{"id":2321,"date":"2009-06-08T15:17:00","date_gmt":"2009-06-08T15:17:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/religionprof\/2009\/06\/the-anti-creed\/"},"modified":"2009-06-08T15:17:00","modified_gmt":"2009-06-08T15:17:00","slug":"the-anti-creed","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/religionprof\/2009\/06\/the-anti-creed.html","title":{"rendered":"The Anti-Creed"},"content":{"rendered":"<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC \"-\/\/W3C\/\/DTD HTML 4.0 Transitional\/\/EN\" \"http:\/\/www.w3.org\/TR\/REC-html40\/loose.dtd\">\n<html><head><meta http-equiv=\"content-type\" content=\"text\/html; charset=utf-8\"><meta http-equiv=\"content-type\" content=\"text\/html; charset=utf-8\"><\/head><body><p>There was a humorous moment in Sunday school this week when, in a discussion of the Baptist principle of \u201csoul freedom\u201d, someone read from the <a href=\"http:\/\/www.abc-usa.org\/identity\/idstate.html\" class=\" decorated-link\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"nofollow\">American Baptist identity statement<\/a>. In this statement which, when printed out runs about 3 pages, and is clearly longer than the Nicene Creed, we encountered the phrase \u201cWe accept no humanly devised confession or creed as binding.\u201d And that seemed to cover the \u201ccreed\u201d that was being read from \u2013 a creed that negates the authority of creeds!<\/p>\n<p>Of course, the irony is only apparent. The American Baptist statement is an attempt to give expression to points of faith, doctrine and practice that most American Baptists share. But it isn\u2019t a creed in the sense of an authoritative document that is imposed hierarchically from the top down.<\/p>\n<p>Nevertheless, the apparent tension was striking. It is perhaps matched only by the experience of reading one of Paul\u2019s letters in English and getting to the point where he says that the <em>letter<\/em> kills\u2026<\/p>\n<div class=\"blogger-post-footer\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"1\" height=\"1\" src=\"https:\/\/blogger.googleusercontent.com\/tracker\/7622297540113836091-1730794765270076911?l=exploringourmatrix.blogspot.com\" alt=\"\"><\/div>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>There was a humorous moment in Sunday school this week when, in a discussion of the Baptist principle of \u201csoul freedom\u201d, someone read from the American Baptist identity statement. In this statement which, when printed out runs about 3 pages, and is clearly longer than the Nicene Creed, we encountered the phrase \u201cWe accept no [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":136,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2321","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v21.1 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/wordpress\/plugins\/seo\/ -->\n<title>The Anti-Creed<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"There was a humorous moment in Sunday school this week when, in a discussion of the Baptist principle of &quot;soul freedom&quot;, someone read from the American\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/religionprof\/2009\/06\/the-anti-creed.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"The Anti-Creed\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"There was a humorous moment in Sunday school this week when, in a discussion of the Baptist principle of &quot;soul freedom&quot;, someone read from the American\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/religionprof\/2009\/06\/the-anti-creed.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"Religion Prof: The Blog of James F. McGrath\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:author\" content=\"http:\/\/www.facebook.com\/religionprof\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2009-06-08T15:17:00+00:00\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:image\" content=\"https:\/\/blogger.googleusercontent.com\/tracker\/7622297540113836091-1730794765270076911?l=exploringourmatrix.blogspot.com\" \/>\n<meta name=\"author\" content=\"James F. McGrath\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:card\" content=\"summary_large_image\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:creator\" content=\"@ReligionProf\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:label1\" content=\"Written by\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data1\" content=\"James F. 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