A Methodist Chats About Catholic Baptists: Sacramental theology on the rise

The Catholic Baptists

I first came across the notion, that there may be Baptists out there that adhere to the mystery of the church, when I read an article in the Christian Century that was titled, The New Monastics. The article reviewed several sacramental communities within the U.S. that tried their best to live out what they thought the early church was all about. Jason Byasse, author of The New Monastics, described them in the following manner:

At a time when the church had grown too cozy with the ruling authorities, when faith had become a means to power and influence, some Christians who sought to live out an authentically biblical faith headed for desolate places. They pooled their resources and dedicated themselves to a life of asceticism and prayer. Most outsiders thought they were crazy. They saw themselves as being on the narrow and difficult path of salvation, with a call to prick the conscience of the wider church about its compromises with the ‘world.’ I’m describing not fourth-century monks, but present-day communities of Christians…

This cadre of present-day monks are known by the following names: (1) The Rutba House, (2) Reba Place Fellowship, (3) the Church of the Servant King, (4) the Church of the Sojourners, and (5) Grace Fellowship Community Church.

In an article by Steven R. Harmon called Catholic Baptists and the New Horizon of Tradition in Baptist Theology, Harmon sides with the seventeenth-century Baptist’s traditions that influenced their theology: “The earliest Baptist confessions demonstrate that seventeenth-century Baptists picked up the same reading glasses when they turned to the Bible as their authority for faith and practice. Baptist confessions issued during the seventeenth century are surprisingly rich with echoes of patristic doctrinal tradition.”

There are seven ideologies in which Harmon lists as identifiers of a Catholic Baptist: “(1) they explicitly recognize tradition as a source of theological authority, (2) they seek a place in Baptist ecclesial life for the ancient ecumenical creeds as key expressions of the larger Christian tradition, (3) they give attention to liturgy as the primary context in which Christians are traditioned, (4) they locate the authority of tradition in the community and its formative practices, (5) they advocate sacramental theology, (6) they engage tradition as a resource for contemporary theological construction in a manner similar to the ressourcement agenda of the ‘nouvelle theologie,’ and (7) they are proponents of a thick ecumenism.”

It is within the affirmations of such patristic traditions that Catholic Baptists are able to affirm the following in terms of sacramental theology: “We affirm baptism, preaching, and the Lord’s table as powerful signs that seal God’s faithfulness in Christ and express our response of awed gratitude rather than as mechanical rituals or mere symbols.” It is within those powerful signs that change is evoked. Methodists, Episcopalians, Roman Catholics, and Lutherans should be waving on our Baptist brethern as they tentatively try to leave their sacramental closets and join the rest of us who hold to the notion that God does something to us in such a way that we're changed forever.

A few years ago, while attending an Episcopal service one Sunday morning, I didn't feel anything special as I followed along in the reading of the liturgy, though I was trying my best to focus on the liturgy and concentrate with a prayerful attitude...but it just wasn't happening. And yet, within a moment or two, as we all shared within the liturgy of confession and penitence, something changed. As I went to the front of the church and partook in Holy Communion, I began to view those in my midst as brothers and sisters in Christ. It was at the table that we were neither rich nor poor, intellectuals or simpletons, but pilgrims connected by a presence through bread and wine.

Hmmm, is sacramental theology on the rise?