Are Baptists Protestants? I have pondered this question as I have attended the Assembly of the Community of Protestant Churches in Europe (CPCE) in the beautiful city of Florence, Italy, during these past days.
The European Baptist Federation (EBF) is not a full member of CPCE because of our position on baptism.
We have an Agreement of Mutual Cooperation that is working well and enabling the EBF to participate in a “Protestant voice” on European issues.
But in any case, I am not sure that Baptists should sit too comfortably with classic “magisterial” Protestantism.
It was these churches, which allied themselves with political rulers and imposed conformity on the nation states of Europe, which brutally suppressed groups like the Anabaptists who are in some way our spiritual fore-parents.
That, of course, is now past history, and it was good that two years ago the Lutheran World Federation issued a Statement of Regret to the Mennonites about the treatment of Anabaptists in the early years of the Reformation.
But we remember too that in most countries where Baptists began in the 19th century, they were put under great pressure by state Protestant churches.
Baptists stood for “a free church in a free state,” that is, one that grants religious freedom for all.
Believers’ baptism is in fact a logical outcome of a church that stands for the essential separation from the state to be a church of believers
At the same time, however, we Baptists are in some sense children of the Reformation, whose 500th anniversary we will celebrate in 2017. We are also at least stepchildren of the Anabaptists, the radical “left wing” of the Reformation whose history was suppressed for so long.
And one important stream of early Baptist life was influenced to some extent by the theology of John Calvin.
In recent years, many Baptists are learning to appreciate their Anabaptist heritage and its relevance for today – especially the commitments to radical discipleship, peacemaking, community ethics, a communal reading of Scripture, freedom of religion for all, and the essential separation of church and state.
Perhaps contemporary Europe needs a witness to these values as the churches find themselves in a more “missionary” context.
As the 500th anniversary of the Reformation is celebrated in 2017, we might hope that something of the legacy of the Anabaptists will also be included. It will be interesting to see if this, in fact, happens.
So at the end of this, and having enjoyed being in the company of Europe’s Protestant leaders for some days, the answer to the question of whether Baptists are Protestants seems to me to be “yes and no,” or “yes … but …”
Tony Peck is general secretary of the European Baptist Federation. This column first appeared on his blog, Europe Matters.
