HISTORY MATTERS

Revd Dr Ken Manley

1 Peter 2: 1- 12

Preached Canberra Baptist Church 6th August 2006

Introduction

One of my daughters and her family recently returned from an extended time overseas. The grandchildren presented me with a couple of little souvenirs. One was a small badge that simply reads, ‘history matters’. I later discovered that the badge was part of a new national program in the UK. Museums, heritage centres as well as historians are combining to promote the idea that history matters.

The UK program was launched a few weeks ago with a magnificent speech by the actor Stephen Fry (in the Observer Sunday for 9 July 2006). He showed why history matters.

... How can we understand our present or glimpse our future if we cannot understand our past? How can we know who we are if we don’t know who we were? ... Historians are prophets looking backwards...  The biggest challenge facing the great teachers and communicators of history is not to teach history itself, nor even the lessons of history, but why history matters.

Let me hasten to assure you that talking about why history matters is not a naked commercial for a recent book on the history of Australian Baptists. This assertion that history matters is something for all Christians to consider carefully.

Why does history matter to Christians?

Basically because the God of the Bible is a God who has acted in history to achieve his saving purposes. Central to the Old Testament is the story of the Exodus – when God delivered his people from bondage. It is presented as an historical event – an interpreted event, of course – the Egyptians may well have had a different understanding of the escape of those Hebrew slaves – but then all history is interpretation. They remembered and repeated this story – it was crucial to their identity. The Hebrews were taught that history mattered to them: ‘God brought us and our fathers out of Egypt’.

And in the New Testament is a very particular history that has as its central focus a brief time span in a specific location on earth. The Christians preached that God acted in history in Christ to deliver his people. As Nathan Söderblom once starkly put it: ‘If you want Christ you must take history with him’. So, they say, ‘The Word was made flesh and dwelt among us’. It is that particular. It is history.

We can see this process at work in the literature of the New Testament. Take 1 Peter 2. Here is a letter addressed to largely unknown little groups of Christians living in parts of Asia Minor, what we call Turkey. It is striking that the writer links them with all the rich heritage of the Old Testament people of God. Their story is part of the greater story. Drawing on familiar Old Testament images and stories they are described as the people of God. Verse 10, drawing on Hosea, declares: once you were ‘no people’. You had no identity. You didn’t belong. You had no purpose. But now – after the remarkable action of God in history – in the Old Testament stories, in Christ and in the gospel at work in their midst, they have been made ‘THE PEOPLE OF GOD’. 

They are called, as the Israelites were, to live as if in a foreign land (literally Babylon in the Old Testament), to be like ‘aliens and exiles’, to be a people whose identity is not defined by any political border, who are not subject in any absolute sense to any earthly authority. Their identity defines their mission. As people of God they are called to a life of mission (vs 9: ‘to proclaim the mighty acts of him who called you out of darkness into his marvellous light’) to be a people of compassionate service and moral living (vs 12). As a later Christian writer put it, Christians were to be  ‘a third race’, not Jews, not Gentiles – but to be ‘the people of God’.

So discernment of God’s activity in history is, in a sense, what the Bible calls faith. It is believing that in Jesus – his life, death and resurrection - God was present. His love was found not in the great power bases of empires but in the man who died as a criminal on a specific spot at a particular moment that you could have timed with a clock if you had been there. An event of history that determined their whole existence – as here in 1 Peter 1:3: ‘By his great mercy he has given us a new birth into a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead’. He died for us on the Cross and was raised again - an event of history that determines our identity as Christians. This is the fundamental theological reason why history matters. The God of the Bible and of our experience is not cavorting around in some distant celestial heaven but is active – often in mysterious ways that puzzle and bewilder us – but right here in the muddle of this earth and our messy lives. Perhaps one of the failures of the modern church is its failure to take history seriously. History matters.

And what about the years since those determinative events of 2000 years ago? God has not left his people. The vocation of the church historian is crucial to the life, health and identity of Christian in every age and place. Again, history matters.

Church history is the church remembering. We do not remember in order to escape the challenges of the present. Some try to live in a time and place when, so they think, the church was a real force in the land. The pervasive smell of senility is too often about much of our church life. Our compulsive chatter about past great days only alienates the laughing young who ignore our plaintive complaints and criticisms.

No, the past is a golden gift - not a golden chain to bind us but a valuable treasure to be passed around and to enrich our lives.

We do not remember the past to raise old controversies. As Gordon Rupp once said, ‘Church history is the church remembering ... there are some things we might all agree to forget and others about which we must be penitent in the presence of God. The rest is a living witness to the communion of saints, the path along which God has led us’.  

So the prophets of the Old Testament looked backwards for understanding so that they could teach how life should be lived forwards. That is the paradox of Christian history: the church is called not only to recall its past to understand its heritage and identity but is to be a future-oriented community.

