As the Southern Baptist Convention prepares to meet in Indianapolis in June 2024, the question of the authority of the Convention in relation to the autonomy of local churches is front and center. Messengers expect to hear a report from the 20-member, presidentially appointed “Cooperation Group” tasked with studying how the Convention should deem churches to be “in friendly cooperation on questions of faith and practice” as written in Article 3 of the SBC Constitution. Messengers will also have the opportunity to vote to ratify the Law Amendment to Article 3 of the SBC Constitution, adding a sixth criteria for what it means to be in “friendly cooperation.” If this amendment receives a two-thirds vote in Indianapolis in June, then the SBC constitution would state that a cooperating church only “Affirms, appoints, or employs only men as any kind of pastor or elder as qualified by Scripture.”[1]
1. SBC Annual (2023), 90.
Some have suggested that such moves to amend the constitution violate “local church autonomy” by commanding “rigid conformity” in ways that will undermine the Convention’s “missional vitality.” Others have argued for the sufficiency of the Baptist Faith and Message, and that further amendments to the Constitution are unnecessary given the clarity of the Baptist Faith and Message 2000 on the office of pastor. Behind these arguments lurks the lingering question of the power of a voluntary association—such as the Southern Baptist Convention—with regard to independent, autonomous, member churches. After all, the Baptist Faith and Message (2000) affirms that local churches are “autonomous” and that associations “have no authority over one another or over the churches.” So what have Baptists taught historically about the authority of a voluntary association to disfellowship or otherwise cut ties with member churches?
This article traces the history of Baptist associations in America to argue that Baptists have consistently affirmed the authority and responsibility of voluntary associations to disfellowship disorderly churches.[2] Beginning with the first Baptist association in America, the Philadelphia Baptist Association formed in 1707, this understanding of the authority of associations spread across the north and the south, informing the founders of the Southern Baptist Convention in 1845. Historically, Baptists have understood church autonomy to mean that the congregation is the highest court of appeals for matters of discipline, doctrine, and the appointment and firing of ministers. However, when a church strays out of step with the association’s beliefs and practices, the churches of the association have the responsibility to step in. Doing so preserves associational unity without violating church autonomy.
2. This article develops with greater detail, the argument made by Michael Haykin, in his longform, “Baptist, A Confessional People.”
America’s first Baptist Association: the Philadelphia Baptist Association
When five churches gathered to form the Philadelphia Baptist Association (PBA) in 1707 to “consult about such things as were wanting [i.e., lacking] in the churches, and to set them in order,” they knew they were setting a pattern for Baptist churches in the New World.[3] As the “mother” of subsequent associations—the Charleston Baptist Association in 1751, the Ketocton Association of Virginia in 1766, and the Warren Association of New England in 1767—the PBA became a model for Baptists in America. As Baptist historian A.H. Newman wrote in 1894, “No agency did so much for the solidifying and extension of the Baptist denomination in the American colonies as the Philadelphia Association.”[4]
3. A. D. Gillette, ed., Minutes of the Philadelphia Baptist Association, 1707 to 1807: Being the First One Hundred Years of Its Existence (Springfield, MO: Particular Baptist Press, 2002), 12.
4. A.H. Newman, A History of the Baptist Churches (New York: The Christian Literature Co., 1894), 210.
The Philadelphia Baptist Confession (1742)
In their statement of faith—the Philadelphia Baptist Confession of 1742—the churches affirmed the independence of member churches, insisting that an association of churches is “not intrusted with any church-power properly so called; or with any jurisdiction over the churches themselves.”[5] Or as Benjamin Griffith wrote in the PBA’s manual of church discipline, “Such Delegates thus assembled, are not intrusted or armed with any coercive Power, or any superior Jurisdiction over the Churches concerned, so as to impose their Determinations on them or their Officers, under the Penalty of Excommunication, or the like.” Nevertheless, Griffith continues,
5. Philadelphia Baptist Confession of Faith, 27:15. The archaic spelling is left intentionally intact here and throughout.
