Broken Southern Baptist Communion

Giving voice to the current spiritual division of attendance at a Southern Baptist Lord's Supper, Ed Kilgore writes:

On the night in question, the pastor offered a brief homily reminding the congregation that the Lord's Supper was limited to "believers" and "the godly." Knowing what I know about contemporary Southern Baptist views these days, I had to wonder if I was outside the circle of fidelity and godliness.

It's not as though the pastor's warning was surprising in any sense. It was, in fact, a pale, watered-down version of the "fencing of the altar" exhortation that was central to the Calvinist eucharistic tradition from which Baptists originally developed. It was a faithful reflection of St. Paul's strictures against "unworthy reception" in his first epistle to the Corinthians. And it was in no way as restrictive in its tone or scope as the Roman Catholic/Orthodox limitation of communion to members in good standing--and without unshriven mortal sin--of their own faith traditions, or even the Anglican/Lutheran requirement of baptism prior to communion.

But that Baptist pastor's words did cause me to ask myself whether he or many of the people around me would consider me a "believer."

For nearly two millennia, of course, Christian "belief" was measured by adherence to creeds, confessions, and such big theological issues as the Trinity or the Atonement. Receiving the eucharist "worthily" also usually revolved around more than the moral condition of the communicant, and required in most traditions a common belief about the nature of the celebration itself--transubstantiation or consubstantiation, real or symbolic presence, sacrifice or memorial.

Nowadays, in the United States at least, such ancient indicia of "belief" have largely receded into the background. And among Protestants, the old disputes have been supplanted by one big dispute: the proposition of biblical inerrancy, and with it, a host of highly political and cultural arguments over issues of gender and sexuality, from the preeminence of men in family and community life, to gay and lesbian "lifestyles," to abortion.

Please read the rest.