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The Twelfth Believers Church Conference at McMaster Divinity College October 17-18 offered many perspectives but few solutions. The conference theme, "The Believer's Church, a voluntary church", was addressed in papers presented by scholars from Canada and the US.
In his opening remarks, chair William Brackney, principal of McMaster Divinity College, defined voluntarism as "a choice to follow Christ". Such a covenant has to be entered voluntarily and must be sealed with adult baptism on confession of faith. "We shall test several assumptions in the next two days," Brackney promised.
Scott Holland of the Church of the Brethren and Westminster College, Pa., in an almost oratorical style, described anabaptists as biblicists and mystics, prophets and pragmatists, holy martyrs and sinners. "They are all our kin." There was originally no one group called anabaptists.
Holland cited H.S. Bender's Anabaptist Vision as a statement normative of evangelical anabaptism: a commitment to Christ, discipleship, community and non-resistance, "rescuing it from the trash bin of history". Bender's vision has "been very useful for certain denominations within the believers' church".
Michael Haykin of Heritage Baptist Seminary echoed the desire for unity and the difficulty in achieving it. He quoted Oliver Cromwell's challenge to Scottish Presbyterians for tolerance. "Is all religion wrapped up in . . . any one form? Faith working by love is the true character of the Christian," Cromwell declared. He urged Presbyterians to embrace in love any Christians of any background. It was enough that they suffered persecution by the world. "They were not convinced," said Haykin tersely.
George Vandervelde of the Institute of Christian Studies in Toronto and the Reformed Church, explained Reformed nominalist tradition, which, he said, "sometimes needs some correction by the believers' church." The latter, however, gives priority to the voluntary individual believer rather than the church, he suggested. Defending infant baptism as infusing grace into the child and a signing and sealing of God's promises, he asked if there isn't room for both forms of baptism in the believers' church.
A. James Reimer of Conrad Grebel College, Waterloo, Ont., spoke on the appropriateness of a voluntary church for our current, democratic individualized society. Leo Driedger, from the University of Manitoba, tackled the complicated question of the influence of individualism on Mennonite community.
A panel of James Berney (Intervarsity Christian Fellowship), Jean Moulton (Salvation Army) and Floyed C. Babcock (Canadian Bible Society), discussed volunteer service as natural to voluntarism. They agreed that parachurch (social service) organizations could not exist without volunteers.
The hunger for unity and healing in the body of Christ is as old as the Reformation. Vandervelde underscored the main problem: "When churches call for unity they hope that all others will adopt their theology and church model."
The acrid stink of burning human flesh no longer draws the curious and hysterical to town squares in Europe. Martyrs are rare now on the continent once consumed by the hatred for religious zealots. Listening to the speakers at the Believers Church conference, one couldn't help think, when will human beings stop explaining things we can see only through a glass darkly, and live in love, by the light that we have?
Walfried Goossen,
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