Such Messengers and Delegates, convened in the Name of Christ, by the voluntary Consent of the several Churches in such mutual Communion, may declare & determine the Mind of the Holy Ghost, revealed in Scripture, concerning Things in Difference; and may decree the Observation of Things that are true and necessary, because [such things are] revealed and appointed in Scripture. And the Churches will do well to receive, own and observe such Determinations, on the Evidence and Authority of the Mind of the Holy Ghost in them.[6]
6. Benjamin Griffith, A Short Treatise of Church-Discipline was printed in and included as an appendix to A Confession of Faith, Put Forth by the Elders and Brethren of Many Congregations of Christians (Baptized upon Profession of Their Faith) in London and the Country. Adopted by the Baptist Association Met at Philadelphia, Sept. 25. 1742. The Sixth Edition. To Which Are Added, Two Articles Viz. of Imposition of Hands, and Singing of Psalms in Publick Worship. Also a Short Treatise of Church Discipline. (Philadelphia, PA: B. Franklin, 1743), 59–62.
In other words, associations are voluntary, but churches ought to hear and heed the association’s decisions. But what about areas of disagreement when the association “decrees” what is “true and necessary” but a church refuses to “receive, own, and observe such”?
“The Power and Duty of an Association” (1749)
This question prompted the PBA to enlist Benjamin Griffith to write another essay, “respecting the power and duty of an Association.”[7] This essay, unanimously adopted by the messengers of the churches of the PBA on September 19, 1749, is perhaps the most definitive and influential statement on the authority of Baptist associations ever written.
7. Printed in A. D. Gillette, ed., Minutes of the Philadelphia Baptist Association, 1707 to 1807 (Philadelphia, PA: American Baptist Publication Society, 1851), 60–63. For further discussion, see Francis W. Sacks, The Philadelphia Baptist Tradition of Church and Church Authority, 1707–1814: An Ecumenical Analysis and Theological Interpretation, Studies in American Religion, v. 48 (Lewiston, NY: Edwin Mellen Press, 1989), 260–1.
In the essay, Griffith argues that each individual Baptist church possesses complete power and authority from Jesus Christ over the administration of gospel ordinances, the reception and expulsion of members, the trial and ordination of officers, and the exercise of gospel discipline. This authority is independent of any superior judicature and cannot be overturned by another body without violating the local church’s God-given powers. As Griffith writes,
Each particular church hath a complete power and authority from Jesus Christ, to administer all gospel ordinances, provided they have a sufficiency of officers duly qualified, or that they be supplied by the officers of another sister church or churches, as baptism, and the Lord’s supper, &c.; and to receive in and cast out, and also to try and ordain their own officers, and to exercise every part of gospel discipline and church government, independent of any other church or assembly whatever.[8]
8. Ibid., 60–61.
Nevertheless, associations have a real and positive authority by virtue of the voluntary consent of member churches and their original statement of theological agreement in doctrine and practice. Thus, the association has the power to exclude delegates from a defective church, advise other churches to do the same, and bear witness against the defection. Though not “a superior judicature, as having a superintendency over the churches,” Griffith argues that “an Association of the delegates of associate churches have a very considerable power in their hands.”[9] Since churches had joined the association voluntarily, and expressed their agreement to the association’s “doctrine and practice,” if a church deviates from sound doctrine or practice, the association has the authority to withdraw from that church and exclude it from the confederation. As Griffith writes,
9. Ibid., 61.
for if the agreement of several distinct churches, in sound doctrine and regular practice, be the first motive, ground, and foundation or basis of their confederation, then it must naturally follow, that a defection in doctrine or practice in any church, in such confederation, or any party in any such church, is ground sufficient for an Association to withdraw from such a church or party so deviating or making defection, and to exclude such from them in some formal manner, and to advertise all the churches in confederation thereof, in order that every church in confederation may withdraw from such in all acts of church communion, to the end they may be ashamed, and that all the churches may discountenance such, and bear testimony against the defection.”[10]
10. Ibid., 61.
Griffith is clear that such a “withdrawal” is not merely a negative action (i.e. a cessation of cooperation). But by virtue of each church’s obligation to be a “pillar and buttress of the truth” (1 Tim. 3:15), churches ought to take the positive step of publicly severing ties with errant churches. Though this power is not one of excommunication, such an act of exclusion consists in refusing “their presence at their consultations, and to advise all the churches in confederation to do so too.”[11] In a word, excommunicating members is the business of local churches. Disfellowshipping churches is the business of associations. As Griffith summarizes the powers of an association,
11. Ibid., 62.
an Association, then, of the delegates of associate churches, may exclude and withdraw from defective and unsound or disorderly churches or persons, in manner abovesaid; and this will appear regular and justifiable by the light and law of nature, as is apparent in the conduct and practice of all regular civil and political corporations and confederations whatsoever; who all of them have certain rules to exclude delinquents from their societies, as well as for others to accede thereunto.[12]
