A Trip to Cold Mountain
By William M. Tillman, Jr.

Excerpt from speech on The BF&M and Social Ethics delivered at TBC convocation, Corpus Christi, Texas, July 15, 2000

We are known by the people with whom we walk. John tells us in his first epistle, "Whoever claims to live in him must walk as Jesus did" (2:6, NIV).

Charles Frazier's first novel, Cold Mountain, is the story of a long walk. In the last months of the American Civil War, a wounded Confederate soldier got up from his hospital bed and struck out for his home in a remote area of North Carolina.

In case you have not noticed, Baptists are in a civil war. We are in a long walk. As with Frazier's hero, simply called Inman, we meet rogues, outlaws, Good Samaritans, vigilantes, wounded soldiers, people who help and people who hinder others. Like Inman, we are not people who have sought war; rather the war has found us.

Like Frazier's characters, we are involved in a physical journey, and an internal odyssey. For Inman and the woman he loved, Ada, their journey toward each other provided the romance element of Cold Mountain. For us, our goal becomes nothing less than identifying and applying Baptist perspectives on social and ethical concerns.

The items that have arisen for the most attention in the evolution of the BF&M are social and ethical issues. The war has not been necessarily over doctrinal rightness. The war has been inherently about ethical concerns; and, that encompasses the theme of this address, "The Baptist Faith and Message and Social Ethics."

The 1963 BF&M-Ethically, What is There?

Larry Baker provides a careful consideration of the 1963 BF&M and gives specific regard to social and ethical concerns in a chapter: Sacred Mandates of Conscience.

The moral and ethical vision of the 1963 BF&M has both theological and methodological dimensions. He anchors this vision for the redeemed Christian in a Trinitarian base. The Bible and the Holy Spirit are the essential resources for acting on this vision. This ethical vision is both personal and social in application.

The tone of the ethical vision is primarily deontological - that is, rule/obligation centered. This ethical vision occurs in the context of humanity's divine creation, a realistic measuring of human fallenness, and the possibility of human potential through divine grace and power. There are both separationist and transformational perspectives about engagement with culture.

The BF&M-What is There or Not, Now?

Many of the facets Larry Baker considered are essentially the same through the 1963, 1998 and 2000 versions of the BF&M. For instance, the deontological perspective carried through from 1963 to 1998 and 2000. The "thou shalt not" tone is heavy. The beauty of life is lightly considered.

The 1963 BF&M was put forward as a consensus statement representing a relatively broad spectrum of the SBC constituency. They appointed a committee of state Baptist convention presidents to work on the statement. The group still seems a bit narrow. For instance, no Christian ethicist of note exists among the group. The group who worked on the most recent revisions represents an even narrower range of perspectives among Baptists than that of the 1960s group.

Moreover, the deletions and additions that have provided so much grist for discussion fall in the sphere of Christian ethics-conscience, issues of sexuality, use of time and war. The issues not considered intrigue me.

What about conversation addressing the technological in roads since 1963? Technological developments in media, transportation, medicine and on and on have been both blessing and bane.

What of the lack of attention to the use of power? What about institutional ethics? What of human rights issues-respect for human beings from which should grow the resistance to oppress, enslave, deceive, manipulate or coerce? There is specific attention to those who should not serve as pastors; but, no attention to a deeper need-that of ministerial ethics.

There never has been an article really about how to address social concerns. What are ethical strategies and tactics that are appropriate for Christians?

Where, for instance, are the guidelines for living the Christian life? More specifically, what about those character-forming influences such as loss and grief? This dynamic moving through Cold Mountain is perhaps the most poignant - the losses of what was, what is, and of what might have been. Here is a matter of deep consequence with which many Baptists now are dealing. Our losses, more than any other things likely shape us. One way to put forward the Baptist autobiography over the last two decades would be to consider our losses.

As dangerous as written guidelines can become as they form a canonical standard, even more so are the tacit rules imposed. Tacit rules move to a level of expedient pragmatism that ironically is couched often in ministerial jargon, but in my experience is a stranger to the grace and truth inherent in the Gospel.

Tacit Rules on Social EthicsÐa Discursus

The tacit rules surrounding the 2000 BF&M exude particularly from the areas not considered. The gaps regarding the implementation of the 2000 BF&M provide the first. The tacit rule is: "The debate is not about power."

Power is like fire; how it is used determines its goodness or badness. Unfortunately, too many people experience power in its negative expressions. They, in turn, apply power as they have experienced it. Furthermore, Baptists have not done lots of reflection on the theology and ethics of power, especially with regard to institutional expressions.

The BF&M guidelines have become a part of a repertoire of violence and coercion, the thorn in the flesh of a Baptist. I wonder sometimes if it is because I am a Christian, a Baptist, or an Oklahoman-but I resent deeply anyone telling me what I must think.

This repertoire furthermore is a handy tool for those personalities who have an insatiable drive and need for power - to be able to have the say over decisions and people.

