Last week, the Southern Baptist Convention passed a resolution urging its members to target Jews for conversion to Christianity. When we heard this, we in the Jewish community were both angry and sad. We were not, however, afraid. Our faith in God is secure. Our commitment to Judaism is resolute. Even the most ardent conversionary campaign will attract only the very few most vulnerable among us. No, we have nothing to fear. Instead, we were angry that a major religious movement in 1996 would say, in effect, “It’s not O.K. to be Jewish.” Some in our society will infer that Jews are now legitimate targets for discrimination and persecution, since we really ought not be Jews at all. Most of all, we were sad. Many Southern Baptists have been our friends. We are hurt that they so disrespect us that they want to convert us.
One voice, though, rang out in San Antonio, soothing our anger and healing our wounds. How fortunate we are that the voice belongs to Dr. Buckner Fanning, Pastor of Trinity Baptist Church, surely the most influential Protestant minister in our city. In last Saturday’s San Antonio Express-News, Dr. Fanning distanced himself from the Southern Baptist Convention resolution. He thereby assured us that a leading Baptist voice would speak out in support of our Jewish community. He helped us to know that we are not alone.
When I called Dr. Fanning to thank him for his kind words in the newspaper, he had only one response. It was a question: “Is there anything more I can do?” At Rabbi Stahl’s urging, I told Dr. Fanning, “Yes, there is one more thing. You can bring your words of love, acceptance, and healing to Temple Beth-El, and speak them to our congregation this Friday night.” He quickly agreed. We are all so grateful.
Dr. Fanning, we, in the Jewish community of San Antonio, consider you to be one of the truly righteous men of our generation. As you know, Jews do not actively seek converts, though we lovingly and joyfully receive Jews-by-Choice who come to us. We need not search for converts, because we know that people do not have to be Jewish to be righteous. There are many paths to God. Truly, you have found yours as we affirm our own.
Dr. Fanning’s presence tonight is not a one-time event. He has been to our Temple previously, many times, in fact. This event is not out of character for our congregation and community. A generation ago, so many important changes in our city took place because our Rabbi Jacobson worked diligently with his Christian colleagues to transform San Antonio. We are so grateful that he is here tonight, together with our student rabbi, David Komerofsky, for whom we wish the same level of interreligious cooperation in the generation ahead.
As you know, our Senior Rabbi, Sam Stahl, and his wife, Lynn, are on sabbatical in Jerusalem this summer. He sends this message to us tonight:
We American Jews are living at a time when relations between Jews and Christians have become harmonious and respectful. Therefore we are shocked and saddened by the almost unanimous decision of the Southern Baptist Convention to direct its conversionary efforts toward Jews. How blessed we are to have with us one of America’s leading Southern Baptist pastors who dissents from this decision. Buckner Fanning is a dear personal friend and a passionate supporter of the State of Israel. He is an ardent Christian leader, who teaches the precepts of his faith with a zeal tempered by wisdom and guided by respect for the beliefs of others. I only wish I could be with all of you tonight to greet Buckner personally. Lynn and I send him, Martha, and all of you our fondest wishes for a Shabbat Shalom from Jerusalem.”
It is my esteemed honor now to invite Dr. Buckner Fanning, our friend, our neighbor, to address us from the pulpit of Temple Beth-El.
Shabbat Shalom! Let the words of my mouth and the meditations of my heart be acceptable in Thy sight, O Lord, my Strength and my Redeemer.”
I do feel very much at home here, Rabbi Block. As you said, Martha and I and other members of our family have been here on numerous occasions, most recently for the commemoration of the Holocaust. Prior to that, we were here for the memorial service for Yitzhak Rabin. We have been here for various occasions of worship and celebration. A number of years ago, I was invited to speak at this Shabbat service, and we had a marvelous time of fellowship and discussion afterwards. You can never know how much at home I feel here. And that’s because of your gracious generosity of spirit and the fact that we are comrades.