12. Ibid., 62.
To defend the associational principle, Griffith points to the Jerusalem council in Acts 15 where messengers from the church at Antioch seek counsel from the church at Jerusalem regarding the false teaching of the Judaizers.[13] Griffith concludes from this text that an association has the power to condemn false teachers and false doctrine (Acts 15:25) and to delegate certain persons to deliver their decisions to be ratified by individual churches (Acts 15:24). “Thus,” Griffith writes, “an Association may disown and withdraw from a defective or disorderly church, and advise the churches related to them to withdraw from, and to discountenance such as aforesaid, without exceeding the bounds of their power.”[14]
13. Ibid., 62.
14. Ibid., 63.
Griffith’s essay shows that Baptists in America have not only prized the autonomy of the local church; they have cherished the independence and autonomy of Baptist associations. Baptist historian Walter Shurden sums up this view: “The association was, just as a local congregation, an independent and self-governing body. This meant that the association could and should ‘withdraw’ from churches or individuals ‘defective in doctrine and practice.’”[15]
15. Walter B. Shurden, “Minutes of the Philadelphia Baptist Association,” Center for Baptist Studies.
It is striking that amid Griffith’s discussion of the powers of an association, no limits are placed on what kinds of actions would warrant disfellowshipping. As Griffith had written earlier in his Treatise on Church Discipline, an association’s powers extended to matters “revealed in Scripture” and “things [held] in difference.” While the PBA tolerated diversity in practice—for instance, by not insisting on agreement regarding the question of whether or not a church should have a plurality of elders or a plurality of deacons—it reserved the right to declare any deviation in doctrine or practice out of step with the Association. For instance, in 1781, the churches of the PBA brought a unanimous recommendation for the First Baptist Church of Philadelphia to excommunicate their pastor, Elhanan Winchester, for preaching universalism, a doctrine that placed him outside of the doctrinal bounds of the Philadelphia Baptist Confession of Faith.[16] The church responded by firing their pastor along with forty-six members who had come to hold that doctrine, demonstrating the effectiveness of denominational authority in protecting doctrine.
16. Gillette, 174.
While such powers may seem poised to effect a “tyranny of the majority,” historian David Benedict could write in 1813 that such an approach to associational authority “has now been in operation 106 years, and I do not find that it was ever complained of for infringing on the independency of any church.”[17] Associational accountability, in other words, did not undermine church autonomy; it shored up associational unity.
17. David Benedict, General History of the Baptist Denomination in America and Other Parts of the World (Boston, MA: Manning and Loring, 1813), 596.
Samuel Jones’s Treatise of Church Discipline (1798)
As a supplement and further elucidation of the PBA’s beliefs and practices, Samuel Jones wrote A Treatise of Church Discipline in 1798.[18] Jones’s treatise demonstrates that in the fifty years between Griffith’s essay and his own, the PBA had not shifted at all on the question of the association’s authority. Jones wrote that associations should “exclude from the connection” disorderly churches. “The association has a right to call any delinquent church to account,” wrote Jones, for “disregard of those things recommended to them, or any material defect in principle or practice; and if satisfactory reasons are not given therefore, nor reformation, then to exclude them.”[19] Like Griffith, Jones is clear, that such an act of disfellowshipping or excluding does not violate church autonomy.
18. Samuel Jones, A Treatise of Church Discipline and a Directory (Philadelphia: S.C. Ustick, 1798).
19. Samuel Jones, A Treatise of Church Discipline and a Directory (Philadelphia: S.C. Ustick, 1798), 16–17. Cited in Dever, ed., Polity, 158.
Let it not be thought, that this power of the association over the churches in connection with it disannuls or destroys the independence of those churches: for if any church of the associated body should become unsound in their principles, or act irregularly and disorderly, and will not do, what may be just and right; such a church will still remain an independent church, though an heterodox and irregular one.[20]
20. Ibid. Italics mine.
In other words, despite being disfellowshipped by an association, a church retains its powers to exercise the ordinances, exercise discipline, and appoint ministers. Nevertheless, action on the part of the association is still necessary to preserve the order and discipline of its member churches. After all, Jones continues, “It would be inconsistent and wrong in the association, to suffer [allow] such a church to continue among them, since, besides other confederations, they would hereby become partakers of their evil deeds. The association can take nothing from them, but what it gave them,” namely, fellowship, partnership, and associational membership.
