Quote of the Week

"And when we die, and you are sent to heaven for doing your conscience, and I am sent to hell for not doing mine, will you come with me, for fellowship?"

Sir Thomas More in A Man for All Seasons (1966)

Lest We Forget: Remembering the Other 9/11

Today marks the 20th anniversary (September 11, 1988) of the destruction of St. Jean Bosco Church in the slums of Port-au-Prince. While Father Jean-Bertrand Aristide was giving mass, armed thugs working for the Henri Namphy regime entered the church and, in a siege that lasted several hours, massacred over twenty parishioners and injured many, many more before setting fire to the church. While Aristide managed to escape with his life, the incident eventually led to his expulsion from the Salesian order on December 15, 1988. Aristide, a liberation theologian and Roman Catholic priest, led the popular movement that led to the downfall of the Duvalier regime on February 7, 1986. Twenty years (and two not-so successful Aristide presidencies) later, Haiti continues to be mired in poverty and violence.

Let us continue to work for peace and justice for the Haitian people.

Today in Church History

On 29 July 29 1794, in a converted blacksmith's shop in Philadelphia, former slave Richard Allen assembled a group of black Christians who had faced discrimination in the local Methodist Episcopal Church. They formed the Bethel African Methodist Episcopal Church, the mother church of the African Methodist Episcopal Church, now known throughout the world.

Today in Church History

On 26 July 1833, having abolished the slave trade in 1807, Britain's House of Commons banned slavery itself. When William Wilberforce, who had spent most of his life crusading against slavery, heard the news, he said, "Thank God I have lived to witness [this] day." He died three days later.

Today in Church History

On July 11, 1656, Barbados expatriates Ann Austin and Mary Fisher became the first Quakers to arrive in America. Officials promptly arrested them and deported them back to England five weeks later.

Today in Church History

On 9 July 381, Nestorius, the first patriarch of Constantinople, was born in what is now Maras, Turkey. Nestorius attained fame for his teaching that Christ had two natures and two persons (rather than two natures in one person), which the Council of Ephesus in 431 condemned as heresy.

Today in Church History

On 5 July 1865, William Booth founded The Christian Mission to work among London's poor and unchurched. Later, he changed the mission's name to the Salvation Army.

Today in Church History

On July 1, 1896, abolitionist writer Harriet Beecher Stowe died. She averaged nearly a book a year, but Uncle Tom's Cabin remains her legacy. Even one of her harshest critics acknowledged that it was "perhaps the most influential novel ever published . . . a verbal earthquake, an ink-and-paper tidal wave."

Today in Church History

On June 30, 1881, Presbyterian preacher and African-American abolitionist Henry Highland Garnet is appointed minister to Liberia. The former slave shocked the abolitionist community in 1843 by calling for violent rebellion. "Rather die free-men than live to be slaves," he preached.

Today in Church History

On June 25, 1865, English missionary J. Hudson Taylor formed the China Inland Mission. Its missionaries would have no guaranteed salaries, nor could they appeal for funds; they would simply trust God to supply their needs. Furthermore, its missionaries would adopt Chinese dress and press the gospel into the China interior.

Honoring Gardner C. Taylor on His 90th Birthday

Tomorrow is the Rev. Dr. Gardner C. Taylor's 90th birthday. On this occasion, he will be remembered by many who have been influenced and shaped by his legacy. Below is a profile on Taylor's life and ministry that was recently published by American Baptist National Ministries.

Dr. Gardner C. Taylor: America’s preacher turns 90

Dr. Gardner Calvin Taylor, one of the twentieth century's most celebrated preachers, turns 90 this month. In keeping with the modesty that has characterized much of his life, Taylor will mark his June 18 birthday at his home in Raleigh, N.C., with little fanfare, says his wife, Phyllis. But that won't discourage the good wishes and tributes paid to this beloved and legendary preacher who has touched the lives of so many during his half century in ministry.

