A Free Christian

Daddy left the farm and became a Baptist minister when I was not yet two-years-old. Baptist church life has been one of the few constants in my life ever since, Baptist in the sense of “Southern Baptist.” In those early years, one part of Baptist indoctrination was the witticism: “What would you be if you weren’t a Baptist?” The proper answer was: “I’d be a-shamed.” More than sixty years later, I’m still a Baptist, but these days I am too ashamed of Southern Baptists to let many people know of my Baptistity.

So my foundational Christian experience and my theological education developed in the milieu of the “conservative” (occasionally bordering on “fundamentalist”) branch of the Christian church. When, more than two decades ago, Southern Baptists splintered, one group called themselves “conservatives,” and their opposition chose to call themselves “moderates.” Nonetheless, the moderates insisted that they too were conservative. I’ve lived in a world where it seemed that “conservative” was an essential modifier.

When, decades ago, sitting in a Sunday morning worship service at the Southwayside Baptist Church in Fort Worth, Texas, I wrote my personal declaration of independence, two components of that document were: Southern Baptist, and Conservative. I didn’t declare myself a “Liberal.” I felt no need of any sort of label other than “Christ-ian.” At least, that is who I have intended and committed myself to be.

The late Jan Kiwiet, a Dutchman “in whom there was no guile,” gave cogent expression to my self-understanding. Kiwiet was a new professor at our seminary. I was a doctoral student in his first seminar. At times, Dr. Kiwiet talked like a rank fundamentalist, only to sound, thirty minutes later, like a wild-eyed liberal. One day, Charles Fox probed this apparent inconsistency. “Dr. Kiwiet,” he asked, “Are you a conservative, or a liberal.” In his thick Dutch accent, our new professor responded with: “Conservative? Liberal? I don’t know dese tings. I’m a free Christian.”

Why do we add modifiers? Nowhere in the Christian Scriptures is there a commandment that God’s people be conservative. Rather, I suspect that, in the synagogues of his time, Jesus was thought of as quite liberal.

Kathleen Norris, in her book, The Quotidian Mysteries, reminds us that “Christian faith is a way of life, not an impregnable fortress made up of ideas; not a philosophy; not a grocery list of beliefs.” She adds, “The Christian religion asks us to put our faith not in ideas, and certainly not in ideologies, but in a God who was vulnerable enough to become human and die, and who desires to be with us in our everyday circumstances.”

It is enough just to be a follower of Jesus the Christ.