The ‘synodal process’ of the Roman Catholic Church has not essentially been concerned with the conduct of synods, or meetings of bishops, though it affirms that ‘synodality’ must take this form of expression periodically. Rather, as framed by Pope Francis I, the process has been about a ‘style’ of life and mission which listens to and learns from the whole diverse range of faithful disciples within the church. As the Synthesis Report of the recent xvith Ordinary General Assembly of the Synod of Bishops in Rome (popularly called the ‘Synod about Synodality’) puts it, ‘the purpose of the synod path is to involve all the baptized’ in ‘a joint journey of the People of God’.1 Synodality is defined as ‘Christians walking in communion with Christ toward the Kingdom along with the whole of humanity’, and the report stresses that ‘If becoming synodal means walking together with the One who is the Way, a synodal Church needs to put those experiencing poverty at the centre of all aspects of its life.’2
Ecclesiology has been offering in past issues a range of perspectives on this synodal process, most recently an Editorial by Paul Avis entitled, ‘Synodality and Anglicanism’. Since then there has been an ecumenical symposium organized by the Centre for Catholic Studies at Durham University entitled ‘Learning on the Way: Receptive Ecumenism and the Catholic Synodal Pathway’, as well as the Synod in Rome. Representatives from the Baptist tradition have been involved in both events, and my aim in this editorial is to reflect, from a Baptist perspective, on aspects of synodality that have arisen there.
Walking Together and Covenant Life
Although the technical word ‘synodality’ is somewhat alien to Baptist sensibilities, Baptists take a particular interest in the way that the Roman Catholic Church has defined it. Documents of the synodal process have laid stress on the literal meaning ‘together on the way’, and have paraphrased this frequently as ‘journeying together’, or – especially – ‘walking together’, as in the passages from the Synthesis Report quoted above. While the phrase ‘walking together’ has become part of English popular speech today, much earlier it had common currency as a key phrase in the church ‘covenants’ of dissenting religious groups during the long English Reformation in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. Such a covenant ecclesiology was held by English Separatists, Independents (later Congregationalists) and Baptists.
According to this ecclesiology each local church congregation is gathered by a covenant which has both a ‘horizontal’ and a ‘vertical’ direction: it is made by members with each other, expressing their mutual commitment, and it is made with God.3 In the words of the early Baptist, John Smyth, in 1606, ‘A visible communion of Saints is of two, three or more Saints joined together by covenant with God & themselves …’4 In Baptist history, it is a pact undertaken and signed when a particular local church is founded, and subsequently made by new members on entering it. In traditional language they have promised both to ‘give themselves up to God’ and to ‘give themselves up to each other’; to ‘walk in the ways of the Lord’ and ‘to walk together’; to obey the ‘rules of Christ’ and to ‘watch over each other’ in a corporate episkope (oversight). All this was expressed in the covenant made at Gainsborough in 1606 or 1607 by the congregation of English Separatists who were shortly to travel into religious exile in Amsterdam, where a group of them would adopt believers’ baptism. As William Bradford recalled the event years later in America, the members ‘joined themselves (by a covenant of the Lord) into a Church estate, in the fellowship of the gospel, to walk in all his ways, made known, or to be made known unto them, according to their best endeavours, whatsoever it should cost them, the Lord assisting them.’5
Baptists, led by the thought of John Smyth, saw that the intersection of the horizontal and the vertical dimensions of covenant must mean that God’s eternal covenant of grace for human salvation made within the life of God as Trinity is actually identified with the covenant-making of a local congregation in time and place.6 Describing a covenant community as a ‘fellowship’ underlines that this community participates in the fellowship of the triune God (1 Jn 1:3). For Baptists, being a ‘gathered church’ means not just ‘gathering together’, but ‘being gathered’ by Christ who is the covenant-maker, drawing believers into the covenant-fellowship of God. Though Christian faith has an essential voluntary element, in response to the grace of God, the church is not regarded as a merely voluntary society, since it gathers in obedience to the risen Christ who is present in its midst. In recent dialogue between the Baptist World Alliance and the Catholic Church, an important step was made in recognizing that Baptist language of covenant and Catholic language of ‘communion’ (koinonia) could be aligned.7
Sharing in Christ’s regal office, all the faithful are called to bear their part in the governance of his church through the corporate processes of discernment (sensus fidei), deliberation, decision-making and the subsequent reception (positive or negative) of those decisions.9
A covenant ecclesiology locates this kind of governance and discernment more strongly in the local congregation than is characteristic of an episcopal structure. Sharing in the three-fold office of Christ for Baptists means the freedom of the local congregation to celebrate the sacraments (the priestly office), to call its own ministry (the prophetic office), and – what most concerns us here – to order, oversee and discipline its own ‘walking together’ (the kingly office). This last means the place of the ‘church (members’) meeting’ in the life of the church.
