Baptists, Pentecostals seek common ground

BIRMINGHAM, Ala. (ABP) – Leaders of two large Christian traditions held
preliminary conversations Dec. 13-15 to lay groundwork for ecumenical
dialogue between Baptists and Pentecostals around the world.

Delegations from the Baptist World Alliance and Pentecostal World
Fellowship set guidelines for anticipated multi-year meetings to pursue
closer ties between two groups that together represent about one fifth
of the world’s Christians.

"The purpose of the dialogue is to examine what it may mean for Baptists
and Pentecostals to walk together in step with the Holy Spirit,"
representatives of the two groups said in a statement issued at Samford
University's Beeson Divinity School in Birmingham, Ala. "Our intention
is for the dialogue to be holistic in its evaluation of faith and
practice."

Future talks tentatively scheduled annually from 2012 through 2014, with
findings and recommendations to follow, would explore areas where
Baptists and Pentecostals already agree, what the two groups offer to
each other and “How do we walk together in the Holy Spirit?”

A new Pew Research Center report
on global Christianity estimated there are 279 million Pentecostals
around the world. They comprise 4 percent of the world’s population and
12.8 percent of all Christians.

Pentecostals are members of Protestant denominations or independent
churches that hold the teaching that all Christians should seek a
post-conversion religious experience called the baptism of the Holy
Spirit. They believe that people who experience the baptism of the Holy
Spirit may receive one or more spiritual gifts, including the abilities
to prophesy or utter messages from God, practice physical healing or
speak in tongues.

Another 305 million Christians worldwide are defined as “charismatic.”
They belong to non-Pentecostal denominations but engage in spiritual
practices associated with Pentecostalism, such as speaking or praying in
tongues. That includes some Baptists, but in general the denomination
teaches that miracles described in the New Testament ceased with the
apostles and there is no need for a “second blessing” beyond salvation.

The Pentecostal World Fellowship is a cooperative body of Pentecostal
churches and groups worldwide with 56 member organizations. It sponsors a
triennial meeting first held in 1947 and in 1961 was named the
Pentecostal World Conference.

The Baptist World Alliance has 221 member organizations with 176,000
churches and a combined membership of 41.6 million. That doesn’t include
the largest Baptist group, the Southern Baptist Convention, which left
the BWA in 2004 over theological differences with some of the more
liberal Baptist member bodies in Europe and the United States. A
catalyst for the break was the BWA’s acceptance into membership of the
Cooperative Baptist Fellowship, a group of disenfranchised former
Southern Baptists formed in 1991.

The Pentecostal dialogue team includes both a conservative Southern
Baptist who remains active in the Baptist World Alliance, Beeson
Divinity School Dean Timothy George, and Curtis Freeman, who directs the
Baptist House of Studies at Duke Divinity School, one of 15 theology
schools that partner with the Atlanta-based CBF.

The dialogue falls under work of the Baptist World Alliance’s Commission
on Doctrine and Christian Unity. It exists to promote greater
understanding with other Christian communions about Baptist beliefs such
as believer’s baptism and religious liberty, while seeking areas of
possible cooperation in areas like missions and evangelism.

BWA General Secretary Neville Callam, who led the BWA delegation, said
he "was pleased that the time had arrived in which Baptists and
Pentecostals could meet to consider how they might work together in the
spirit of Jesus' prayer for the unity of the church."

Callam’s predecessor, Denton Lotz, first proposed dialogue with
Pentecostals in 2001. The BWA executive committee authorized Callam in
March to identify a small team "to explore the commencement of
BWA/Pentecostal bilateral dialogue.” In July Callam presented team
members, who in addition to Callam, George and Freeman include Fausto
Vasconcelos, BWA director of the mission, evangelism and theological
reflection, and Bill Brackney, a professor at Acadia Divinity College in
Nova Scotia.

A separate BWA dialogue team held exploratory talks Oct. 30-Nov. 2 with
the Ecumenical Patriarchate of Constantinople, "first among equals" in
the Eastern Orthodox communion and regarded as the representative and
spiritual leader of the world's 300 million Orthodox Christians.