Terry Todd’s riveting post offers a great way to end our Following Jesus colloquy here at Respectful Conversation. The picture of church life he offers is so wildly different from anything else we have engaged, yet there ought to be points of connection and elements of appeal for many of us. I certainly find some […]
Robert Millet offers a treatment of the Latter-day Saints (LDS) way of following Jesus that is refreshing in its familiarity, at least to this Baptist: search the scriptures, pray always, love and serve others, gather in church community. It is hard to argue with that list — though what to make of scripture, what love […]
As I ponder Farris Blount’s thoughtful, fair-minded reflections, I respond as a repentant white Baptist of the South. I recall that when I wandered into that Southern Baptist congregation in summer 1978, and that William & Mary Baptist Student Union in 1980, and into Southern Baptist Theological Seminary in 1984 and again as a professor […]
For this Baptist, John Wesley is one of the most interesting and significant Protestant leaders in history. I have always found his project alluring: within decadent, aristocratic-heavy 18th century Anglicanism arose a leader, and a movement, calling for a renewal of heartfelt, wholly committed, holistic, holiness. (Perhaps only Baptists alliterate quite like that. Sorry.) The […]
Reading Christopher Gehrz’s essay about pietism, I was once again reminded of my primal Baptist experience, a bit of which I have narrated in an earlier post. His essay helps clarify for me that pietism was alive and well in that Baptist congregation in northern Virginia in the late 1970s. I was taught that the […]
It was a treat reading the engagement of the entire “Following Jesus” team with my little essay laying out my understanding of Baptist ways of following Jesus. I especially appreciated how my turn to spiritual autobiography elicited considerable storytelling from other sisters and brothers in Christ. There is something instructive there, I think. Certainly many […]
One summer Friday afternoon in 1978 a teenage boy named David Gushee wandered uninvited into a Southern Baptist church in Tysons Corner, Virginia. I had never attended worship at that church but my then-girlfriend attended there with her family — though they were out of town. I was on my own, a total stranger to […]
I have never really seen the appeal of at least the main versions of Reformed Christianity that I have encountered in the US, though I have great respect for many Christians who were raised in this tradition, and seem to like them better in the Netherlands than here! The hypercognitive confessionalism of some Reformed Christians […]
For three months in my last year as a ministry student at Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, I (and my wife Jeanie) undertook an inquirer’s class at the downtown Episcopal church. It was a fateful crossroads for us. If we had left the Southern Baptists and joined the Episcopalians at that point, my professional life, and […]
Michael King’s post found striking resonance with my understanding of discipleship as a Baptist. These resonances include 1) a resolute focus on Jesus, with the Sermon on the Mount functioning as the locus classicus in defining the Way of Jesus. Closely related is 2) the emphasis on the kingdom or reign of God as the apocalyptic-ethical […]
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