Baptists and Voting

Two good posts on the issue from

Steve Holmes

In England, at that time, voting in parliamentary elections was restricted to about 5% of the male population – all landowners, of course. For a church to take this symbol of cultural privilege and, in prophetic parody, put it in the hands of every member, of every social class, women as well as men, was a piece of genius. A poor woman voting on the call of a pastor was a profoundly powerful visible sign of the Kingdom.

and Tim Bulkely

I am (still) a Baptist precisely because of the congregational and Christ-centeredness of Baptist life. The picture of “voting on everything” simply misunderstands. In an ideal church meeting (which does not exist, see Genesis 3) we would vote on nothing. The Church (the local gathered community of Jesus followers) would pray, discuss, argue, debate, and finally recognise, which way the Spirit is blowing and follow.

I am a recent addition to the baptist denomination and this issue, problematic though it is is the very reason I went baptist as opposed to the other options that presented themselves. I'm going to be a panelist soon at a Carey Baptist College leadership day on the topic, so I'll save my own thoughts till after that. But I do have to admit that as an idealist on this issue, the on the ground practicality of it is not so straight forward.

Let me know what you think :-)

On Being Baptist

I love this venn diagram by Alex Baker,

But there are other reasons for being Baptist, like

1. congregational discernment of the mind of Christ - OK, in the west we do struggle not to turn this into democracy with all the attendent political fallout, but I'd rather shoot for the stars of Rom 12:1-8 than settle for the beaurocrats making decisions for the local congregation.
2. a commitment to New Testament Christianity - OK, you've gotta be careful not to look at the early church with rose tinted specs, and you have to realise that as the world changes so will the way the church presents the gospel to that world, but honestly I'm not interested in imitating the reformers or the fathers any more than as far as they imitated Christ.  And if that is my goal then I might as well start with Christ first.  I'm grateful for church history, its legacy and lessons, but the church of today honours the church of yesterday, not by imitating them, but by doing with equal vigour and determination what they did, submitting themselves to the teachings of Christ and his apostles.
3. we don't baptise babies - how can a sign of repentance, conversion, and wilingness to die to self be performed for a baby?  Honestly, of all the confusing things to do, you don't come to Christ through having something "done" to you. If baptism of infants works, why don't we just run round throwing water over everyone, they'll thank us one day, won't they?  
4. James William McClendon

So, what's your excuse? ;-)