The Influence of the Philadelphia Baptist Association Beyond Philadelphia
Griffith’s essay was unanimously adopted by the churches of the Philadelphia Baptist Association and enshrined in its record of minutes as the definitive statement regarding the powers of an association. And as Baptist associations spread across the early Republic, modeled after the Philadelphia Association, Walter Shurden writes that “most definitions of associational authority agreed with Griffith’s explication of the power of an association.”[21] This was especially true of the Shaftsbury Association.
21. Walter B. Shurden, “The Baptist Association in Colonial America, 1707–1814,” Perspectives in Religious Studies 13, 4 (Winter 1986): 113.
Shaftsbury Association Circular Letter of 1791
Established in 1780 and encompassing churches in Vermont, Massachusetts, and New York, the Shaftesbury Association enlisted three pastors in 1791 in preparing a statement regarding “distinctions really existing between the power of churches, and that of an association.”[22] After describing the authority of local churches over matters of discipline and doctrine, the authors affirmed the authority of associations to “withdraw” from disorderly and apostate churches:
22. Printed in Stephen Wright, History of the Shaftsbury Baptist Association, 1781–1853 (Troy, NY: A.G. Johnson, 1853), 30–35.
But in case any church, or churches shall apostatize from the faith, and become corrupt, on information from sister churches, who have taken gospel steps to reclaim them, and have not succeeded, but have necessarily been called “to withdraw from them,” it is the duty of this association to sympathize with those grieved churches in their sorrows, and to inform the churches in general, that we consider those churches who have fallen, no longer in our fellowship.[23]
23. Ibid., 34.
The Shaftsbury Association affirmed this position again in 1799, clarifying the association’s power to “withdraw” from disorderly churches, writing,
The Association take this opportunity of declaring their sentiment;—that it is gospel-wise for the Association, whenever they receive official information that any church in the Union has fallen from the faith and practice of the Gospel, that the Association may and ought to withdraw their fellowship from such church as fully and publicly, as they formed fellowship with them at first.[24]
24. Wright, 61.
So important was this teaching on the power of the association, that in 1805, the association amended its constitution to make this authority and duty even more explicit:
If any church of the union shall become corrupt in doctrine or practice, it shall be the duty of any sister church who may have knowledge of the same, to labor with said offending church. If satisfaction is not obtained, it will then become necessary for the aggrieved church to call for the advice and assistance of other churches; and if they judge there is sufficient ground to suspend fellowship with the delinquent Church, their testimony and report to the Association shall be a sufficient reason to drop it from the minutes, and to publish to the world, that they have withdrawn that fellowship which they had given to said delinquent Church.[25]
25. Wright, 192.
In other words, Baptists in the Shaftsbury Association understood the principle of Matthew 18:15–20 (“If your brother sins against you…”) to extend to inter-church relationships within an association. If a church was in error, the other churches had an obligation to warn them, and if they remained obstinate, to bring the matter to the association, resulting ultimately in exclusion. Again, such an act was never termed “excommunication.” As a voluntary association, they could not deprive an independent church of its authority to appoint ministers or admit and see out members. But an association could and should police the doctrinal boundaries of its fellowship.
Such associational powers could doubtless be abused. Yet the effect of associational authority, writes Shurden, was to promote unity and prevent “irregularities in doctrine and practice.”[26] Thus even Isaac Backus, ever skeptical of concentrated authority, was forced to confess the beneficial effects of associational accountability. “If the church departs from her former faith or order, she is left out of the association,” wrote Backus in his history of Baptist churches in New England. “By these means, mutual acquaintance and communion has been begotten and promoted; the weak and oppressed have been relieved; errors in doctrine and practice have been exposed and guarded against; false teachers have been exposed, and warnings against them have been published.”[27]
26. Walter B. Shurden, “The Associational Principle, 1707–1814: Its Rationale,” Foundations 21, 3 (September 1978), 221.
27. Isaac Backus, Church History of New England, Vol. 3 (Boston, MA: Manning & Loring, 1796), 117.
The Baptists of Virginia
Nor were these views peculiar to the north. After the formation of the Southern Baptist Convention in 1845, Charleston-native and pastor of Richmond’s Second Baptist Church, wrote an influential treatise on church government—Church Polity; or the Kingdom of Christ (1849)—which made extensive use of Griffith’s 1749 essay on the authority of an association. As Reynolds wrote, an association consisted in the “union of churches” around “uniformity of faith and practice.” Then, after quoting Benjamin Griffith’s essay on the powers of an association affirmatively at length, Reynolds concluded by saying that if any member church should “depart from the principles of the union, by embracing error, abusing its power over its members, or neglecting attendance on the meetings of the association, it is the right and duty of this body to remonstrate, to advise, and if the church proves incorrigible, to withdraw fellowship from it.”[28] Southern Baptists, apparently, were not averse to withdrawing fellowship from churches that embraced error.
