Încă un articol excelent al lui Trevin, text care parcă ne dă ghes să ne discutăm şi noi, baptiştii din România, identitatea ca trăitori într-o cultură în continuă schimbare.

My grandparents remember the day when “religious diversity” in the South referred to the presence of multiple Christian denominations.

• Pentecostals debating spiritual gifts with Baptists.
• Presbyterians promoting perseverance of the saints over against the Methodists.
• Episcopalians choosing high liturgy as opposed to evangelical expressions of low church piety.

Of the various Protestant denominations that have yielded influence in the South in the past 60 years, the churches belonging to the Southern Baptist Convention have been most dominant. Even today, the SBC still stands as the largest Protestant religious group in the United States. And yet the cultural rivers have shifted away from the quiet waters of a “Southern Baptist Zion” to the rushing rapids of accelerating cultural changes.

……………

Baptists in other parts of the world (my family and friends in Romania, for example) know firsthand what social ostracism looks like. The more you get to know Baptists in other parts of the country, the more you realize that the cultural dominance we have enjoyed in the South is the exception, not the rule. 

The tributaries that have come together to form the rushing river of Baptists today (Anabaptists, general Baptists, particular Baptists) all knew something of persecution. We’ve been belittled and mocked before, sometimes by other Christians. Why not again, this time by secularists? And what if, at this very hour, we will be the ones to help other evangelicals learn how to thrive in lean times?

Hope

Let’s not shrink back from the future that awaits us. We may be given the honor of suffering for the Name. So let’s willingly put ourselves at odds with the culture, expect the social ostracism we can see on the horizon, and stand joyfully amidst the ruins of Christendom while we continue to proclaim the excellencies of the Risen One.

We may have to dig deeper and stand stronger than ever before. But no matter how mighty Babylon may seem or how dim the future looks, we must remember one thing.

There is an empty tomb in Jerusalem.

citeşte articolul AICI