European Baptists get together

Last week about 120 of us from around Europe got together for the European Baptist Federation Council. The EBF is the organisation that links together Baptists from various countries around Europe - Europe here being a pretty elastic term, since, as one of our members observes, Baptists are better at mission and fellowship than they are at geography, and the EBF comprises 53 member unions from across UK, Continental Europe - as far East as Tajikistan - and taking in Iraq, Israel and Egypt. (To find out more, check http://www.ebf.org/about-ebf/)
It is always, therefore, an interesting gathering. We come from very different contexts, with different histories, outlooks and practices. And there are places where our theologies are very different.
The leading theme of this Council was creation care. We had the opportunity from hearing from Rev Dr Ernest Lucas, a scientist turned biblical scholar, who teaches at Bristol Baptist College, and who has made a study of this issue for many years. He led us through a significant and serious paper on the biblical basis for taking our care of the created order seriously. It was a tough discussion - and tougher for those for whom English was not a first language.
Nevertheless, it was disappointing, in the subsequent discussion groups, to learn that some of my Baptist brethren (and yes, I do mean the exclusive term) regarded Ernest's approach to Scripture as unbiblical and even unChristian, and that his argument that creation care is part of the calling of disciples was a distortion of the gospel. The narrowness of their vision of the calling of God to the people of God that some people were holding on to was hard to hear. If Jesus has indeed come to bring life in all its fulness, then that must have something to say about the quality of life that we share with others on the planet - even the quality of life that those of us in the privileged world impose on others.
A conversation at the table at the end of the week focussed on what aspect of our faith would we be willing to die for (there were good reasons for this, which I will discuss in another post). Thinking it over later, I realised that while identifying what we might die for is a good way of getting to grips with what our priorities are, recongisning what we are willing to let others die for might be a helpful way of seeing where our sinfulness is. As one of our deacons reminds us; "Jesus tells us to love our neighbours. My neighbour in Bangladesh is drowning because of climate chaos. What does that tell me?"