28. J.L. Reynolds, Church Polity or the Kingdom of Christ (1849) in Dever, Polity, 393.
Like Reynolds, the General Association of Separate Baptists encapsulated the authority of associations into their governing documents on May 13, 1771. After agreeing that “the Association has no power or authority to impose anything upon the churches,” they declared their conviction that “we believe we have a right to withdraw ourselves from any church.”[29] Historian Robert Semple interprets these articles of agreement to mean that the association may withdraw from a church that is not only disorderly in practice but heterodox in sentiment. As Semple concludes, “To give an association power to deal with, and finally to put such out of their association must be proper, and, indeed, must be what is designed by the above article. By no other means could a general union be preserved.”[30]
29. Robert Baylor Semple, A History of the Rise and Progress of the Baptists in Virginia (Richmond, VA: Pitt & Dickinson, 1894), 71.
30. Semple, 75.
Like the Separate Baptists, the Ketocton Association of Virginia likewise in their statement of purpose, affirmed that when an association received intelligence of “any church proving erroneous in principle,” if they “cannot be reclaimed, are excluded from the association.”[31]
31. William Fristoe, A Concise History of the Ketocton Baptist Association (Staunton, VA: William Gilman Lyford., 1808), 16.
Nor were these views without effect. In his history of the Georgia Baptist Association, Jesse Mercer recounts how the Association responded to several preachers who adopted “the Arminian scheme of doctrine.” After due deliberation, Mercer writes, “it was determined, that there was no propriety in Associational intercourse, where there was no union.” Thus, by “a large majority,” the Association voted to advise the churches “to call these ministers to account.” The Association could not remove pastors. But they did believe they were obligated to warn the churches. The churches responded to the admonition of the association and proceeded to exclude the Arminian pastors.[32] As in the case of the PBA and the universalism being taught at the First Baptist Church of Philadelphia, this example illustrates the power of an association over otherwise autonomous, independent churches. As Walter Shurden has written, “Paradoxically, a Baptist association exerted more power over local churches by means of its advisory functions, than through any other means.”[33]
32. Jesse Mercer, History of the Georgia Baptist Association (Washington, GA: 1838), 26–27.
33. Walter B. Shurden, Associationalism Among Baptists in America: 1707–1814 (New York: Arno Press, 1980), 135.
E.K. Love and Associational Authority in Black Churches
Across north and south, Baptists in America universally acknowledged the authority of associations to disfellowship disorderly churches. Such a view of the authority of an association extended to African American Baptist churches as well. In a sermon delivered before the Missionary Baptist Convention of Georgia in 1882, Rev. Emmanuel K. Love, the influential pastor of the First Baptist Church of Thomasville, Georgia, argued that severing ties with “disorderly churches” did not interfere with the principle of church autonomy but rather served to protect and strengthen the convention as a whole.
We claim that our Convention is not an ecclesiastical body and therefore, we cannot try church cases. That we cannot settle church troubles, you and your humble speaker are agreed. But we can discountenance disorderly churches. We can say which one is right, (when called upon) and therefore fit to unite with us. In this way we would hinder many splits and confusions in the churches and add largely to the cause of Christ, and advance our denominational interest in the State.[34]
34. E. K. Love, Wait on the Lord: A Discourse Delivered by E.K. Love (Augusta, Ga.: Georgia Baptist Book and Job Print, 1882), 7. Daniel Murray Pamphlet Collection, Library of Congress.
The context of Love’s comment was the early controversies over the authority and trustworthiness of Scripture in the late nineteenth century due to the encroaching effects of higher criticism. Rather than tolerating the churches who called pastors who taught such doctrines, Love demanded that associations exercise their God-given responsibility by separating themselves from error.
The Authority of the Southern Baptist Convention
Despite any disanalogies between an association and the Southern Baptist Convention, the same principles regarding the authority of a voluntary association of churches apply. The SBC has long recognized this authority, both through requiring conformity to the Baptist Faith and Message and through decisive constitutional amendments to Article 3, clarifying its terms of cooperation. In this sense, the clarity sought by the Law Amendment does not demand “rigid conformity” or threaten the SBC’s “missional vitality” any more than the SBC’s previous constitutional amendments regarding homosexuality, racism, or sexual abuse.