I have some very close friends in Dallas. In fact, Martha’s very closest friend and maid of honor in our wedding, Ruthie Silvergold, now Ruthie Levy, and Bernard Levy, are very close to us and we to them. I was preaching once in Dallas and my picture was in the paper. This was when their oldest son, Arnold, was a little boy. He was looking through the paper, and he saw my picture there, and he ran in with excitement to his parents to say, "Mother, Dad, I know this Rabbi!" So I suppose I was inducted into the synagogue upon that occasion.
Rabbi Stahl spoke to our church on two subsequent Sunday nights a few months ago. It was one of the most invigorating, exciting, and illuminating experiences that we have had, and we have invited him back. It was on Sunday evening from 5:30 until 7:00. The first Sunday evening, we had 200 to 250 people present, and the following Sunday evening, on his second appearance and presentation, the congregation more than doubled. Over 500 people were present. I said, "Sam, I wish you’d come on Sunday morning. It would help me."
It was a great gift to us, and, as an expression of our appreciation for him, the Rashi Commentaries were purchased and were given to our Church Library in honor of a man in our church and as a tribute to your Rabbi and my dear friend, Rabbi Stahl.
When Martha and I came to San Antonio thirty-seven years ago, Rabbi and Mrs. David Jacobson greeted us and welcomed us and made us feel a part of this community of faith. We have treasured their love, their friendship and their encouragement across these years. I am grateful for the privilege of being with you again tonight, sir. This city stands in great debt to you for all that you and your devoted wife have meant to San Antonio and countless multitudes of people.
I am here to talk about the Baptists. That is a very difficult thing to talk about because it’s hard to pinpoint exactly who Baptists are and how we make decisions. I am going to try to explain briefly. Sometimes people ask, “When did the Baptist Church begin?” Well, some people seemingly think that it began in the South during the Civil War. Not so. Others believe the Baptist Church began in Reformation days. There are others who believe the Baptist faith preceded even the Reformation. Others believe the Baptist Church began with John the Baptist on the banks of the Jordan. But I personally believe the Baptist Church began much, much earlier than that. The Baptist Church began long ago, when Abraham said to Lot, "You go your way, and I’ll go mine." To understand Baptists, you need to understand our deep sense of independence and freedom.
Trinity Baptist Church is a self-governing, autonomous fellowship of believers. We do not belong to a denomination. Our denomination belongs to us. We choose to send our money, along with other Baptist congregations, in a financial union for the purposes of education and missions and ministry. We do not work for the denomination. The denomination works for us. They do not tell us what to give, how much to give, or where to give. They do not tell us what to preach or what to practice. There is great diversity and freedom among Baptists. Unfortunately for Baptists, for many of us who have been Baptists almost all of our lives, what we are seeing now in the Southern Baptist Convention does not reflect the true faith and spirit of Baptists, nor Baptists that are true to their historical roots.
My wife Martha used to go to the Temple on Friday night with her dear friend, Ruthie Silvergold, and Ruthie would go to the First Baptist Church in Dallas with Martha on Sunday morning. The pastor under whom we grew up, Dr. George W. Truit, and Rabbi David Lefkowitz, were very close personal friends. They traveled to Israel together. We grew up in that kind of Baptist atmosphere, with Dr. Truit, who, for forty-seven years, was Pastor of the First Baptist Church in Dallas, President of the Baptist World Alliance, and a man whose spirit was bigger than any single denomination, a man whose faith reached out to any and all. It is from that heritage and within that tradition that Martha and I and many other Baptists have been nurtured, and I am grateful for that heritage.
It may be of interest to you to know that less than 14,000 people attended the recent Southern Baptist Convention in New Orleans. That is only a little more than half of the number that attended that same convention eight years ago. There were less than 1,000 Texas Baptists in New Orleans. Not one person from our church attended. I did not attend. Our church voted a number of years ago to not send any money, any of the collections from our congregation, to any institution or organization within the Southern Baptist Convention that was dominated and controlled by the fundamentalist spirit, which gave rise to what occurred in New Orleans a few days ago. We do not support them financially; and we do not support their spirit.