For 42 years, Taylor served as senior pastor at the 14,000-member Concord Baptist Church of Christ in Brooklyn, N.Y., one of the largest American Baptist churches in the United States when he retired in 1990. Concord gained a deserved reputation for its social activism and community outreach under the leadership of this faithful servant of God.

Looking back over countless accolades and professional honors received throughout his life—the Presidential Medal of Freedom notwithstanding—Taylor considers "Sunday mornings in the pulpit at Concord" his greatest achievement. His successor and longtime protégée, Dr. Gary V. Simpson, now Concord's senior pastor, reflects on Taylor's storied preaching:

"Of all the contributions that Dr. Taylor continues to make to my life and ministry, I am most indebted to the sacred, serious discipline he modeled as preacher in the Concord pulpit. There is no question that the people of this congregation have a uniquely earnest expectation of any preacher—to convey a word of life in a culture that portends death. It is overwhelming to think that his preaching is the high bar of what was normative and usual on Sunday mornings. His voice has unequivocally decreed, 'There is a Word from the Lord.'"

Although Taylor is distinguished by his eloquence in the pulpit—having preached more than 2,000 sermons—his audiences were not limited to his Concord family. Taylor's sermons are still studied in schools of divinity throughout the country and abroad, and they continue to be read and listened to by an even wider audience, thanks to several books and recordings published by Judson Press. Today the lifetime sales of those resources approach $750,000. Taylor's longtime Judson Press publisher and friend, Laura Alden, recalls the generous spirit of this man:

"Judson Press has been privileged to serve as Dr. Taylor's publisher for these many years. In addition to being a great preacher, pastor and author, Gardner Taylor is a gracious and generous man of God. The Judson Press staff who have worked with him are readers, listeners and absolute fans of Dr. Taylor. We have relationships with all our authors, but this relationship is different—it's in a special category. We are Baptists, so, of course, we don't officially have saints. But if we did, Dr. Taylor would be our top candidate. He has been a blessing to all of us."

Taylor seems comfortable letting others speak about his "legacy." Perhaps the most important of his "earthly" tributes have come from peers. Certainly, being called "one of the greatest preachers in America" and the "dean of the nation's Black preachers" is no small achievement for a Louisiana-born itinerant preacher's son and grandson of slaves. It is also notable when pastors like the venerable Dr. J. Alfred Smith Sr., a legend in his own right, pay him homage:

"With gentleness, modesty, wit and some humor, Dr. Taylor continues to mentor me, and many ministers in the generations after me, to work for excellence as servants of the church and as representatives of Jesus Christ."

Although not initially brought up with American Baptist roots, as he puts it, Taylor "inherited" an American Baptist congregation in Concord, which became God's launching pad for his great success. Fellow pastor and National Ministries' Executive Director Dr. Aidsand F. Wright-Riggins III recounts Taylor's contributions to the Black church and Protestant tradition:

"I am most appreciative to Dr. Taylor for his role in radicalizing the Black church and having a revolutionary impact on mainline Protestantism throughout the 1960s and beyond. His co-founding of the Progressive National Baptist Convention, along with Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., is still sending reverberations of racial justice and racial reconciliation across this land. I am proud to have benefited by and learned from his legacy."

These days Dr. Taylor devotes some of his time to mentoring aspiring seminarians and young preachers and the rest to combing through his exhaustive collection of writings, interviews, speeches and sermons for materials that will become part of his archive.

When asked what scripture passage he would choose for his final sermon, Taylor responded without hesitation in that full-throated, resonant, vibrato that is his trademark: "Now we are children of God, and what we will be has not yet been made known. But we know that when he appears, we shall be like him, for we shall see him as he is." (1 John 3:2)

Happy birthday, Dr. Taylor.

Today in Church History

On 4 June 1873, Charles F. Parham, founder of the Apostolic Faith movement and one of the founders of the modern Pentecostal movement, was born in Muscatine, Iowa. In 1900 he founded the Bethel Bible School, where speaking in tongues broke out—launching the Pentecostal movement.

