Baptists share common roots with the so-called “peace churches,” denominations with a history of pacifism and peacemaking. But despite that common bond, historians say most Baptists have become more accepting of war.
Peace groups like the Quakers, Mennonites and Brethren have been linked with Baptists. But Glenn Hinson, senior professor of church history and spirituality at the Baptist Seminary of Kentucky in Lexington, said most Baptists actually fall into a different category from those supporting complete pacifism.
Parting from pacifism
“Although a few Baptists have opted for pacifism on occasion, most fit better into the category known as pacificism, by which is meant they regard war as a horrible option for resolving disputes between nations but still concede its inevitability on occasion,” Hinson wrote in 2004. “Sometimes, human beings must pay the supreme price to preserve freedom, eliminate oppression and injustice or end other evils.” The peace churches are often regarded as successors of Anabaptists, or “re-baptizers,” 16th-century Christians who rejected infant baptism in favor of believers’ baptism.
And there is clear evidence of a connection between the Waterlander Mennonites and the General Baptists, the earliest group of Baptists in England, Hinson said. But while many denominations, including Baptists, share roots with the Anabaptists, many have parted ways on the issue of war and pacifism.
There are other differences, of course. Bill Leonard, dean of the divinity school at Wake Forest University in Winston-Salem, N.C., said that as early as the 17th century, Baptists had several points where they distinguished themselves from Anabaptist groups.
“Baptists would take an oath,” he said, noting one distinction. Anabaptist groups, on the other hand, do not because “Christians always tell the truth, so an oath isn’t necessary.” Baptists also have a loyalty to the state, Leonard said. In times of hostility, that loyalty has led Baptists to accept justification for war.
World War II, in particular, led many Baptists to step away from pacifism. In a 1940 resolution supporting conscientious objectors of warfare, the Southern Baptist Convention (SBC) expressed “utter abhorrence of war as an instrument of [i]nternational policy” and said “war is contrary to the mind and spirit of Christ.”
Four years later, the convention voted to receive and transmit voluntary contributions for the support of those opposed to bearing arms based on their religious convictions. By 1969, a resolution brought to the convention floor reaffirming the position taken in 1940 failed. And by 1972, the convention considered a resolution supporting both conscientious objection and participation in war.
“World War II became a kind of watershed for Baptists — a recognition that there are certain times when evil is so awesome that there is no other response to be made,” Leonard said. World War II became a model for applying just-war theory, a list of qualifications for evaluating if war is ethical. Baptists didn’t want to let other conflicts rise to the level of Nazi Germany, Leonard said. “They didn’t want to let [the Holocaust] happen again.”
Hinson said Baptists have typically started peace movements just before wars but joined the fight once hostilities began.
Guns and the gospel
“I think Baptists read Scriptures, especially the Gospels, enough to recognize that war is contrary to God’s purpose,” he said. “If it can be avoided, we should do so.” “Consequently, as questioning goes on about entering a war, Baptists have often joined those who oppose it,” Hinson added.
He also said Baptists participated with Puritans in the English Civil War from 1642 to 1646 and have fought in most wars since. Both Hinson and Leonard acknowledged prominent Baptists who were pacifists, including Walter Rauschenbusch and Harry Emerson Fosdick. Leonard wrote in his book “Baptist Ways: A History” that conservative preacher Charles Haddon Spurgeon spoke out against war.
“Although apparently not a member of the Peace Society, Charles Haddon Spurgeon condemned militarism in general and the Crimean War in particular,” Leonard said. “In a well-known sermon, ‘War and the Spread of the Gospel,’ he declared, ‘And I do firmly hold that the slaughter of men, that bayonets, and swords and guns, have never yet been, and never can be promoters of the gospel.’”
For Baptists who remain committed to pacifism or peacemaking, the Baptist Peace Fellowship of North America has been a rallying point since its founding in the early 1980s. According to the organization’s Web site, Baptists are called by God to peace: “This calling is rooted in our faith in Jesus Christ, who is our Peace, in whom God is reconciling the world and through whom God calls us to the ministry of peacemaking. Peace is not only our goal, but our means. The foundation of peace is justice. The force of peace is love.” Hinson said the Baptist Peace Fellowship has been slowly growing in recent years.
‘Just war’
“Increasing destructiveness of weapons and the prospect of nuclear annihilation has brought Baptists closer to the peace churches,” he said. “It is very hard to favor ‘just war’ because you can’t expect to avoid civilian casualties or unlimited destruction.”
Accordingly the SBC made a peace statement in its Baptist Faith and Message doctrinal statement: “It is the duty of Christians to seek peace with all men on principles of righteousness. In accordance with the spirit and teachings of Christ they should do all in their power to put an end to war.”
But the SBC is the only religious body that backed the invasion of Iraq, Hinson said. “Part of the reason for that is that the South has always been more militant than the rest of the country, and most of the military installations in the U.S. are located in the South,” he said.
“Apart from Southern Baptists, however, you can see a strong peace emphasis in the American Baptist Churches, among conservative Baptists and in some of the smaller Baptists bodies,” he added. “That echoes what is happening in other denominations.” (ABP, TAB)
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