theology (Nashville, TN: B&H Publishing Group, 2023), 730.
[6] Thomas S. Kidd, Paul D. Miller, and Andrew T. Walker, Baptist Political Theology (Nashville, TN: B&H Publishing Group, 2023), 730.
[7] Thomas S. Kidd, Paul D. Miller, and Andrew T. Walker, Baptist Political Theology (Nashville, TN: B&H Publishing Group, 2023), 14.