Church Meeting: a Means of Discernment
The synodality of the local congregation is centered in the ‘church (members’) meeting’, which meets regularly and has freedom to discern the purpose of Christ for every area of its life and its mission. As the instrument of covenant life, it also admits new members and has the power to dismiss members. It calls a woman or man to be its minister of word and sacrament (or perhaps a ministerial team) and is guided by the church ‘officers’, who are the minister(s), and a group of lay ‘deacons’, making up the ‘diaconate’. In turn the diaconate implements the decisions made by the church meeting. Prayer and Bible study should permeate the atmosphere of the church meeting, since the aim is essentially to discern the mind of Christ who stands in the midst of the church, not to find a majority. Each member has a voice and a vote in the meeting, and every attempt should be made to listen with sensitivity and respect to varying opinions and different life-experiences, with nobody feeling excluded. The meeting will be open to hear marginal, prophetic and unexpected voices, as well as being willing to listen carefully to those it has called to teach and oversee the community. If possible, discernment is made through coming to a consensus, but on some issues a vote will need to be taken, and on some matters (such as the calling of a minister) the church meeting will require more than a bare majority.
… although the particular Congregations be distinct and several Bodies, every one a compact and knit City in itself; yet are they all to walk by one and the same Rule, and by all means convenient to have the counsel and help of one another in all needful affairs of the Church, as members of one body in the common faith under Christ their only head.10
Each congregation has the freedom to make decisions for its own faith and life, since it exists under the rule of Christ, and this cannot be infringed upon by any external ecclesial power. Yet this is not an ‘autonomy’ (‘self-rule’) because congregations are covenanted and ‘walk’ together as members of ‘one body’, observing ‘one and the same Rule’. The rule is the personal rule of Christ himself, discerned on the basis of Scripture when congregations assemble together. Since Christ rules in assemblies of churches when they gather, the local church meeting must give serious attention to the way that this wider association has discerned the mind of Christ, and to be ready to trust fellow churches. It will think that it needs the fellowship and gifts of others (in association or national union) to find the mind of Christ on many issues, but will also believe that it has the freedom to recognize whether Christ’s purpose has indeed been found for its own life. This is a delicate balance, arising from the nature of covenant, but not unlike what Paul Avis has called ‘reception, positive or negative’ (see above). The tension can only be lived within by mutual trust, not on the basis of law. The wider church (ultimately the ‘church universal’) is not a mere collection of local congregations, since it is the ‘one body’ of Christ. Baptists have much sympathy with some recent Roman Catholic ecclesiology which envisages a perichoresis or mutual interweaving of the local and the universal church.11
The church meeting lies at the heart of the process of synodality among Baptists, and the covenantal relation between church meeting and diaconate is reflected (approximately at least) at every level of church life. In the ‘regional associations’ of the Baptist Union of Great Britain (bugb), for example, each has something corresponding to a church meeting and diaconate. There is an assembly (sometimes called an Annual General Meeting) of representatives from member churches, which is a kind of ‘church meeting of church meetings’. As part of its consultation process it appoints several ‘regional ministers’ and elects an ‘executive committee’ or ‘steering group’, which oversees a wide range of services and support offered to its member churches.
At the national level of bugb the church meeting is reflected in the Council, which is mainly constituted by representatives of associations, and whose aim is to find the mind of Christ for the life and mission of the churches, associations, and colleges it represents. It has, in effect, two diaconates in a ‘dual operating’ structure, which guide the Council and implement its strategic vision in practical terms. On the one hand, the Board of Trustees of bugb (which is a Charitable Incorporated Organization, or cio) operates in the world of charity compliance and exercises a general monitoring function while administering a range of committees, organizations, and other charities which provide resources for the churches of the Union. On the other hand, the ‘Core Leadership Team’ (clt) includes all regional minister team leaders as well as other leaders in the denomination and operates in the world of ‘Baptists Together’ as a grass-roots movement for spiritual life and mission including some 2,000 local churches. The ‘General Secretary’ of bugb is a member of Council, Trustees, and clt.