For instance, in 1992, the Southern Baptist Convention voted to disfellowship two congregations in North Carolina for their actions “in regard to homosexuality,” which the Convention argued were “contrary to the teachings of the Bible on human sexuality.” Of the two churches in question, one had ordained a practicing gay man as a pastor. The other had held a “marriage-like ceremony” for two homosexual men. Both churches had previously been disfellowshipped by their local Baptist associations.[35] Yet this decisive action did not prevent the Executive Committee from simultaneously proposing an amendment to Article 3 of its Constitution. In their proposed amendment, first affirmed in 1992 and then ratified in 1993, the Executive Committee sought to clarify that, “Among churches not in cooperation with the Convention are churches which act to affirm, approve, or endorse homosexual behavior.”[36] Contrary to some voices, the Southern Baptist Convention has therefore not pitted constitutional amendments against the Baptist Faith and Message, but has taken a variety of approaches to counteract doctrinal error.
35. “Maryland/Delaware Baptists Seek Unity but Debate Issues,” Baptist Press, November 12, 1992.
36. SBC Annual (1993), 46.
In fact, the continual appeal to “church autonomy” by churches seeking to circumvent the associational accountability of other churches has become such a repeated refrain that in his President’s Address at the 2001 Southern Baptist Convention in New Orleans, Louisiana, James Merritt sought to set the record straight regarding the true meaning of church autonomy.
I want to say this straight, and I want to make it plain. I believe in local church autonomy. I don’t want any leader, agency, institution, or convention giving orders to me or my congregation. But hear me, and hear me well. The ocean of church autonomy stops at the shore of biblical authority. Local autonomy, without biblical authority, becomes spiritual anarchy.
It is the height of spiritual cowardice and theological hypocrisy to hide behind the skirt of church autonomy, or the priesthood of the believer, while pretending that churches can do anything they want to do, or believe anything they want to believe, and still be Baptist.
I appreciate our Baptist distinctives. I am grateful for those beliefs that make us Baptist. But any time a so-called Baptist distinctive is used as an excuse not to follow sound Bible doctrine, at that point it may be distinctive, but it is certainly not Baptist.[37]
37. “The Battle of New Orleans,” Southern Baptist Convention Presidential Address, SBC Annual (2001), 93.
Since then, the SBC has adopted constitutional amendments declaring sexual abuse and the toleration of discrimination on the basis of ethnicity grounds for disfellowshipping member churches. Such actions are entirely consistent with the history of Baptist associationalism. In line with this, Bart Barber argued in a 2012 blogpost for the SBC to disfellowship Christ Tabernacle Missionary Baptist Church (Jacksonville, Florida) for calling a sex predator as a pastor. He advocated that “withdrawal of fellowship is the only punitive action open to Southern Baptist cooperative structures.” Such an action, Barber argued, did not constitute a violation of local church autonomy. The SBC could not remove Christ Tabernacle’s pastor. But Barber rightly noted, “We do, however, have the authority to determine which churches are those with whom we walk in cooperative fellowship.”
If such an action is consistent with Baptist history and Southern Baptist practice, why would further clarity regarding the office of pastor/elder suddenly threaten the Convention’s unity? As Barber wrote in 2012, “Historically, gross error in the selection of pastors has been among the most widely recognized grounds for disfellowshipping churches from Baptist associations.” Thus, as Barber continued, “It is a late, flawed idea in Baptist life that a local congregation’s decision to call a pastor is no business of the other congregations in fellowship with that church.”
Conclusion
This article has reviewed the writings of Baptists in America regarding the authority and responsibility of associations to disfellowship disorderly churches, from 1742 to the present. As these writings from Baptist history have abundantly demonstrated, local church autonomy is not incompatible with mutual accountability. True church autonomy consists in a church’s right to call the officers they deem fit and oversee the church’s membership. However, whenever a church’s practice or doctrine violates the stated beliefs and practices of an association of churches they have voluntarily joined, they face the likelihood of associational repercussions. Such a church has no ground to appeal to “church autonomy” as a shield from associational accountability. Rather, such a church ought to change its practice to conform to the association, or voluntarily withdraw. That’s the way Baptist associationalism started. And that’s the way Baptist associationalism at every level should continue.