A Healthy Baptist Minimalism

My friend, and newly installed pastor of the First Baptist Church of New York City, Dr. Matthew Hoskinson, has written a helpful article "On Being Baptist." Not totally satisfied with all the definitions of Baptist identity or distinctives, Matt has set out to prove what for him it means to be a Baptist (at a minimum). He clearly spells it out:

Baptists are distinct from other world religions in that they are Christian, Baptists are distinct from the rest of Christendom in that they are Protestant, and Baptists are distinct from the rest of Protestantism in that they are credobaptist in practice and congregational in polity. This essay focuses on the last of these statements.

He really did a good job. For he concludes:

Baptists are credobaptist in practice and congregational in polity. They may be more than this, but one cannot be less than this and still wear the label. Within the wide stream of Baptist thinking there are many different currents, some healthy, some not. But what defines and distinguishes Baptists from other Protestant groups are these two doctrines.

While I'm sure he has not written a new proposal, he is clear on what distinguishes the Baptist church. It would probably do well to subject the B-A-P-T-I-S-T distinctives to this shorter criteria. If we do, our acrostic might look like T-...S. Hmmm.