It must be admitted that the traditional pattern of synodality among Baptists has been interrupted by Charity law, since the diaconate at the local congregational level, the executive committee at the association level, and the Board of Trustees at the national level are now all charity trustees. They are therefore given powers and responsibilities of governance by law which, taken legalistically, would upset the delicate balance of a covenantal relationship. In the whole recent discussion of synodality, this insertion of charity law into the ecclesial scene in the UK seems to have been taken little account of, though it is a factor in the life of all churches.12 Among Baptists, some accommodation has been made with the Charity Commissioners about the attention that trustees must give to the decisions of the local ‘church meeting’ or the bugb Council; the agreed constitution for bugb as a cio, for example, distinguishes between ‘broad strategy’ provided by Council, and ‘management’ provided by the Trustees. But in this situation much depends upon the willingness to work within a synodal ethos of covenant, though within the structure of law. My own observation is that, among Baptists, the pattern of church meeting and diaconate has been weakened most at the association level, as associations have chosen to become ‘Companies Limited by Guarantee’ with strong powers of governance given to trustees.
In thinking about the way that the church meeting functions at the local level, Baptists should take account of the definition of synodality offered in the Synthesis Report – walking together towards the Kingdom of God ‘along with the whole of humanity’. This surely means giving a place in discerning the purpose of Christ to those in the wider community, where Christ is also present in the world. While reserving the right of a vote to covenanted members of the church, church meetings can – and increasingly do – listen to the voices of those on the fringes of the church and outside it, especially those marginalized by society.
Discernment at Local and Catholic Levels
In the recent ecumenical symposium at Durham University it was felt that a significant contribution had been made by the explanations of the local discernment process practised by Quakers and Baptists. The Quaker practice of waiting in silence for the mind of the meeting to become evident through several voices, the writing of a minute embodying consensus by the Clerk of Meeting, and the checking of this by the whole meeting, made a considerable impression on those present, and one session was spent by the ecumenical gathering at Durham in ‘trying it out’ for itself.13 The presentation of a Baptist delegate about the way that a local church meeting provided the opportunity for ‘slow wisdom’ to accumulate to the point when a decision could be made also became a common reference point.
The generally encouraging chapter named ‘On the Road to Christian Unity’ in the Catholic Synthesis Report has, disappointingly, nothing to say explicitly about learning from such practices of discernment on the local level in other churches and ecclesial communities. It stresses the essential connection between ecumenism and synodality, as did Instrumentum Laboris in preparing for the Synod,14 and generously expresses the intention to ‘continue to involve Christians of other Churches and ecclesial traditions in Catholic synodal processes at all levels’; however, the chapter is largely concerned with learning from the place that the college of bishops and primacy holds in both discernment and governance in the Eastern Orthodox tradition (7h).15 It notes in passing that ‘there were some references to practices in other ecclesial communities, enriching our debates’ (7g), but there is nothing in the chapter which might illuminate the ‘desire for the Church as God’s home and family, a Church that is closer to the lives of Her people, less bureaucratic and more relational’ (1b). The Synod itself, in its process, exemplified the aspiration that local churches (i.e. dioceses) should ‘experiment with and adapt conversation in the Spirit, and other forms of discernment in ways they may consider appropriate drawing from diverse spiritual traditions relevant to the needs and cultures of their contexts’ (2j), but no examples of good practice are drawn from ecumenical engagement.
