320 Dimensions of Baptism
while centered on eucharistic practice and theology, reveals an under-
standing of baptism that has become rather prevalent.I lodge no complaint against communing with bread and wine, but for
myself, for more than thirty years experiment... I have known no instance
that God evidently blessed the ordinance for the conversion of sinners,
which often attends preaching, praying, singing and baptizing.^67Baptism has come to be principally a verbum visibile, 'God's enacted word
.. .proclaiming] the gospel', to the unconverted.^68 Certainly, the kerygma
is the primary recitation of Christian memory, and we would not wish for
memory to be absent from kerygma. We must be careful to ask, though,
whether memory is indeed absent from contemporary Baptist baptismal
thought and practice, or is another memory present? I would argue the
latter. Turning again to Southern Baptists specifically, the language by
which they speak of baptism reveals a latent memorial quality. Given the
verbal leanness of present Southern Baptist practice, we must ask what the
ritual symbolizes for Southern Baptists. We find there more manifestly
memorial aspects reasserting themselves. Yet what Southern Baptists call
a kerygmatic event, it turns out, rests upon a definite hypomnesis that has
yielded a wounded soteriology that divides earth and heaven, body and
spirit. What, we may wonder, brought Baptists to neglect the earthly,
bodily aspects of baptism?- Quoted in L.F. Greene, 'Further Sketches of the Life of John Leland', in L.F.
Greene (ed.), The Writings of the Late Elder John Leland, Including Some Events in
His Life, Written By Himself, With Additional Sketches, & c. by Miss L.F. Greene
(New York: G.W. Wood, 1845), pp. 59-60.
The Separate Baptists were former 'New Light' (pro-revival) Congregationalists
emerging from the first Great Awakening in America. They tended to be Calvinist in
theology but not doctrinaire, and more concerned for two revivalist emphases:
evangelism and spiritual warmth in worship. With the Regular Baptists they were a
principal constituent tradition that eventually formed the Southern Baptist Convention.
Fisher Humphreys contends that the legacy from the Separate Baptists constitutes the
'center of gravity' in Southern Baptist faith and life. Cf. F. Humphreys, The Way We
Were: How Southern Baptist Theology has Changed and What it Means to Us All
(New York: McCracken Press, 1994), pp. 55-66; Leonard, Hope, pp. 33-34; and
McBeth, Baptist Heritage, pp. 201-206. - Segler, Manual, p. 12. Cf. F.M. Segler, Christian Worship: Its Theology and
Practice (Nashville: Broadman Press, 1967), p. 140;F.M. Segler,^ Theology of Church
and Ministry (Nashville: Broadman Press, 1960), p. 202, in which baptism and the
Lord's Supper are described as 'part of the church's preaching ministry'; and F.M.
McConnell, McConnell 's Manual for Baptist Churches (Valley Forge, PA: Judson Press,
1926), p. 48, 'They [baptism and the Supper] are declarative and not procurative'.