BAPTISTS AS BROTHERS

This notion that we can’t even recognize a Baptist as a brother is an arrogance not original to our Movement. In fact it was some Texas preachers two generations back who stirred up the “rebaptism controversy” in which they insisted that Baptists be reimmersed to be part of us, to the consternation of David Lipscomb, editor of the Gospel Advocate, and other Tennessee leaders. The Firm Foundation was started to promote this sectarian practice. The idea is still widely prevalent that Baptists are not Christians until they are rebaptized to our satisfaction and become part of us.

The truth is that a large part of our Movement in the early days was made up of Baptists. Phillip S. Fall, pastor of First Baptist Church in Nashville, influenced by Alexander Campbell, brought his entire church, save five members, into the Movement, and it never occurred to anyone that they should be immersed again. Raccoon John Smith led scores of Baptist churches and thousands of their members into the Restoration, but there is no record of any of them ever being reimmersed, including Raccoon, who never thought of himself as having “left” anything. When the Baptists tried to run him off, he would say with a smile, “I love you too much to leave you!”

Campbell was adamant on this subject, insisting that there is no cause for anyone being immersed a second time unless he was void of faith at the time of the act. 

This was the attitude toward the Baptists through most of the 19th century. In 1889 James A. Harding, with David Lipscomb as his moderator, debated J. B. Moody, prominent Baptist, for 16 days to vast audiences in Nashville. It was on the design of baptism, as to whether one is saved before or at the time of baptism. While Harding and Lipscomb differed with Moody on the question, there was no question raised as to whether the Baptists were Christians. Since it is God who does the saving, Harding could easily believe that God normally accepts one as saved at the time of baptism even if that person supposes he is saved before that. After all, immersion has meaning only in reference to one’s faith in a Person, not in reference to his knowledge of an act. If we contend that salvation is a matter of knowledge and understanding of this or that rather than of faith in Jesus, we may all be in trouble.

Anyway, brother Harding repeatedly called J. B. Moody his brother in his debate. When David Lipscomb was asked if he had any brothers among the sects, he assured his questioner that he did. As to whether such ones should leave the sects, Lipscomb acknowledged that they might well do so, but that they had the problem of having nowhere to go since all others are as sectarian as themselves or more so. One can imagine Lipscomb’s disappointment when Austin McGary and others in Texas began to sectarianize the Movement by insisting that baptized believers be rebaptized, thus de-christianizing a large segment of the Body of Christ. As Steve Eckstein puts it in his History of the Churches of Christ in Texas: “David Lipscomb decried the action of a few preachers who argued the necessity of rebaptism, particulary those baptized by the denominations. He contended that when a man had believed in Christ, repented of his sins, and had been baptized in order to obey God, he was then a Christian. Lipscomb strongly affirmed that any preacher who would require such a person to be rebaptized would be ‘very presumptuous in the sight of God.’” (p. 254)

It is enough to say that we have hardly taken brotherhood seriously enough. The injunction in scripture to “love the brotherhood” does not mean to love those of our own party. We are first to accept all of God’s children as our brothers, and then to treat them as brothers. I hear our people sometimes say, with a touch of levity, in those instances when they call a man brother who might not be: “Well, if I miss him in Christ, I’ll catch him in Adam.”

I have no special interest in the brotherhood of Adam, but I see it as tragic when we deliberately “miss” and reject those who are in the brotherhood of Christ. What is more tender than to call a man brother and to mean it? As for him who is in Adam, what is more loving than to lay a hand on his shoulder and say, “I want you as my brother.”—the Editor