Baptists, nevertheless, can – I suggest – learn something from the Report’s account of the ‘bishop in ecclesial communion’. As with its picture of papal primacy, the Report moves away from earlier notions about the exercise of authority towards the function of the bishops in enabling synodal life to flourish. The bishop has ‘the task of discerning and coordinating the different charisms and ministries sent forth by the Spirit for the proclamation of the Gospel and the common good of the community’ and ‘has an indispensable role in vivifying and animating the synodal process in the local Church, promoting the mutuality between “all, some and one”’ (12b, c). This account has resonances with Paul Avis’ picture, from an Anglican viewpoint, of the ‘bishop in synod’ as persuading, listening, thinking again, alert to the sensus fidei (‘corporate discernment’) and building a consensus.16
Baptists might find a clue here to rectifying an imbalance that can happen within their covenantal synodality. The idea of covenant should expand their vision beyond the fellowship of the local congregation to the wider church, as churches and not simply individuals are bound in covenant within the ‘one body’ of Christ. Moreover, covenant is an expansive principle, overlapping confessional borders. Nevertheless, there is a tendency to focus on life and mission in the particular locality where the congregation is placed, and to rely on being self-sufficient in gifts and discernment. Just as oversight in the local community flows back and forth as a matter of trust between individual episkope (the minister), collegial episkope (minister and deacons) and communal episkope (the church meeting), there could be a better reflection of this dynamic at the association and national levels which would encourage a wider synodality. Association ‘regional ministers’ have, however, in recent years become employees of the board of trustees rather than (as they were formerly) ‘general superintendents’ commissioned by the Union, and at the national level the ‘General Secretary’ is not formally seen as the senior or presiding minister. A clearer form of episkope beyond the local church, in accord with covenant, would assist the overall process of discernment and what the Synthesis Report calls ‘conversation in the Spirit’.
Baptism, the sensus fidei, and Mission
The Synthesis Report makes two linked affirmations: first that baptism cannot be understood outside the whole process of initiation, and second that ‘a mature exercise of the sensus fidei requires not only reception of Baptism but a life lived in authentic discipleship’ (3g, h). The report appears to retreat from this double perception for a moment when it asserts, in its chapter on ecumenism, that the foundation of ecumenism, synodality and the sensus fidei simply lies in baptism (7b), but then returns in the following chapter to the view that ‘the sacraments of Christian initiation confer on all the disciples of Jesus the responsibility for the mission of the Church’, and that this co-mission is ‘essential for synodality’ (8b).
With regard to baptism and Christian initiation, Baptists in ecumenical dialogues with other churches have consistently pressed the desirability of comparing, not one isolated moment of baptism with another, but the whole sequence of events which mark the beginning of the Christian life and discipleship. It is whole journeys of initiation that can be seen as equivalent and ‘common’.17 In specific terms, one journey that is familiar to Roman Catholic, Anglican, and some reformed Christians would be from infant baptism and the initiating grace of God in the context of the faith of the church, through Christian nurture in childhood, to public profession of faith and laying on of hands in confirmation for gifts of the Spirit, to be used in ministry in the world, and first communion. Another journey, the Baptist experience, would be from blessing as an infant and reception of initiating grace, through Christian nurture in childhood to believers’ baptism, laying on of hands for gifts of the Spirit, first communion and then increasing use of those gifts in ministry in the world.18 A common statement of the Baptist World Alliance and the Roman Catholic Church (2010) thus affirms that ‘Initiation into Christ and his church is a process wider than the act of baptism itself. We can work towards a mutual recognition of the different forms that initiation takes among us, as an entire “journey” of faith and grace.’19 The Synthesis Report makes the link with synodality by naming initiation as a ‘journey’20 which, ‘with the gradualness of its stages and steps, is the paradigm for every ecclesial experience of walking together’ (3a).
The believer-Baptist view will be that the process of initiation has not come to an end until a person has assumed responsibilities as a disciple of Christ, with a personally-owned faith. If this cannot happen within the event of baptism itself, as in the case of the baptism of infants, then initiation will have to be ‘stretched’ in some way to accommodate it. Traditionally this moment has been located in western churches within confirmation, but whether or not it takes this particular form, Baptists will expect an entry into personal participation in the mission of God, arising from the initiative of divine grace and from dying and rising with Christ in baptism, to be a part of Christian beginnings. The Synthesis Report in fact highlights the sacrament of confirmation as being part of the whole process of initiation, as the point when ‘the grace of Pentecost … enriches the faithful with the abundance of the gifts of the Spirit, and calls them to a synodality in which they ‘develop their specific vocation, rooted in their common baptismal dignity, in the service of mission’ (3d). For Baptists and Catholics, synodality is based on a baptism that is part of the larger journey of initiation, and this journey is the first part of a life-long journey of discipleship.
It appears that this link between synodality and the process of initiation has not yet worked itself into the chapter on ecumenism, which repeats only the notion of a common baptism. Yet the significance for synodality is that a ‘journey of initiation’ includes the first steps in discipleship which will become a deeper ‘walking together’ as years go on. Initiation, as the Synthesis Report puts it, is the ‘paradigm’ for walking together (3a).
