Do Baptist care about church history?

They're very important. I don't mean to be glib, but the short answer is that your average Baptist doesn't want to learn these things because they're associated with Catholicism.

Another reason is that they can't understand how these things still play such an integral part in the nature and role of the church today.

I teach a class on church history at our church and we get a pretty big turn out, but it's usually only the more "hardcore" folks.

 

That's a really dangerous attitude. If you don't know church history, then you won't be able to recognize danger signs in the church today and you won't understand why certain doctrines, creeds and confessions are important (and, yes, Baptists do hold to creeds).

 

I believe as we come to understand history (especially church history) as His-story, then we'll begin to cultivate a deeper apprecation for all of God's dealings with man down through time. The history of the church, for good or for bad, is the history of God's dealings with His people. I fear we neglect much of the work of God if we fail to study and understand the in's and out's of the body of Christ, not only for today, but since our inception as well.

 

I care.

But I'm a Christian first, then a Baptist.

 

I certainly hope you told her the truth about those 80 books in the 1611 KJV. The Bible had only 66 books but between the Old Testament and the New Testament, they placed the Apocryphal books with a statement saying they were not included in the Bible as part of it because they were apocryphal and not inspired or ever part of the Bible. They were placed there for the value of history and reading only. They did not even become part of the Catholic Bible until the Council of Trent (16th century) when they were deemed to be inspirational and therefore part of the Old Testament. The truth is that they were never part of the Old Testament. The Jewish people canonized the Old Testament long before the Apocryphal books were even written and they never accepted them.

Actually your wife was right!

 

When the Pilgrims first came to America and for more than 100 years later, Baptists were not allowed to be part of this country. They were not allowed to have services, not considered Christians and if they professed their faith publicly, they were jailed. They were not allowed to hold public office and were scorned everywhere they went. It was many years before they were finally accepted into the American society.

God's people have always been denied and mistreated.

 

I remember the "Peanuts" cartoon in which one of the characters ... Lucy, maybe ... said that she had been assigned to do a report on church history. In the final panel, she began her oral report, "Our pastor was born in 1938 ..."

The point was and is, I think, that many of us think of church history as something that is confined to our own lifetime and experience. The cartoon stuck with me because I WAS born in 1938!

I have found that when I do some teaching on Christian history (which is broader than institutional church history), there is a fair amount of interest in it.

 

The church I serve was established in 1891. We have the minutes of every business meeting staring in 1901 (don't know where the first ten years worth are). The are snapshots of our church's history. The minutes were written in narrative form, thus are a gold mine of information about how the church changed over the years, how the culture changed, and how the church operated.

A couple of interesting things gleaned from those minutes: In 1919 or so, the church had a debate whether the Sunday School was subservient to the church or could it operate independently of church oversight.

There were no standing committees. If a job needed to be done (mostly go beg for money to pay the preacher or buy coal for the stove), an ad hoc committee was appointed. When it finished its job, it reported back to the church and was discharged. The church government was vigorously congregational.

Church discipline was routine. And redemptive. Often those disfellowshipped showed up in the minutes later as having been restored.

When a pastoral vacancy occurred, there was no search committee. There was a business meeting, at which members nominated various preachers. The church appointed a delegation to notify the preacher and get his response. Most of the time, the answer to the call was yes. Sometimes, it was no, and the process started over.

Two men got into conflict, and came to the church to ask it to help resolve the dispute. The congregation heard both sides, rendered an opinion and effected a reconciliation.

The last incidence of church discipline in our minutes was around 1940.

I told you it was a gold mine, didn't I?

 

I can easily recognize the truth and the lies by comparing them with God's word, which I have read through many times and studied extensively. The Holy Spirit teaches me. The past isn't going to tell me anything I need to know in recognizing false teachers and false teachings.

 

By studying history one can take a look at the decision that were made and see the results of those decisions. One cannot accurately interpret scripture without understanding the historical context. One cannot go from exegesis to homiletics without understanding the historical context of the passage and the present day situation the people are confronted with.