We must always remember the future. As the Queen of Hearts said to Alice, ‘It’s a poor sort of memory that only works backwards’. We not only recall the first coming of Jesus but long for his return – ‘even so come Lord Jesus’. We are called to a hope with responsibility. Church history can point us to understand ways in which the church has at times misunderstood and abused its heritage but also to times of thrilling obedience and commitment.
Can you see why a Christian would want to say, ‘History matters’? There is a theological reason. God acts in history. And there are very practical reasons why history matters – such as Stephen Fry enunciated - through history we can understand more of our present and sense what the future might be; through history we can know what has made us who we are. 
Some history matters for Australian Baptists today.

We too need to see our story linked with the larger story of God’s people. Stephen Fry observed, ‘History is not the story of strangers, aliens from another realm; it is the story of us had we been born a little earlier. History is memory...’. So, as 1 Peter reminded those scattered Christians in Asia, you too are part of that long and significant story. The phrase ‘aliens and exiles’ recalls the past. This is where you belong.

Do we know that? In the most significant sense, we want to see ourselves truly as part of that greater story of God’s people in all ages and places. For example, we seek a greater understanding of what the church and individual Christians have brought to our nation. We welcome the Christian Heritage National Forum as it meets in this city in the next couple of days. History matters – so much so that in Australia we have experienced what have been termed ‘history wars’ as historians have clashed in their attempts to read our past as a nation. Christian historians and interested friends have a high challenge in bringing a necessary reminder about how Christians have helped shape the people we are as Australians.
But it must be admitted that at times Baptists, not least in Australia, have adopted a sectarian stance as though we were the only real people of God. I have told some of that story in my book because it is a part of who we have been and possibly in some ways still are.
I like the way a great Baptist theologian of the early 20th century faced this. Walter Rauschenbusch:
We are not a perfect denomination. We are capable of being just as narrow and small as anybody. There are fine qualities in which other denominations surpass us. I do not want to foster Baptist self-conceit... I am a Baptist, but I am more than a Baptist. All things are mine; whether Francis of Assisi, or Luther, or Knox, or Wesley; all are mine because I am Christ’s. The old Adam is a strict denominationalist; the new Adam is just a Christian.

But if history matters, we need to know why there are Baptists. We are a denomination which acknowledges the truths and insights of others but we also insist that there are truths and emphases that we feel obliged to maintain. If we want to leave denominationalism behind us, as many do today in Australia, it is even more important to know what our heritage is, to realize what we bring to the church’s collective memory and experience and what remain challenges for our contemporary life and mission. In a time of bewildering change – as these days are – it is even more important for Baptists to remember that history matters.

That is why I have tried to tell the story of Australian Baptists, a story that in many ways has not previously been told. Not all will agree with my story- that is the way of history and historians. I don’t expect an outbreak of Baptist history wars and I hope my effort will be seen as a gift to my own family of Baptists. I hope it brings at least some understanding of who we are and why we are the way we are.

You see, we are in grave danger of not knowing who we are as Baptists. Of course Baptists have often reinvented themselves, just as we are doing at present – freedom to do so is part of our legacy for we are not a movement restricted by formal creeds and hierarchical government. But the risks of being such a free people are great. We can be manipulated by the dominant culture in startling ways. We are exposed to a lazy or uncritical adoption of the newest fad in being church. My plea is that history matters. If we change we need to know what we are leaving and why we are doing it.

What have Baptists historically stood for? Here many approaches might be offered. We share belief in the historic faith of the church such as enshrined in the Apostles’ Creed. We affirm the distinctives of the Protestant Reformation with an emphasis on the authority of Scripture and justification by faith. But beyond this?

A large wall diagram in Regent’s Park College in Oxford tries to summarize Baptist emphases (in Greek, of course, after all this is Oxford). It is in the form of a five-pointed star imposed on two concentric circles. The points of the star spring from the inner circle on which is inscribed ‘Lord Jesus’, suggesting that at the heart of all Baptist faith is that central affirmation ‘Jesus is Lord’ and a determination not to accept any other authority as absolute. Jesus is Lord. The Lord still guides and directs his people by Scripture and the leading of the Holy Spirit.