The autonomy of Baptists is difficult for some people to comprehend, because most congregations, most denominations, have a hierarchy to one degree or another. They have an overseeing or governing body or group. Baptists, because of their fierce commitment to freedom and independence, believe each local Baptist church is an independent, self-governing, autonomous body. It is with this in mind that I try to explain Baptists to you and to tell you what I wish Baptists had voted in New Orleans a few days ago relating to Jews, and what I desire that all Baptists and all persons of faith in every community of faith would affirm and practice; that we would all be such positive, devoted, loving representatives of our faith, so consistent in our living, so loving in our attitudes, that we would be drawn together in a common-union, a communion of faith, hope and love. I believe the best thing that I as a Baptist can do for the world is to be a better, more loving Christian, and endeavor to let God’s spirit so permeate my life and be a witness to a world filled with bitterness and hate.
Let me tell you where I am coming from in my own experience. On my seventeenth birthday, just a few weeks before I graduated from high school in 1943, I enlisted in the United States Marine Corps. I spent three and one-half years as an enlisted man in the Marine Corps, about two years of it in the Pacific. I was assigned to the Second Marine Division. I went to Guam, joined the Second Marine Division on Saipan, and then I landed a few days after the atomic bomb had been dropped on Nagasaki on August 9, 1945. I was among the first troops to land in Nagasaki, Japan.
As a Pfc. in a rifle company, I, and other members of the platoon, were assigned the task of going from house to house where people were terrified of us, thinking that we had come to execute them. On some occasions, we had to force people who had been so terribly injured by that bomb to come to receive the medical treatment that was available. Approximately 40,000 people died instantly. Thousands more died over the ensuing weeks. Our responsibility was to bring women and children, for most of the men were already away in the service, except the elderly, and to bring them in with their horrible radiation burns so they could receive treatment and food and clothing.
This experience was the catalytic agent that led to the transformation of my life and the direction of my vocation. There I began to see there that force never changes anything. Hatred never heals. Violence never brings peace. And out of that crucible of suffering, I came home and felt called into the ministry of One who answered a question one day when a passerby asked, "What is the greatest commandment, teacher?" And Jesus said, "The greatest commandment is this," and He reached back into his roots, your roots, my roots, and from Leviticus and Deuteronomy, He said, "You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, with all your strength, and you shall love your neighbor as yourself. There is no other commandment greater than these."
The One whom I endeavor to follow said that the paramount virtue was love; love for anyone, everyone. Target no one. Love everyone. Love God with all of your heart, your soul, your strength, and love your neighbor as you love yourself. Love one another.
So I come here humbly tonight to say, "I love God. I desire to love Him more." This service of worship this evening has inspired me and spoken to my spirit, and I pray that every day I will grow more like the spirit of love, the spirit of joy, the spirit of truth, that epitomizes those who follow God in faith. And so I love God and I love you, and I thank God for the privilege of being in this labor of love and service in this community that we all love and cherish. We want San Antonio to be a community characterized by love and not by violence; by building churches, not burning them; by encouraging, not discouraging; helping, not hurting.
And in the finest of Baptist traditions, I want to take you back briefly to give you some small hint of where Baptists at their finest and best have come from and where I believe Baptists at their finest and best still are.
Let me explain a little about Baptist history and the hostility and persecution which on occasions has been ours, paradoxically been ours, from other professing Christians.
In the 1500's, a man by the name of Thomas Helwys, an English barrister, an English lawyer, suffered greatly because of his commitment to Baptist principles. His wife was imprisoned in York Castle. Upon her release, she and her husband left England. He had a great enthusiasm for establishing the Baptist faith in England, and because of that, he and his wife returned. Their decision was very courageous, because two Baptists had just been put to death for heresy. Bartholomew Legate, a merchant, who had been opposed to the domination of the Church by the state, was burned at the stake at St. Paul’s in March, 1612. In April, Edward Wightman was convicted on similar charges and burned to death at Litchfield. Helwys’ sense of commitment increased with every fresh account of such tragic events, and consequently precipitated his return to England. He returned to England with a few other Baptists and established the first Baptist church on English soil. He wrote a book and inscribed a special copy to King James: "The king is a mortal man and not God. Therefore, he hath no power over the immortal souls of his subjects to make laws and ordinances for them and to set spiritual foundations and standards below them or above them."