Today in Church History

On 30 May 1822, a slave betrayed the plans of African Methodist (and former slave) Denmark Vesey to stage a massive slave uprising on July 14. Of the 131 African Americans arrested in the plot, 35 were executed (including Vesey) and 43 were deported. Vesey's Charleston, South Carolina, church was closed until 1865.

Theological Education in the Bahamas, Part II

This is the second of a five part series that previously appeared in News from Daniel and Estela Schweissing between February and August 2006. A more in-depth theological treatment of this topic can be found in the upcoming edition of the American Baptist Quarterly.

BAHAMIANIZATION OF THE THEOLOGICAL CURRICULUM

Bahamians have a saying that goes something like this, "When America sneezes, the Bahamas catches cold." Basically, what that means is that if we’re doing something here in the United States, the Bahamians are quick to jump on the bandwagon. And once they’re on the bandwagon, they’ll often outdo us at whatever we were trying to do in the first place. Consider how the books, movies, television programs, and personalities that are currently fashionable in popular American Evangelical culture have influenced Christianity in the Bahamas. Bahamian Christian book shops prominently display stacks of Rick Warren’s Purpose-Driven Life, Tim LaHaye’s Left Behind series, and Bruce Wilkinson's Prayer of Jabez. Cable Bahamas pipes in religious programming from the major U.S. television networks, making household names of personalities like John Hagee, Benny Hinn, T.D. Jakes, Kenneth and Gloria Copeland, and Juanita Bynum. And two years ago, Bahamian movie theaters were packed out by church groups attending showings of Mel Gibson’s Passion of Christ. Clearly, one of the biggest theological challenges facing the Bahamian church is that Bahamian Christianity has often been more greatly influenced by American Evangelical culture than it has by Bahamian culture.

From the earliest days of the modern missions movement, missionaries have understood the importance of translating the gospel message from their language (or, more precisely, the Greek and Hebrew languages of scripture) to the language of the people they hoped to reach. Pioneer Baptist missionaries William Carey and Adoniram Judson placed a high priority on mastering the indigenous languages of India and Burma, writing dictionaries, and translating the scriptures so that they could communicate the gospel effectively. In the past couple of generations, missionaries have begun to understand that in the same way that the gospel is communicated most effectively by using the language of the people they want to reach, it is also best communicated through their culture. In other words, just as it has always been a priority to translate the gospel from one language to another, it is now a priority to translate the gospel from our culture (or, again, the Greek and Hebrew cultures of the Bible) to the culture of the people to whom we minister. Consequently, one of the most important challenges that we face in Bahamian theological education is helping our students to understand what the gospel means from a Bahamian perspective rather than an American perspective.

Such an understanding is already evident in the way that a small number of Bahamian churches are responding to the highly polemical debate in the American church over the use of contemporary versus traditional forms of worship. American churches that do a good job of attracting teenagers and young adults typically emphasize contemporary worship styles in which praise songs are accompanied by a band playing electronic keyboards, electric guitars, and drums. In such churches, the words to songs (and even readings from scriptures) are projected on a screen behind the pulpit, eliminating the need for congregants to use hymnals or Bibles. This is in contrast to more traditional styles of worship—typically attended by senior adults—where the singing of hymns is accompanied by piano and organ music, the use of hymnals allows worshipers to follow the melody as well as the words, and nearly every church member can be seen carrying a Bible to and from services. Needless to say, this debate over which worship style to use has been imported to the Bahamas where most churches are ardent proponents of one style or the other. But many Bahamian churches have rejected these American approaches to worship, opting instead to worship in ways that embrace their own music and culture. They have realized that using their own native instruments—goat skin drums, cow bells, and bicycle horns—in a Junkanoo style worship service allows them to reach their people more effectively than is possible with imported worship styles that cater to specific subcultures of the American church.

