Journal: Southeastern Theological Review
Volume: STR 08:2 (Fall 2017)
Article: From Reformation London To Contemporary Nashville: Changing Baptist Views Of The Church
Author: Malcolm B. Yarnell III

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From Reformation London To Contemporary Nashville: Changing Baptist Views Of The Church

Malcolm B. Yarnell III

Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary

How did Baptist views of the church develop from the English Reformation? And how have those views since changed? The author first traces the earliest Baptists’ grounding of ecclesiology in Christology. He then provides a phenomenological description of contemporary anthropological ecclesiologies held among Southern Baptists. He then offers a concluding critique.

Key Words: Baptists, Church, English Reformation, humanity, Jesus Christ, Southern Baptist Convention

Periodically, Southern Baptist theologians are asked to explain and even defend their theological positions to other Baptists, to other evangelical theologians, or to representatives from the Anglican Communion and the Roman Catholic Church. The alternation between raised eyebrows and furrowed frowns, followed by intense questioning, indicates how this apparently exotic but vibrant expression of Christian communal life is perceived by other Western Christians.1 The following essay responds to such queries by explaining both the commonalities

STR 8:2 (Fall 2017) p. 52

and peculiarities of contemporary Southern Baptist church life as it developed historically and theologically out of the fertile milieu of the European Reformation.

The Southern Baptist Convention represents the largest convention of Baptist churches in the world—there are over 40,000 Southern Baptist churches with a reported membership of some 15 million. The Southern Baptist Convention also fields full-time and temporary domestic and international missionaries in the tens of thousands. Moreover, they completed, with the turn of the century, a major theological realignment known as the “Conservative Resurgence” or “Conservative Reformation” by the political victors, but as the “Fundamentalist Takeover” by the vanquished.2 Yet, in many ways, alongside their amazing numerical strength, vigorous missionary efforts, and concern for doctrine, Southern Baptists are perceived, and properly so, to be somewhat different.

Southern Baptists developed from the English Reformation, which made three overarching doctrinal claims: the necessity of faith in Jesus Christ for salvation; a typically high view of the Bible; and a great concern for the nature, composition, and role of the church. Much could and should be written on Southern Baptist participation in transitions in the first two doctrines, soteriology and Scripture, but we shall be concerned with...