Maranatha Baptist Church subscribes to the doctrinal statement of the 1963 Baptist Faith and Message. You can read the statement in its entirety here.
Maranatha Baptist Church affirms historic Baptist distinctives, including:
1. Bible Freedom – the freedom for all to interpret the Bible under the Lordship of Jesus Christ. The Bible transforms our lives, supersedes any form of creed, and frees the individual to interpret scripture as the Holy Spirit leads.
2. Soul Freedom – the belief that a person’s faith is personal, experiential, and voluntary. A person is responsible for making up his or her own mind about God and spiritual matters.
3. Church Freedom – the belief that local churches are free under the Lordship of Christ to determine their membership and leadership, to order their worship and work, and to ordain whom they perceive as gifted for ministry. No one — no pastor, no civil magistrate, no convention of churches — can dictate to the local church.
4. Religious Freedom – defined as “a free church in a free state ” — the separation of church and state.
(Walter Shurden, The Baptist Identity: Four Fragile Freedoms. Macon, GA: Smyth and Helwys, 1993.)
Affiliations:
Southern Baptist Convention
Cooperative Baptist Fellowship
Georgia Baptist Convention
Cooperative Baptist Fellowship of Georgia
Religious Freedom — defined as “a free church in a free state” — the separation of church and state. …Why does it sound like the Baptists who wrote such things as the above were preparing to live under a Soviet-style autocracy?
In order to ensure to citizens freedom of conscience, the church in the USSR is separated from the state, and the school from the church. Freedom of religious worship and freedom of antireligious propaganda is recognized for all citizens.
— 1936 USSR constitution, article 124
Citizens of the USSR are guaranteed freedom of conscience, that is, the right to profess or not to profess any religion, and to conduct religious worship or atheistic propaganda. Incitement of hostility or hatred on religious grounds is prohibited. In the USSR, the church is separated from the state, and the school from the church.
— 1977 USSR constitution, article 52