Therefore, the next tacit rule I list: "The pastor is the most important part of the life of a church."

Contemporary Baptists are living out what their ancestors fought against in the Reformation; that is a dichotomy between clergy and lay people-a first class and second class in the church.

A system of privilege and oppression has come into place in the church and institutional life of the SBC. Deference is sought and given as a clericalism has developed. We are dangerously close, in some quarters, to operating with a de facto kind of apostolic succession mentality among some pastors.

These ideas about power lead to another tacit rule: "Anglo men are the head of the house, the church, and of society."

We can make a case that much racism still exists, though certainly the SBC eventually addressed slavery and racism. There are, though, still areas in which Anglo men cannot let go of their perceived threatened positions. Another way to say it, for instance, is: women are to keep quiet. Do not overshadow or embarrass men.

Close to this last tacit rule is another: "Women really are not that important to the work of the Kingdom of God." Some of those in positions of church leadership really think they can do without the involvement of women. Just let them disallow women's participation in volunteer jobs and the amount of monetary contributions they make to the life and mission of local churches and Christian efforts around the globe. See if they can keep the doors of the place open.

One of the first rallying cries more than two decades ago was "the battle for the Bible."

I rather think the tacit rule in place is this: "I believe it; the Bible says it; that settles it." A not-so-subtle tendency has come particularly among the preacher types to equate what they say is equivalent to what the Bible says. The operative hermeneutic among many Baptists is one that will support a group in place and their goals to maintaining that place.

Where Is This Going?

Likely the end of this debate is not in sight. Whether the facet addressed is who should serve as clergy, biblical interpretation, polity, or guidelines for dealing with ethical issues, tacit rules will go on. The shift from a confessional posture to a creedal one, the antithesis of a Baptist approach, is nearly done. Annual revisions of statements like the Baptist Faith and Message are likely. These formularies will have the effect of both holding territory and people and keeping people out.

The real implementation of the 2000 BF&M emulates the medieval RCC system where are combined Scripture, tradition and church law. It becomes a rather rationalistic system, unfortunately; and, paradoxically in light of proclamations otherwise, it borders on being a modern Gnosticism. They say we will know the truth, but only a select few hold it, the gatekeepers of truth.

In Cold Mountain, Inman periodically lost the trail home. Among contemporary Baptists, the ethical trail is getting lost. The contemporary gatekeepers have won the semantic battle. They pick words, themes, labels which carry emotive dimensions, then define or redefine the discussion convenient to their larger goals. One effect with this revisionism is that ensuing generations forget their longer history. An ethical amnesia sets in.

The results of this kind of revisionism are a Gospel of fear and not freedom. Alternatively, pejorative labels and guilt by convoluted association come into play. Tell me something about your fears, though, and I can tell you something about your theology and ethics.

What Can Be Done?

More Baptists need to recognize earlier the paradigmatic shifts happening and consequences following. The typical responses of ignoring the struggle, that the struggle will go away, or being bothered only when me and mine are affected are not sufficient. We will have to consider seriously the limitations of the BF&M statements. My suggestion is the framing of another statement of confession that carries a fuller, deeper expression of who Baptists are, especially at the points of Christian social ethics.

Cold Mountain relates little directly about the Civil War. However, Charles Frazier develops for the reader in a vividly poignant way what violence on several levels does to a society. The dehumanizing context can distort values. Frazier's character Inman noted that he had seen so much death he might not make a civilian again.

The current generations in theological education know little of the Baptist civil war. They do not know the pain some people have experienced. Though living in it, the younger ones often cannot see it or interpret it, except as they seek out the histories or hear old soldiers' war stories.

Moreover, we need to more than shore up the information gaps among us on Baptist history. For, we simply cannot rehearse how Leland, Backus, Bunyan, Rauschenbusch, or Maston dealt with their contexts. We must be more insightful discerners of our own context and how we apply the Christian Gospel in it.

Conclusion

I do not like the ending of Frazier's book, Cold Mountain. The energy of the story just slips away.

Several ways exist, however, to find resolution to a story, a saga and a journey. We are writing Baptist history now. We have something to say about where the movement goes.

The very nature of the Gospel of Jesus Christ will increasingly come into jeopardy, paradoxically at the hands of those who call themselves Baptists. Some of what is at stake is how Baptists, real Baptists, who have been the freedom fighters of the theological world, are going to respond. This is more than a story of how the BF&M saga will end, but what we stand for and act upon ethically. We can provide a constructive resolution of the Baptist plot.

I hope, though, others will not remember our generation as the one that let the Baptist movement slip away.

So, let us find the trail, the one marked out by the Trail Blazer-the literal name given by the writer of Hebrews to Jesus Christ, the Pioneer of our faith-and walk, even walk as Jesus walked; and show the way to others as to what it means to walk and live as Baptist Christians.

October 2000