What’s Your Creed?

In the 1820s Alexander Campbell began a “back to the Bible” movement through an influential publishing campaign across America’s frontier. Motivated by millennial hopes, Campbell believed Jesus would return when Christians rejected divisive sectarianism and united around “the restoration of the ancient order of things.” He believed the simple apostolic message contained in the New Testament could be easily discerned by the blank slate of the unprejudiced mind, liberated from creedal biases. For Campbell, manmade creeds impeded access to the plain truth of Scripture.

The Campbellite mantra eventually became, “No creed but the Bible.” However, quite ironically, Campbell spent millions of gallons of ink spreading his own opinions about just exactly what the liberated mind would discover in Scripture. For more than four decades he published a monthly read by thousands under the subsequent monikers The Christian Baptist (1823–1830) and The Millennial Harbinger (1830–1866). Most controversially, Campbell taught the necessity of baptism for the forgiveness of sins and the propositional nature of saving faith. Regarding this latter teaching, Campbell did not believe the Holy Spirit assisted in granting saving faith and that a person could believe in Christ as easily as believing George Washington was the first president of the United States. Campbell’s project divided churches across the nation and, according to historian Richard C. Traylor, around one-fourth of the total number of Kentucky Baptists joined his movement.

To combat Campbell’s influence, Baptist leaders astutely recognized that Campbell was not asking his readers to reject all creeds, but instead to replace their own respective creeds with his. To show this, his opponents labeled his movement “Campbellism”—a label he despised—and set about abstracting his various teachings into creedal form. In 1829 the Beaver Association in Ohio and Pennsylvania published a creedal summary of Campbell’s views in eight points by mining the articles published in his periodicals. This document supplied for the first time a compact summary of Campbell’s views. Several months later, Silas M. Noel, then the pastor of Frankfort (Baptist) Church, published what he called “The Thirty-Nine Articles,” alluding to the 1571 Anglican creed by the same name. Noel copied thirty-nine problematic teachings from Campbell’s Christian Baptist and interspersed his own commentary to clarify Campbell’s heretical views.

Campbell’s interlocutors affirmed Andrew Fuller’s earlier observation that “the man who has no creed has no belief.” Or, to put it another way, “Everyone has a creed; only a few bother to write it down.”

Recently, Rebecca McLaughlin has followed the footsteps of the Beaver Association and Silas Noel by identifying what she calls “the Secular Creed.” She argues that modern Western culture upholds five tenets of orthodoxy: Black Lives Matter, Love Is Love, The Gay Rights Movement Is the New Civil Rights Movement, Women’s Rights Are Human Rights, Transgender Women Are Women. The violation of any of these cherished doctrines risks being blackballed and cancelled as a bigoted heretic.

Everyone is committed to a creed of some sort because every person holds to a set of beliefs that they think everyone else should believe in too. Everyone believes that the world would be better if everyone else embraced a specific set of beliefs. If you think, “I wish everyone would mind their own business,” you are asserting a creedal belief. Or consider the popular New Atheist mantra, “Organized religion is harmful.” These are all statements that make universal assertions. These kinds of beliefs are religious by nature because they often speak to big issues, give rise to great zeal and passion, inspire proselytizing, and cause resentment of rival views.

Over one-fourth of Americans identify today as having no religious affiliation. My guess is those same people would claim that they have no religious creed. However, Andrew Fuller was right: to have no creed is to have no belief, and you simply can’t function in this world without belief. Therefore, everyone has a creed. You may just need help identifying it.

What is your creed? What are the beliefs that you cling to—that you think everyone else should embrace, too? And perhaps an even more important question: What is the basis for your creedal commitments? When it comes to ultimate issues, we need a stronger foundation than fads and feelings.

Each new age presents new circumstances that inspire creedal formulations, but novel doesn’t equate to true or better. Jesus Christ is the same yesterday, today, and forever (Hebrews 13:8). Since the beginning of his movement, Christians have gathered to formulate creeds summarizing the essence of his message in response to new contemporary challenges. These creeds, anchored in God’s revelation, have withstood the test of time, and have led God’s people to life and flourishing throughout history.

You have a creed already. You just need to make sure it’s true.

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