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E. Y. Mullins on confessions of faith: what E. Y Mullins thought about confessions of faith assumed renewed relevance in 2007.

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At the fall convocation of the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary on August 28, Albert Mohler, Mullins's successor as president several times removed, asserted that confessions of faith are more important than ever for evangelical churches and seminaries. Christianity, he insisted, "is not a mood" and "not an emotion." Rather, it "is established by the truth of God's Word, by the saving reality of God's deeds in Jesus Christ, around certain definite doctrines without which it is not possible to exercise the kind of faith that saves." Mohler also averred that Baptists have been a confessional people throughout their history. Although acknowledging that scripture is the sole authority for Baptists, he contended that confessions serve as "concise expressions of its most important doctrines." (1)

What would Mullins say about the statement on "The Baptist Conception of Religious Liberty" issued by the Baptist World Congress at Stockholm in 1923, which has Mullins's thought-prints all over it. It declared, among other things, that

religious liberty excludes the imposition of religious creeds by ecclesiastical authority. Confessions of faith by individuals or groups of men [and women], voluntarily framed and set forth as containing the essentials of what men [or women] believe to be the Gospel, are all right. They are merely one way of witnessing to the truth. But when they are laid upon men's [or women's] consciences by ecclesiastical command, or by a form of human authority, they become a shadow between the soul and God, an intolerable yoke, impertinence and a tyranny. (2)

Mullins did a careful balancing act between confessions of faith voluntarily entered into and the freedom of every individual or group to seek the truth embedded in scriptures. He would not have subscribed to Mohler's propositional concept of faith. He recognized that confessions of faith could serve a useful purpose in helping Baptists, so diverse and often divided, to express some kind of unity, but he feared far more, as Baptists did earlier in their history, the peril of power imposing itself on individual and corporate liberties. His nuanced approach is visible in a number of places.

The "Fraternal Address" 1919

Like many students of church history, Mullins could see that some kinds of confessions of faith, when entered into voluntarily, were useful and perhaps essential to the existence of a community of believers. The farther they reached outward to embrace others, the more believers needed to articulate ties that bound. We can see this writ large in Mullins's thinking as he sought to create a Baptist consciousness on a global scale. A striking witness of this is the "Fraternal Address" sent "To those of 'Like Precious Faith with Us' Scattered Abroad, Beloved in the Lord" just after World War I. Although attributed to a committee, composed also of J. B. Gambrell, Z. T. Cody, L. R. Scarborough, and William Ellyson, Mullins, as chairperson, made the original draft and put his stamp on every part of it. In the address, he expressed the hope that it would "lead to a mutually helpful relation and cooperation in the furtherance of the truth." (3)

Mullins pulled out some grand phrases to undergird this somewhat surprising circular issued by "non-creedal" or "anti-creedal" Southern Baptists. Persuaded that "religion alone can conserve the true values and promote the highest interests of society" and "is an indispensable factor in the reconstruction of the world now torn by war and divided by enmity and in the restoration of social harmony," he judged this a propitious moment "for the promulgation of the religious views and practices which Baptists hold and have consistently exemplified through a long history." (4) Indeed, this document laid down an explicit rationale for a group of Baptists putting together a confessional statement:

The message of no other religious people is so completely a need of such times as are the principles which Baptists hold and teach. There is not an article of their faith which is not essential to the reconstruction of the world and the social fellowship of the race. Therefore, all people who hold the views which distinguish Baptists should seek to draw closer together and render a service which men [and women] of pure Christian faith owe their fellowmen [and women]. We covet a better understanding and a closer fellowship with those in all lands who cherish a common...

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