Panel during the Friday, August 25, 2017, public forum entitled, “Learning to Engage Our Muslim Neighbors.” From left to right: Michal Muelenberg, John Azumah, Richard Mouw, Marion Larson, Rick Love, and Cory Willson (facilitator).

Yet it has been rightly said that Christian responses to Islam and Muslims in the post-9/11 world represent “a struggle for the soul of the Christian faith”. How individual Christians, congregations, and the larger church engage with their Muslim neighbors and with Islam generally has tremendous import for the mission of Christ’s church and for Christian witness worldwide. This conundrum is true around the world and is increasingly as relevant in North American communities, large and small.

While the American context was the focus, input came from leading majority world voices, particularly Africa, Asia and the Middle East. Organizers understood that living in an age of the global church requires wisdom from those parts of Christ’s body for the American church to properly and effectively continue to play its leading role in global missions. The hope is that this gathering will spur on future smaller consultations that bring together Muslims and evangelicals to discuss pressing issues and tensions that exist between Christians and Muslims in America. Several participants are already engaged in these types of conversations and projects with Muslims. For example, Fuller Seminary, Columbia Theological Seminary, and Pentecostal Theological Seminary regularly teach courses involving engagement with the reality of Islam and its adherents at various levels of theological and dialogical discourse.

Press Release: Believers’ Baptism Consultation

Observations on the Believers’ Baptism Consultation by Tony Richie

⁴There is one body and one Spirit, just as you were called to the one hope of your calling, ⁵one Lord, one faith, one baptism, ⁶one God and Father of all, who is above all and through all and in all. Ephesians 4:4-6 (NRSV)

A Consultation on Believers’ Baptism[1] was held at the Four Seasons Hotel in Kingston Jamaica from January 8 through 10, 2015. It was convened specifically to consider ways in which the thinking among those traditions that have normally practiced only believers’ baptism might have changed in the thirty years since the publication of the Faith and Order Convergence Text, Baptism, Eucharist and Ministry in 1982. Through the papers presented by each of the participating communions along with reflections from Faith and Order, the participants sought to discern the places of convergence in their understanding of the mode, meaning and practice of baptism as well as to name the hindrances to the general acceptance of those practices that do not accord with their own understanding. The participants were grateful for the hospitality shown by the Jamaican churches, and to the United Church in Jamaica and the Cayman Islands for their explanation of how they live with two practices of baptism within one church.

Recognizing the historic nature of the event as the first conversation of its kind, the consultation was filled with a spirit of excitement as relationships were deepened and new learnings discovered. Common affirmations were celebrated and differences were met with an attitude of respect and wonderment. At the conclusion of the consultation, a new hope emerged for continued conversations and meaningful ecumenical advance.

• The participants gave thanks for Baptism, Eucharist and Ministry in its call for churches to recognize in BEM and one another the “faith of the church through the ages;” and also the more recent document One Baptism: Towards Mutual Recognition (2011).
• They recognized that relatively little time has been spent on mutual reflection by traditions which do not practice infant baptism and gave thanks for this opportunity for open and honest reflections on the meaning, practice and shared understandings of baptism.
• They give thanks to God for the ongoing call to oneness as made manifest through the initiative of the Conference of Secretaries of Christian World Communions, the general support of the participating communions and the Faith and Order Commission of the World Council of Churches.
• They further give thanks for the presenters from the Baptist World Alliance, the Church of the Brethren, the Disciples of Christ, the Mennonite World Conference, the Pentecostal movement and the Churches of Christ/Christian Churches, while regretting the absence of the African Instituted Churches and their unique ecclesiological and cultural perspective.
• They give thanks for the spirit of listening and the mutual respect demonstrated by the participants and guests in the consultation.
• They give thanks to God for continuing to reveal God’s mission and purpose through these conversations.

Report: Believers’ Baptism Consultation

A Consultation on Believers’ Baptism was held at the Four Seasons Hotel in Kingston, Jamaica, from January 8 through 10, 2015.

Second, we were led to wrestle with the undergirding theology of water baptism from a Pentecostal perspective. Accordingly, during the dialogue sessions my own discussions on water baptism tended to emphasize a few guiding themes. First, I stressed that baptismal theology is shaped by gracious divine agency, participatory and transformational soteriology, facilitatory ecclesiology, holistic and synergistic anthropology, and teleological eschatology. Second, baptism in water is a means not an end, and therefore is not a final state or status but an ongoing calling or vocation, the beginning of a journey to be lived out in obedient faith. Third, I argued that water baptism should be viewed as Trinitarian act, communal event, and individual appropriation (in repentance and faith).

Fourth, for me the objective/communal and subjective/individual poles are kept in appropriate tension, that is, the complementarity and unity of both should be maintained (ritual event and religious experience). Fifth, infant baptism may be considered in terms of prevenient grace; but, this generates difficulties with adult (believers’ baptism) which, in terms of those baptized as infants, would not be considered initiation but (re)affirmation. Sixth, infant dedication is likely a viable alternative to infant baptism, with biblical precedent, affirming the necessary aspects of prevenient grace while avoiding complications of baptized but unconverted adults. And finally, the rite of water baptism does not exhaust the significance of Spirit baptism which fulfills the initial and original vision of water baptism in its individual, ecclesial, and, ultimately, in its eschatological and cosmological dimensions.

(Kingston, Jamaica) — A three-day consultation took place involving representatives from six different “believers baptism” church traditions to share their understandings and practices of baptism and to explore how their thinking has changed in light of the emerging theological convergence on baptism and growing ecumenical encounter over the past 30 years. This was the first time such a gathering has taken place, and thus represents an historic moment in the life of these traditions.

The traditions included the Baptists, Brethren, Churches of Christ, Disciples of Christ, Mennonites, and Pentecostals. The 18 participants came from Jamaica, Kenya, Germany, Paraguay, Switzerland, the United Kingdom, and the United States.

The initiative for the consultation grew out of the annual meeting of Secretaries of Christian World Communions in 2012, which noted fresh thinking and official agreements around the mutual recognition of baptism between churches who practice “infant baptism” and those who have practiced “believers baptism” have been observed.

The agenda of the consultation included presentations from each of the traditions on their past and current teaching and practice of baptism, with attention to how their understandings have changed or developed, along with the opportunity to discuss the presentations. A representative of the Faith and Order Commission of the World Council of Churches was also present to provide input from the perspective of the wider global discussion on baptism within the ecumenical movement.

The highlights of the consultation, as stated in a report on the meeting, included:

• gratitude for the opportunity to have an open and honest reflection on the meaning, practice and shared understandings of baptism among the participants;
• naming the potential found in the image of “being on a journey” for the Christian life, with different forms and expressions of initiation and confession, while sharing a similar call to discipleship;
• the significance of understanding the Holy Spirit as a source both of our diversity as well as our unity in Christ;
• the need for a re-examination of the language of ‘sacrament’, ‘ordinance’, ‘sign’ and ‘symbol’ as ways to acknowledge that God is the primary actor in baptism;
• the need to recognize the continuity between ecumenical reception of other traditions as church, and the practices that marks each tradition as a unique expression of the body of Christ.

The full text of the report on the meeting will be shared with both the Conference of Secretaries of Christian World Communions and the Faith and Order Commission of the WCC with the hope that it will move the discussion and work on the mutual recognition of baptism and Christian unity forward.