On the five points of the star are other words.
One is ‘faith’ which emphasizes the necessity for each individual to confess the faith personally.
‘Baptism’ is the next word and reminds us of the characteristic Baptist teaching that baptism is for believers only, a belief which they hold derives from Scripture and a belief for which many have literally given their lives.
The third word is ‘Fellowship’, a reminder that the Baptists’ message is that whilst we must come to faith individually we are not to live as solitary believers but to covenant with others in the life of the church. This fellowship embraces every aspect of our life and reaches out to all who follow Christ.
The fourth word is ‘freedom’ which again is a major Baptist distinctive and also a truth for which from their beginnings many Baptists risked all, including their own lives. Many Baptists might be recalled here but Martin Luther King was an outstanding Baptist from last century to illustrate this Baptist characteristic.
The final word is ‘gospel’ or evangelism, a clue that for Baptists evangelism and mission have always been central to their identity, whether it be a misionary like William Carey or an evangelist like Billy Graham.
And the outer circle is meant to convey that the Baptist message is universal and reaches out to the whole world.
Surely these are important matters which still need to be stressed in our modern church communities. More might be said. The Baptist pattern of church government, where change is also moving amongst us, has always stressed that the congregation as a whole is called, under Christ, to be the determining authority in the life of the church. We give up that principle at our peril, in my view – I think this is a good example where history can help us by alerting us to the dangers of alternatives, even if at times our high view of the church has been marred by the foibles of our fellow-Baptists.
And do I really need to remind a local church like this that history matters?

There are several in this congregation who have given much time and effort to the telling of this congregation’s story and to help you appreciate some of the ways in which God has moved in your midst. Prize such custodians of your church’s memory! I wish there was more of your story in my book but my book is not intended to replace the state or local church historians’ tasks.

History matters if prejudices and stereotypes of Baptist people are to be uncovered. I read, for example, in my friend Father Ed Campion’s book, Lines of My Life. A passage and a story some of you will know:
Towards the end of his book on Keating, Don Watson, despondent at the way things were going, has himself looking out the window of his flat in Kingston, ACT. Opposite him is a Baptist church; and as Don watches they come out of church: ‘The Baptists filed out of the church and stood around chatting under the trees in Telopea park. As a body of people they expressed the ideal of community perfectly, but not one of them looked remotely like a Keating voter’.
Last week Michael McKernan, addressing the Kingston Baptist Leisure Group, read them this passage. In a card to me this morning, he said, ‘They laughed, of course, but frankly several of them looked like Keating voters and as one later said, “It really annoys us to be told that Methodism was a greater influence on Labor than Marx. It was us Baptists”.
Displaying a deep native bigotry, no doubt, I’ll write back to Michael that a Baptist Leisure Group seems as unlikely to me as a Presbyterian sense of humour. (p. 183.)

History will perhaps break down some of these ‘native bigotries’ of which we Baptists, it must be confessed, have more than our fair share.

But allow me to share a couple of quotations about your church and its beginnings that are in my book (pp. 460, 461). As most of you will know, this church was begun as an initiative by Baptists around Australia who agreed to support the establishment of a church in the fledgling new capital city. Eventually this building was opened on 23 February 1929. The preacher was Donovan Mitchell, then minister of Flinders Street church in Adelaide and he eloquently expounded on the meaning of the new church:
This building is a sign of our unity in the faith. It is a corporate witness of our Catholicism; a prayer in stone; an altar upon which our petty state differences are consumed; a gift to our Lord; a symbol of our patriotism; a love offering to this land of hope and glory; an assurance to all present and future politicians that the people called Baptists watch and labour and pray.

He insisted that the Canberra church ‘gathered splendours from Chapman’s halo, from Mead’s crown, from Hibberd’s laurel’ – these and other Australian pioneers ‘have breathed into the timbers of this new building the spirit and incense of our fathers’.
 In reporting to the Baptist Union of Australia in 1929 pioneer pastor Dr Waldock, whose story Roy Henson has so capably told, captured the spirit of the times in Canberra:
It was a population of exiles, who sat down by the river Molonglo and wept when they remembered Melbourne, who said, ‘They that have carried us away require from us a song and mirth. How shall we sing the Lord’s song in a strange land? If I forget thee O Melbourne, let my right hand forget her cunning. Into this atmosphere of discontent we were required to go and with very little material to start with, build up a Baptist church worthy of ourselves and the Commonwealth.

And the rest, as they say, is history. The whimsical reference to ‘a population of exiles who sat down by the river Molonglo’ takes us immediately back to our 1 Peter text, to those other ‘aliens and exiles’ whose story was one with all the people of God. 

History matters - because it dares us to remember what it is like to be a Christian in other places and times. The miracle is that as we remember we are propelled forwards to be true to our destiny as ‘People of God’ in our own age, even us - with that mix of faith and foibles that has always characterized God’s people – as the history of Australian Baptists, I suggest, more than amply demonstrates. Our history, as in my book, does span from Woolloomooloo where the first baptisms took place in 1832 to the year 2000 when the word ‘Eternity’, repeatedly written in chalk on the streets of Sydney by a Baptist layman, was blazed forth from the top of the Harbour Bridge as a new millennium was celebrated. But even more deeply, I hope that our story will remind us that in Woolloomooloo - and Canberra and wherever we are - these little lives of ours have an eternal meaning and hope. That is why history matters.