This Month in Our History…with Fred Anderson
August 2008 Edition
If Baptist principles are to be taught to the people and caught within the fabric of congregations, they must be heard from the pulpit. C. Wirt Trainham of Northern Virginia understood the need for preaching on Baptist heritage from time to time.
He was 29 in 1894 when he became pastor of a field of churches in Prince William and Loudoun counties – Antioch, Little River, and Manassas. The young pastor felt the need for a Baptist witness in Haymarket also, so he held monthly meetings in the village. In October 1894 he organized a church with 28 members.
Wirt Trainham enumerated the Baptist beliefs in sermons preached at Haymarket and elsewhere during his 55-year ministry, which included 11 years as associational missionary in the Potomac Baptist Association.
Trainham grew up in a Baptist family. He was one of “Hatcher’s boys” at Grace Baptist Church in Richmond. He attended Richmond College and Southern Baptist Theological Seminary. And he lived and breathed Baptist ways.
Over a century ago, he preached a sermon on “The Baptist Position.” He said, “Baptists are often misunderstood and misrepresented.” He enumerated Baptist distinctives and included the following:
- “A regenerated church membership – every member first a member of the body of Jesus Christ through the regenerative power and work of the Holy Spirit”;
- “Only believers-regenerated persons are proper subjects for baptism”; and
- “The right of every man to civil and religious liberty, hence the entire separation of church and state.”
Trainham served in the same territory where, a century earlier, Baptists had been jailed and otherwise persecuted for their faith while they struggled to secure soul liberty for the nation.
Trainham also emphasized Baptist church polity with its “love of democracy.” He said: “Every member of a Baptist church has all the rights, privileges, and authority of every other member. The whole congregation of a local church constitutes the governing power in a Baptist church. From its decisions there is no appeal. There is no court of higher resort.”
“No church or combination of churches can exercise authority over another church. Each can receive, discipline, and dismiss members; call and depose its ministry; and formulate and operate its own plan of Christian activity.”
“Baptists hold that every church of Christ is independent of every other church. While many churches may be one in faith and practice, there is no organic union. Each is sufficient for its own interpretation and execution of divine law, each sufficient for its own government.”
Another Baptist hallmark is priesthood of the believer. Trainham declared: “Baptist church government puts the emphasis upon individuality as does no other. It affords greater opportunity for individual development, cherishes as a sacred heritage the right and duty of individual study and interpretation of God’s holy book, and lays greater responsibility upon the individual for the welfare and prosperity of Zion.”
What about the Bible? Trainham exclaimed: “We regard it as the Word of God. It was written by holy men as they were moved of the Holy Spirit, and hence it is God’s Word.”
What about creeds? Trainham stated the Baptist case when he said: “We believe [the Bible] to be a sufficient guide for faith and practice. We are unwilling to accept anything else as binding upon our hearts, consciences, or lives. Hence we have no creed.”
The paper on which Trainham wrote his sermon has become brown and brittle; but within congregations in Northern Virginia, the principles which he preached remain alive.
|
