FINDLEY EDGE: UNLIKELY BAPTIST PROPHET

I recently re-discovered the late Findley Edge, a man I met twice- once in 1982 and again in 1992. Edge being considered a prophet is not new; Temp Sparkman, my major professor at Midwestern Baptist Theological Seminary, authored a pamphlet on Edge describing his roles as a teacher, a theorist, and a prophet. This brief essay will also touch on all three aspects of his ministry with the most emphasis on the prophetic.

Findley Edge was born in Albany, Georgia on September 6, 1916. (Clarence Jordan, another Baptist prophet, was born in Talbotton slightly more than four years previously just 96 miles north of Albany.) At the age of twelve, Edge joined First Baptist Church and was baptized. Yet he struggled with this spiritual experience into college when he accepted the fact that he was saved by faith and not by worry.

Edge enrolled at Stetson University in Florida where he played basketball. While a college senior he was ordained to the ministry and was called as pastor of the Apopka Baptist Church where he stayed a year following graduation. Then he went to the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary in Louisville, Kentucky first receiving the Master of Theology in 1942 and the Doctor of Theology in 1945. The first glimpse of his prophetic work was seen in his doctoral dissertation “Religious Education and the Problem of Institutionalism.” After receiving his doctorate Edge was appointed an instructor at Southern Seminary and then rose through the academic ranks to full professor in 1955 and senior professor in 1982. Edge died on October 28, 2002 at the age of 86.

Edge’s ascendancy into seminary academics was in conjunction with the rapid numerical growth of churches of all denominations following the end of World War II. In particular, the Southern Baptist Convention (SBC) grew beyond its traditional boundaries of the Old South to become a truly national denomination. (For example, I am currently a member of a large SBC congregation in Kansas.) Edge admittedly got caught up with this and began focusing on teaching methods rather than on theological foundations to combat institutionalism. As a result his book Teaching for Results was published in the mid-1950s; it was his best-selling book (this was the one book I remember being on my father-in-law’s bookshelf along with his Bible) and also his least favorite.

Then Edge began a shift back to the theological questions raised in his doctoral dissertation. The publication of A Quest for Vitality in Religion in the mid-1960s came with a darkened national mood with anti-war protests, the civil rights movement, and political assassinations. An examination of Edge’s prophetic emphasis which follows is based on my notes from his lectures I attended at Southeastern Baptist Theological Seminary in 1982, from Temp Sparkman’s Findley B. Edge: Teacher, Theorist, Prophet, and from my own doctoral dissertation.

For Edge, a quest for vitality in religion starts with a question of whether the problem of the Church should be doing better at what we are already doing or is there a more basic problem. Obviously, he pointed to the second part of his question. The basic problem with the Church is institutionalism. There are seven stages of institutionalism for any organization-

1.     A movement is born

2.     A degree of organizational development begins

3.     The movement becomes a “hated sect”

4.     The movement is accepted and not merely tolerated

5.     The movement gains popularity

6.     The movement becomes increasingly centralized in organization and belief

7.     The movement becomes institutionalized- it is massive and powerful with conformity in belief and expresses outward forms without deep internal dynamics

Thus, the problem of the Church is not numerical growth, the problem is the recovery of the essence of the Gospel. And the priesthood of the believer is the key doctrine for the Church to recover the Gospel essence. The goal of this doctrine is fulfill God’s redemptive purpose personally- saving relationship to God through Jesus Christ- and socially- bring healing to all people and places where there is brokenness. Some laity find ministry in the institutional Church, some in their vocation, and others through community action. The Cross is central to the work of the laity.

While Edge believed that the Church could be redeemed by the ministry of the laity, he identified four challenges-

1.     Our understanding of the priesthood of the believer is too limited and shallow. It is usually only interpreted as direct communication with God. The basic responsibility for ministry in the world is given to laypeople not clergy.

2.     We do not believe the doctrine. “Clergy” is not found in the New Testament, yet laypeople feel “clergy” are the ones called to do ministry.

3.     When the doctrine is pressed upon they laity, they protest that they have no time and that they have given money for others to do ministry. Proxy ministry is not biblical. Primary thing God desires from the laity is their loives not their money.

4.     Education occurs when one lives in a community of faith that attempts to live put its faith. The most powerful teaching force in a local church is the life of faith lived by the congregation.

Edge next turns to the institutionalization of religious education particularly by Southern Baptists. He felt Baptists had failed to develop a distinctive educational philosophy that would use to the fullest extent the privileges of freedom and creativity Baptists have historically emphasized. Edge had characterized religious education in the SBC in four ways-

1.     Teaching is viewed as the static passing on of the teacher to the learner

2.     The curriculum content came from the denomination and not from felt needs within each church

3.     Learning was depended upon external motivation

4.     Teaching in the church was incongruent with Jesus’s teachings and the dilemmas of the human condition

In response to this situation Edge attempted to forge a middle ground between the extremes of transmissive education as typified by the SBC on the one hand and creative education as advocated by the classical liberal theologians on the other. Edge termed his stance as experiential education. It is built upon the propositions that the learner is to have a genuine experience with Christ, that the Bible and Christian tradition are the guides for education among Christians, and that education is completed when mature Christian living is seen in the life  experiences of the learner. Edge’s emphasis on experiential education properly places religious education within the context of a renewed church which is undergirded by strong theological foundations and which which offers vitality instead of institutionalism.

 

COMPARISON OF RELIGIOUS EDUCATION STANCES

Stance	View of Learner	Curriculum	Evaluation of Results
Transmissive (traditional)	Emphasis on conversion from sinful state	Content-oriented	Relationship with God
Creative (liberal)	Essential goodness of human nature	Person-centered	Human relationships
Experiential (Edge)	Balance of conversion and development of Christian personality and character	Personal experience interpreted and guided by Bible and Christian tradition	Christian character

 

When one thinks of a prophet in the biblical sense one usually thinks of the powerful proclaimers of God’s Word from the Hebrew Scriptures. They were outsiders- either from the beginning or they were ousted from the institutional religious establishment. For example, the Prophet Amos when accused of prophesying for money literally replied, “Prophet, not ! Son of Prophet, not I! Herdsman and dresser of fig trees, I! (Amos 7:14)

In contrast, Findley Edge was an unlikely Baptist prophet because he was an insider rather than an outsider to the institutional Church he sought to reform. And he did his service primarily through religious education.