Our one peculiarity: "Baptists are individualistic"--W. W. Landrum

If Baptists have one peculiarity more pronounced than any other, it is the stress they lay upon the worth of a single soul. Baptists are individualistic. The church exists for the individual, and not the individual for the church. Presbyterians are rather familistic; the family they are disposed to regard as a religious unit. Methodists are tribalistic; the Conference is the religious unit. Episcopalians are nationalistic; they have a State Church in England and once had it here. Baptists are individualistic. They go forth to preach to every individual soul the broadest and deepest conceptions of personal responsibility. Starting with the doctrine of soul liberty, the right of private judgment, they commend personal repentance, personal faith, personal baptism, personal communion with the Saviour at the Lord’s Supper, personal fidelity to all the moral, evangelical, and positive commands of the Lord Jesus Christ. 

--from a sermon by W.W. Landrum entitled “All” (based upon Matthew 28:18-20)preached in the First Baptist Church, Washington, D. C. The sermon is recorded in full in J. F. Love’s The Southern Baptist Pulpit, American Baptist Publication Society, 1895

Who was W.W. Landrum? The following is taken from the biographical note included in Love's compilation of Southern Baptist preachers.

William Warren Landrum, the eldest son of Rev. Dr. Sylvanus Landrum, was born at Macon, Ga., January 18, 1853; converted and baptized when thirteen years of age, and called to preach at eighteen years of age, and licensed by the First Church of Savannah, Ga.; educated at Mercer University, Macon, Ga., and Brown University, Providence, R. I., where he graduated as bachelor of arts in 1872, and at the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary. Ordained at Jefferson, Tex., May, 1874, and pastor at Shreveport, La., for nearly two years; at First Church, Augusta, Ga., for nearly six years; and has been pastor of the Second Church, Richmond, Va., for nearly thirteen years; was given the degree of D. D. by Washington and Lee University in 1885. His high character, affable manner, and pulpit gifts, have made him universally popular, both with the laity and clergy.

 

Comments

[Max]

"... soul liberty ... personal repentance, personal faith, personal baptism, personal communion with the Saviour ... personal fidelity to all the moral, evangelical, and positive commands of the Lord Jesus Christ."

In my interactions with New Calvinists in my area, I have found them to have a mistrust in personal experience. Since I have one, I find that Christian attitude a bit strange. Since the enactment of the BFM2000, there appears to be a diminished emphasis on Baptist doctrines of soul competency and priesthood of the believer. I'm growing increasingly uncomfortable with this evolution of Southern Baptists.

[CASEY]

MAX:
If you'll change your description from "increasingly uncomfortable" to ALARMED.....we'll be in full agreement.....this 'trend' has a disasterous ending if it is not stopped.......

[Max]

Casey,

SBC leadership have put a trumpet to their mouth and uttered an unclear sound. Thus, the alarm has not been sounded ... it has yet to echo down the halls of SBC's 45,000+ churches, who are mostly unaware of SBC Calvinization. However, "alarmed" along with other such words have certainly crossed my spirit: apprehensive, uneasy, anxious. I was young and now I'm old and I ain't seen nothin' like this!

[Nate]

Max, when you say New Calvinists have a mistrust in personal experience, can you flesh that out a bit? Are they saying their salvation/point of coversion was somehow not expressing personal repentance and faith in Christ? Or, are they saying they have no personal responsibilites in an ecclessiological sense (church membership/personal growth, etc)?

[Lydia]

I LOVE this! This was what my parents believed:

" The church exists for the individual, and not the individual for the church. "

Oh my goodness how far we have fallen. Now the individual has little value at all except to fund the operation or unless they are one of the set apart ones whose message is the most important event of our week and are paid for it. The individual is a vile worm who has no volition. (Personally I believe we are more fully "human" ...as in image of God.... when we reflect Him back out into the world. We are LESS human when we use others for our own ends)

The other way around...."the individual for the church" (which the YRR pastor now owns because he has the "true Gospel) is what I have heard the most of in the past few years. So, If you don't like it then leave...even if you worked and gave money there for 30 years some SBTS indoctrinated 30 year old is telling you to take a hike cos he is the boss now.

[Lydia]

One more point that I think needs to be made concerning 'the individual existing for the church' is that it is collectivist thinking which includes totalitarianism and socialism. It is a state church mentality.

And that mentality is all over the SBC now.

[Max]

Nate – I hear very little in the way of testimonies from New Calvinists of a direct experience of grace … an initial point in time when penitent sinner met a forgiving Savior. On the other hand, I hear much about an intellectual conversion to the doctrines of grace … following a period of time in which the mind yielded to and embraced such teachings. When I have shared my salvation encounter with the living Christ through repentance, belief and faith, I have had some reformed folks stare at me like raccoons caught in the headlights of a car (the mistrust in personal experience I referred to).