In Baptist practice, baptism and confirmation coincide, and because the candidate for baptism is already a believing disciple, the baptized person can immediately become part of the process of discernment within the community, already sharing – though in an immature form – in the sensus fidei, or what the Synthesis Report calls ‘an instinct for the gospel’. Baptism is an act of covenanting and is followed immediately by participation in the church members’ meeting, having a voice among other voices, and taking up the responsibilities of being part of the mission of God. The Synthesis Report, entitled A Synodal Church in Mission, makes clear that it is mission to which the synodal path leads.
The Synodal Church in Mission, Introduction. Accessible at: www.synod.va/content/dam/synod/assembly/synthesis/english/2023.10.28-ENG-Synthesis-Report.pdf.
Synodal Church in Mission, 1h, 4h.
See Paul S. Fiddes, ‘A Fourth Strand of the Reformation’, Ecclesiology 13 (2017), pp. 153–9.
John Smyth, Principles and Inferences Concerning the Visible Church (1607), in W. T. Whitley (ed.), The Works of John Smyth (2 volumes; Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1915), Vol. 1, p. 252.
William Bradford, History of Plymouth Plantation Vol. 1, 1620–1647 (repr. Mass. Historical Society, Boston, 1912), pp. 20–2. My emphasis.
Smyth, Paralleles, Censures, Observations, in Whitley, Works, Vol. 2, p. 403.
‘The Word of God in the Life of the Church, A Report of International Conversations between The Catholic Church and the Baptist World Alliance 2006–2010’, American Baptist Quarterly 31 (2012), p. 40.
e.g. ‘Confession of Faith, of those Churches which are commonly (though falsly) called Anabaptists’ (1644), repr. in William L. Lumpkin, Baptist Confessions of Faith (Philadelphia: Judson Press, 1959), p. 260 (ch. 8); ‘Confession of Faith Put Forth by the Elders and Brethren of Many Congregations’ (1677), repr. in Lumpkin, Baptist Confessions, pp. 159–60 (art. 10).
Paul Avis, ‘Synodality and Anglicanism’, Ecclesiology 19 (2023), pp. 133–40 (134); cf. Paul Avis, ‘The Roles of the Ecclesial Orders in the Governance of the Church’, Ecclesiology 18 (2022), pp. 3–9 (5).
‘Confession of Faith’ (1644), repr. in Lumpkin, Baptist Confessions, 168–9 (ch. 47).
E.g. Walter Kasper, ‘On the Church’, The Tablet 255 (June 23, 2001). pp. 927–30. ‘Local Church’ in Catholic terminology means of course the diocese.
See, for instance, the Church of England, Governance Review Group Report, sections 108–110, 118–19, 138: www.churchofengland.org/media/PDF.
See Elaine Green, ‘Learning on the Way, Briefing Paper: Religious Society of Friends (Quakers) in Britain’, pp. 4–7. Accessible at: www.durham.ac.uk/media/durham-university/research-/research-centres/catholic-studies-centre-for-ccs/LotW-QUAKER-Briefing.pdf.
Instrumentum laboris of the 16th Ordinary General Assembly of the Synod of Bishops, 20.06.2023, B1.4. Accessible at: https://press.vatican.va/content/salastampa/en/bollettino/pubblico/2023/06/20/230620e.html.
Cf. Paul McPartlan, Editorial, ‘Serving Communion: Re-thinking the Relationship between Primacy and Synodality’, Ecclesiology 16 (2020), pp. 3–11 (5–8).
Avis, ‘Roles of the Ecclesial Orders’, 8–9.
Conversations Around the World. The Report of the International Conversations between the Anglican Communion and the Baptist World Alliance (London: Anglican Communion Office, 2005), pp. 44–8; Dialogue between the Community of Protestant Churches in Europe (cpce) and the European Baptist Federation (ebf) on the Doctrine and Practice of Baptism, Leuenberg Documents 9 (Frankfurt: Verlag Lembeck, 2005), 19–22; Pushing at the Boundaries of Unity. Anglicans and Baptists in Conversation (London: Church House Publishing 2005), pp. 31–57; ‘Word of God in the Life of the Church’, pp. 67–72.
Among some Anglicans, first communion will precede confirmation, and among some Baptists, first communion will precede baptism.
‘The Word of God in the Life of the Church’, p. 69. My emphasis.
As in The Catechism of the Catholic Church, 12229. Accessible at: www.vatican.va/archive/ENG0015.