While matters of liturgy and worship are actually just a small part of what we focus on in Bahamian theological education, this process of Bahamianization of worship in the Bahamian church aptly illustrates what we hope to accomplish in our teaching. When I first came to Atlantic College five years ago, I found that the theology program was based on a classic Western style theological curriculum that had been borrowed from a U.S. based school. While such a curriculum might effectively prepare pastors to minister successfully in the United States, particularly in a white middle class suburban setting, it is inadequate to prepare Bahamian students for the realities of ministry in the Bahamian church. Consequently, one of my biggest concerns in teaching is to help my students avoid getting trapped into thinking that American forms of theology—that is, Christian faith and practice—should be normative for the Bahamian church. Rather, I challenge them to identify and embrace a theological perspective that is both AUTHENTICALLY CHRISTIAN—meaning consistent with the teachings of scripture—and AUTHENTICALLY BAHAMIAN—meaning consistent with the reality of their own culture. Regardless of what subject we might be teaching—whether it be Old Testament, New Testament, systematic theology, church history, biblical interpretation, or preaching—our goal is to help our students understand each and every area of the theological curriculum from a distinctly Bahamian perspective rather than an imported U.S. perspective.

When I studied church history as a seminary student, we learned about all the great movers and shakers in the church—or so we thought—from the time of the apostles down to the present and they all had one thing in common. With few exceptions, they were white men of European and North American descent. At Atlantic College, my approach to church history has been different. My classes don’t just cover the European and American roots of Christianity; they also look at its African and Caribbean roots. Probably very few of us are aware that the Ethiopian Orthodox Church is the second oldest organized church in the world, after the Roman Catholic Church. Yet when we teach our students—all of whom are of African descent—about the Ethiopian Orthodox Church, this is significant for them because it affirms that God was already working in the lives of black Africans for over one-thousand years before the first white missionaries arrived on the continent. When we study Baptist history, we don’t just learn about the heroes of the faith that many of us learned about in Sunday school—Roger Williams, John Smyth, William Carey, and Adoniram Judson. We also study the lives of heroes like George Liele, Prince Williams, and Sharper Morris—former American slaves who brought the Baptist faith to Jamaica and the Bahamas. In other words, our students learn that the first Baptist missionaries in the Caribbean were entrepreneurial Afro-American preachers without the benefit of support from an organized mission sending agency, that these preachers began working in the Caribbean during the decade before William Carey—the so-called father of modern missions—set sail for India, and that they labored in the Bahamas for over fifty years before the first white British Baptist missionaries ever showed up. Again, this affirms for our students that God has been working through their own people and their own culture, independently of the influence of the Western church.

If our priority in theological education is to help our students understand theology from a Bahamian perspective, then how does this approach to teaching church history help to achieve that goal? As a cultural outsider to the Bahamas, I cannot expect to ever fully understand all of the nuances of Bahamian culture, let alone be able to fully understand theology from a distinctly Bahamian perspective myself. And in the absence of a significant body of theological writings authored by Bahamian theologians, I cannot readily introduce my students to an already existing Bahamian theology. The best that I can hope for is to equip my students with the tools to analyze their own culture and develop their own understanding of theology within their cultural context. In a country where centuries of colonialism and slavery have indoctrinated its people with the notion that “foreign is better,” perhaps the most important tool that I can provide my students with is an understanding and appreciation of their own religious and cultural heritage. Not only does such an understanding and appreciation affirm for our students that God values their culture and that he chooses to work through that culture; it also gives them permission to begin thinking theologically from their own unique cultural perspective. Thus, my job is not simply to teach theology but to find ways of teaching it that are culturally relevant for my students. If this effort is successful, then I hope to insure that, when America sneezes, our students and their churches do not catch cold.

COMING NEXT: Now that we've shown why helping students understand theology from the perspective of their own culture is important, how does this change in perspective impact the way that they do ministry? Find out in a few days as Part III of our series addresses this question in “Finding Alternatives to Business as Usual in the Church.”

PREVIOUSLY
Part I: Why is Bahamian theological education important?