Helwys went on to remind James that, "although he was a king, he was not God." In Helwys’ words, we hear an echo of Elijah talking to Ahab, and Nathan, speaking to David. Helwys argued for complete religious freedom for everyone, specifically, "Roman Catholics, Turks, and Jews." Jews had been expelled from England in 1290, as you probably know, and had not been re-admitted. In the end, Helwys’ bold witness cost him his life. He died in prison in 1616, but he had accomplished his purpose. He had succeeded in sowing the seeds of religious liberty in England and shaping the basic principles of Baptist faith and order that many of us still subscribe to to this day. Others would come after him. We at Trinity Baptist are among that group and we are in his debt for blazing the trail.
There was another Baptist minister by the name of Mark Leonard Busher who was the leader of a third congregation established in England. Busher argued for freedom, not only for Christians, but also for Jews. He asked that they be re-admitted to England with full religious and civil liberties.
All of these men had a very strong faith in God and a personal faith in Christ, but they did not feel that their faith or anyone else’s faith should be imposed upon or forced upon anyone else. These men and many others have been the pattern of Baptist faith and practice, and that was a pattern of Baptist faith and practice in which I grew up, and Martha grew up. This pattern has only been altered in the last few years with the fundamentalist takeover of the Southern Baptist Convention.
So let me jump quickly forward to the 1600's, when Roger Williams, a Baptist, was ultimately forced to leave Massachusetts because they would not allow religious freedom. His teachings on separation of church and state and full independence for all beliefs were considered subversive and he was brought to trial and sentenced to be banished from the Colony on October 9, 1635. Williams was able to secure from the English Parliament a charter for his little Colony to be established. Thus, the Rhode Island Colony, based upon the principle of religious liberty for all, supported by the separation of church and state, came into existence.
Although despised and denigrated by the Massachusetts Bay authorities as the "garbage dump of New England," they yet survived and set a pattern of democratic government that in time would become characteristic of the new nation, America, which was then in the process of emerging on the shores of the New World. At the heart of Roger Williams’ view of both church and state and the nature of Christian faith was his insistence, hear me, and hear him, that faith can not, must not, be coerced.
His most famous metaphor in illustrating what he considered the ideal relationship of church and state is a ship at sea. By using this analogy, he attempted to dispel the notion that he was promoting anarchy by advocating religious liberty. I quote Roger Williams: "There goes many a ship to sea with many hundred souls in one ship, whose will and woe is common and is a true picture of a commonwealth or a human combination or society. It has fallen out sometimes that both Papists and Protestants, Jews and Turks may be embarked in one ship, upon which supposal I affirmed that all the liberty of conscience that ever I pleaded for turns upon these two hinges. None of the Roman Catholics, Protestants, Jews, or Turks should be forced to come to the ship’s prayers or worship or compelled or restricted from their own particular prayers or worship, if they practice any."
There is no doubt that Roger Williams was a profound thinker, perhaps, as some have called him, the most original thinker the American Colonies produced. And perhaps his greatest contribution lay in the fact that, through the crucible of his own experience, he was able to implement for the first time in history a democratic government within a state that guaranteed complete religious liberty, not mere toleration. And all of this was accomplished by a Baptist who was profoundly committed to Jesus.
One result of Rhode Island’s religious freedom was that the much persecuted Jews finally found a refuge. Sephardic Jews from Spain arrived as early as 1658 and eventually became so successful that in 1763 they erected one of the most exquisitely beautiful synagogues in America. Thus, Rhode Island became the citadel of freedom in the New World.
So the example of Helwys, Busher, Williams and countless thousands of others is the pattern of faith and practice which Baptists have historically believed, which many of us still believe with all of our hearts, and which we endeavor to practice. I count myself among them.
May God be with us all to help us love God with all of our heart and soul and strength, and to love our neighbor as ourselves. May it be so. Shabbat Shalom!
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