Happy Reformation Day

As the world (and many Christians) celebrated Halloween, Oct 31 marks the anniversary of Martin Luther's nailing of his 95 Theses to the door of the Church at Wittenberg. This is the official beginning of the Protestant Reformation.

For African American Baptists and all Protestants, do we realize how connected we are to the Reformation? Those of us who are Baptists, we are very much Protestant. Our confessions and declarations are steeped in Reformation theology.

We are to make sure that we are continuing to preach the gospel recovered during the Reformation: the gospel of grace alone through faith alone in Christ alone. Are we telling this old Story?

Let us remember the true gospel this Reformation Day.

Psalm-singing particuarly suited for African Americans

Yesterday, I sang the middle portion of Psalm 22 during my private devotion. After my devotion ended, I realized how suited this psalm is for African Americans to sing. Most of the psalm is a lament in which David believes that the Lord has forsaken him during a dark period in his life. This psalm points to God's abandonment of his Son on the cross and the suffering the Lord endured at the hands of sinful men. The Spirit sung with clarity even denoting that Christ's hands and feet would be pierced.

Why do I believe this psalm is particularly suited for African Americans? First, when African Americans sing this psalm they sing with their Savior. There is a communion with the suffering of Christ in singing this psalm. Second, as a lament primarily it speaks to the historic existence of African Americans. Having endured slavery, legal segregation, and even now as African Americans face racism of all sorts we have warrant for singing laments.

The Church in general has moved away from singing laments. The assumption is that we must sing all joyful songs under the New Covenant. Wrong; everything in the Christian life is not joy even though we must count it all joy. There are times when we feel abandoned by God and everyone else. This is the time to take up Psalm 22; it's commanded even for New Covenant believers.

Historic African American Baptist Calvinism

Yesterday, I began to do some serious work on a conference paper on Calvinism's influence on 18th and 19th century Af-Am Baptists. I read a letter from George Liele, who was a slave in VA and SC. He heard the gospel from a white New Light Baptist preacher, and the Lord opened his heart to repent from his sin and trust in Christ. He would become a slave preacher, and then his master manumitted him in order to pursue full-time ministry. Eventually, Liele would help to establish three independent Af-Am Baptist churches before fleeing the colonies in 1787 to settle in Jamaica. He is considered the father of American missions period. He is the first American Baptist to establish a church overseas.

In a letter he wrote to a white Baptist preacher in SC sometime after he settled in Jamaica, Liele mentioned that he believes in election among other biblical doctrines. He also believed in the final perserverance of the saints.

Here is a man born into slavery, fled the colonies as a loyalist to the British Crown, and founded the first Baptist church in Jamaica. He was a Calvinist. People have criticized Calvinism for being too heady and too cold. If this is so, how could this be attractive for a former slave? My point is that Calvinism makes sense of the Bible; it makes sense of the way of salvation, and the person and work of Christ. This is why a former slave was a Calvinist.

Law and Gospel Confusion

Last Lord's Day I listened to a sermon by a National Baptist pastor with a few African American Calvinistic Baptists (all friends of mine). After the sermon, one of my friends made an astute and biblical ctiticism of the sermon. He said that the pastor never made a distinction between the Law and the Gospel. The pastor gave many imperatives in the course of the sermon assuming that everyone in his audience were Christians. (This is interesting because after the sermon he "opened the doors of the church"). Also during the course of the sermon the pastor never shared that only true Christians have the spiritual wherewithal to carry out these imperatives he issued based upon his reading of the biblical text. He never preached the gospel.

The gospel used to be at the heart of African American Baptist preaching, but since the rise of the Full Gospel Baptist movement within the National Baptist Convention especially, African American Baptist churches have lost the gospel largely. I remember something Luther once said, "You have to preach the gospel to the baptized." We all need the gospel. I need to and I want to hear the gospel every Lord's Day. I need to be reminded of my native inability to carry out the Law's demand; I need to be reminded that only through faith in Christ am I justified; and I need to know that only through and by the power of Christ's Spirit can I obey the Law in a feeble way.

Without hearing the gospel but only hearing the Law I would become presumptuous. Hearing the gospel without the Law, I would become profligate. I need the gospel and the Law to trust in Christ's person and work, and to live holy in the power of the Spirit.

One more thing to note about that sermon: it really isn't in accord with Baptist preaching according to the New Hampshire Declaration of Faith, Article XII. I've summarized above the gist of this article. Here it is verbatim:

12. Of the Harmony of the Law and the Gospel
We believe that the Law of God is the eternal and unchangeable rule of his moral government;62 that it is holy, just, and good;63 and that the inability which the Scriptures ascribe to fallen men to fulfill its precepts arises entirely from their love of sin;64 to deliver them from which, and to restore them through a Mediator to unfeigned obedience to the holy Law, is one great end of the Gospel, and of the means of grace connected with the establishment of the visible Church.65

Pastors must keep this emphasis every Lord's Day in their preaching.