Profs, former president respond on tongues

Nearly one year after the matter of private prayer language began dominating Southern Baptist headlines, pastors, professors and church members are weighing in on a topic that is relatively new and obscure to many Southern Baptists.

In several letters posted on his church’s website, Pastor Dwight McKissic of Cornerstone Baptist Church in Arlington disagreed with what he views as forbidding the practice of a private prayer language at Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary. Seminary officials, meanwhile, have insisted they are not forbidding tongues, but instead discouraging the promotion or advocacy of the charismatic gifts by faculty and administration through a statement the school’s trustees passed in their October meeting.

To make his case, McKissic appealed to the writings of several Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary professors and its former president.

The two Southwestern professors whose writings are quoted extensively, James Leo Garrett and Siegfried Schatzmann, along with former seminary president Kenneth Hemphill whom McKissic described as having endorsed the practice of private prayer language, varied in their reactions to McKissic’s citations.

One said he thought his treatment in a systematic theology text had been misrepresented as an endorsement of the practice, another preferred not to comment further and the last agreed that the practice should not be a test of fellowship.

McKissic made clear that he distinguishes his “continualist” viewpoint from a classical Pentecostal theology, favoring the word “ecstatic” to describe the use of a private prayer language.

Serving as a new trustee on Southwestern’s board, which last month issued a statement against promoting charismatic practices at the school, McKissic, convinced that the Baptist Faith and Message 2000 allows freedom for both views, pressed board officers to explain how their interpretation of private prayer language is more valid than his own.

“If my interpretation is unbiblical and harmful to the churches, how are you going to label the interpretations of current faculty members that are similar to mine as I will reference and document later?” McKissic asked.

Responding to a request from Baptist Press to clarify his view, Hemphill noted he had been referenced on the topic in both the recent discussion at Southwestern as well as in a document IMB trustees used a year ago. Both trustee boards used his 1992 book “Mirror, Mirror on the Wall: Discovering Your True Self Through Spiritual Gifts,” as a source. Hemphill’s workbook on spiritual gifts was released a few years later.

“Since a brief quotation from a much larger context has been used, additional information might prove helpful,” he told BP. “I do believe that Paul in 1 Corinthians 14 prohibits the public display of tongues in worship. He declares that they can be confusing to the ungifted,” citing 1 Corinthians 14:16, “and detrimental to evangelism,” referring to verse 23.

“I do not, however, believe that 1 Corinthians 14 provides sufficient scriptural warrant to prohibit the practice of a personal prayer language. I do not believe the Bible clearly teaches the cessation of such gifts,” Hemphill said.

“There are legitimate issues of interpretative difference on this matter among scholars with a commitment to biblical inerrancy. While I do not personally practice a prayer language nor advocate such practice, I do not think we should make this a test of one’s commitment to the conservative resurgence, the principles of biblical inerrancy, or loyalty to Southern Baptist life and work. I think we should be guided by Paul’s preference for intelligible speech in the gathered assembly and his caution that we should not prohibit a private prayer language,” he added, referring to 1 Corinthians 14:39.

Offering a further warning, Hemphill told BP, “We must be careful not to allow issues of personal interpretation and preference to deter us in our passion to expand God’s kingdom through our Baptist family of faith.”