Last revised : 2000.11.14

Johns the Baptists?

I am a Baptist. In a sense I have always been a Baptist -- my parents were both Baptists, my father a Baptist minister -- but in another sense I have only been a Baptist since 1990, when I read Hans Küng's The Church, realized I was a Christian, and decided to be baptized.

When I was married (1979-83) to Shakuntala Kumari, a Hindu, I often told her I wanted to become a Hindu to improve our marriage. She always tried to discourage me, and usually she would say at some point, "You should be a Baptist, and if you can't be a Baptist then you should be a Methodist." At the time I would have sworn that I was never going to be a Baptist! But she was right...

I am an American Baptist, not a Southern Baptist. This means I can go to Disneyland without sinning ;-) -- though I find it's hard to go anywhere without sinning! In many social, political and theological respects I am on the left-wing fringe of the American Baptists, but what can I do? (American Baptists are not so much "on the left" as broadly inclusive — at least, some of us still are; the same polarizing tendency that has swept the Southern Baptist Convention has been at work among us Northerners, albeit in less extreme form and with less support in Valley Forge than in Nashville. In any event, I'm not sure the drive to be comfortable ought to be the governing factor in choosing one's, or at least my, religious affiliation!)

I am a member of Fremont Baptist Church in Seattle, Washington, USA, where I was baptized in January, 1991. I grew up (to age 13) in University Baptist Church, Seattle. I was alienated from the church and from God for much of the period from 1968 (when my parents were killed in a car crash) until 1984 (when I sobered up and met God); read my "sermon" My Burning Bush.

I am a supporter of the Welcoming and Affirming Baptist movement, which consists of individuals and congregations that seek to eliminate discrimination and condemnation based on sexual orientation and gender identification from the life of the Church. I have had letters and short articles on this subject published in The Seattle Times and Dia Regno (the monthly publication of KELI.) Read my own Welcoming and Affirming Statement, written as part of the application process for AWAB membership.

I am also a supporter (and a member, if I can ever get the dues together!) of the Baptist Peace Fellowship of North America, which seeks to engage and inform Baptists in global and local peace and justice issues.

Baptizing My Friend Robert Gonzales October, 1999

Baptists believe in the priesthood of all believers, and we believe that all Christians (I would say, all people) have gifts that God has given them to use in ministry. I don't think I have any particular qualifications for pastoral ministry, but this doesn't mean I don't have the wherewithal (at least occasionally) to preach, to baptize, even to join in holy matrimony. I write occasional hymns, and am compiling what is already the world's largest on-line hymnal in Esperanto. (Click here for lists of well-known hymns
and
Christmas carols in Esperanto, listed by their English first lines, all available on-line.) Some of my own hymns (or sacred ballads) in English include In Bethlem Town, Come then, let's have breakfast, Lord Eternal, God of Ages, Who'd have thought the Lord Almighty, and most recently The Potato Bug Hymn.

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