I read this quotation today in a book I had to read and now need to review...
One can be an Evangelical in virtually any ecclesiastical setting, accept a state church, a hierarchical church government, infant baptism, and still be, apparently, an 'Evangelical'. But not a Baptist. Baptists profess the acceptance of 'no creed except the Bible'. When some Baptists attempt to impose a man=made creed upon the Baptist fellowship, does this effort stem from a Baptist , or from, let us say, a fundamentalist mentality? Some Baptists have been Calvinists, others Arminians, fundamentalists, Liberals, tongue-speakers, faith-healers, evolutionists, non-evolutionists, premilleniumists, postmilleniumists, amilleniumists, ecumenists, non-ecumenists and so forth, but none of theses ideological factors made them Baptists. A real Baptist is a believer who holds tenaciously, courageously and charibtably, to Baptist convictions.
Cited on p111 of T Watson Moyes Our Place Among the Churches, Scottish Baptist Ecumenical Relations in the Twentieth Century: from Principled Denominationalism to Evangelical Separateness.
Put in simple terms, it more or less equates to saying that what holds us together is the Declaration of Principle, which allows for very broad diversity.
I don't want to pre-empt my book review, but this book combines some profound honesty with graciousness. It is not a happy tale, but one that friends south of Hadrians' Wall would benefit from knowing more about.
