Local church autonomy: Theory or Reality?

“All Baptist churches are autonomous.”

That’s the line that Baptist officials hide behind to avoid taking action against clergy predators in their denomination.

It’s a good-sounding line, but is it a true line? Or is it just talk?

It’s a line that has allowed state and national Baptist entities to avoid legal responsibility for a whole lot of years. But is it true?

Let’s take a look at what Dr. Nancy Ammerman says about Baptists’ claim of local church autonomy. Ammerman is a professor in the School of Theology and Department of Sociology at Boston University. (That’s her in the photo.) Ammerman’s book, Baptist Battles, was named the 1992 distinguished book of the year by the Society for the Scientific Study of Religion. In it, Ammerman points out that Southern Baptists have been “among the most tightly-knit, hierarchically functioning denominations in America.” (Baptist Battles at 270)

So . . . according to Ammerman, while Southern Baptists claim to be non-hierarchical, they are in reality “hierarchically functioning.”

What does that mean? It means that, in reality, Southern Baptists are “45,000 autonomous churches choosing autonomously to do exactly what Nashville tells them to do.” (Thanks to a reader for bringing us this quote from Ammerman’s public speeches.)

In Baptist Battles, Ammerman explains the “how” of this “hierarchical functioning.” The Cooperative Program, she says, means that all funds go through one channel, and that almost all churches shape their identities and activities in a denominationally-prescribed manner.

Ammerman discusses a scale that three sociologists developed for quantifying denominational differences in local church autonomy. The results were reported in the Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion in 1983. Here’s how Ammerman summarizes what that study said about Southern Baptists:

“Sociologists…have developed a scale with which to measure the degree of parish autonomy that exists in a denomination. But even their questions illustrate the difficulty in making clear distinctions between local and nonlocal control. Of the fourteen questions on their scale, Southern Baptists clearly submit to nonlocal control on only one, the requirement of yearly demographic reports. On five items, power is in local hands (ordination, accounting procedures, the legal officers of the corporation, and the like). But on eight items decisions sometimes (or always) are made in consultation with nonlocal entities. Even the disposal of property, for instance may not be a purely local matter if the church has a loan underwritten by the Home Mission Board. If the church receives Church Pastoral Assistance, it is not in full control of its pastor’s salary (or even choice of pastor). And churches always depend on local and state denominational officials for pastor search help. Beyond the everyday ways in which the denomination shapes local church life, even in these legal and personnel decisions, Southern Baptist congregations are not always autonomous entities.” (Baptist Battles at 260)

Okay . . . so Baptist churches aren’t really so autonomous after all. But what difference does it make? Why is this polity-stuff important?

Is that what you’re wondering?

Here’s the answer.

By now, Baptist officials have demonstrated that, until they are forced into it, they will not implement the sorts of institutional safeguards that other faith groups have for the protection of kids against clergy-predators. Until the law forces them to accept legal responsibility, Baptist officials will not recognize their moral responsibility.

But their steady drone of a mantra -- “all Baptist churches are autonomous” -- is what has allowed denominational entities to avoid legal responsibility. That’s the wall they hide behind, and until the law sees how thin that wall actually is, kids in Baptist churches will not be made safer.

Judges and lawyers must begin to understand that this wall functions as little more than a stage-set. It lets Baptist officials put on their play of “all Baptist churches are autonomous,” but at the end of the show, the set comes down and the churches “do exactly what Nashville tells them to do.”

In reality, the denomination is “hierarchically functioning.” If Baptist leaders wanted to, they could easily use Cooperative Program dollars to establish review boards for the responsible assessment of clergy abuse reports. The fact that they don’t is not because “all Baptist churches are autonomous.” It’s because Baptist leaders are blind to the reality of moral responsibility.