Today I had the poor fortune to read several pages of Michel Foucault, the French philosopher best known for his description of the relationship of knowledge and power, and the ways in which society is regulated through power relationships mediated through the most mundane aspects of life, such as economics, religion, and sexuality. I did, however, find one idea, which he in turn stole from Nietzsche. Foucault says that history should not be written as if there is some grand "transcendent" idea floating above it which directs it and gives it meaning. Rather, history should be written in the form of genealogy. Ideas are not connected to each other because they have some given characteristic or set of characteristics. Instead, they are grouped together because they flow into and from each other and are therefore related. At least, I think that's what he said.

This is good news for the Baptist historian. Baptist history need not be a catalog of instances in which people, wearing the name "Baptist," follow a set of rules (advocating the separation of church and state, adult believer's baptism, etc.) that are provided by the historian after the fact. It is possible, of course, to discern these marks of the Baptist people, but it might be best if we did not convert these observations into ironclad rules that help us determine who to include and who to reject. In other words, an "is" shouldn't automatically become an "ought."

Perhaps this is why McClendon has so much trouble finally deciding what it means to be "baptist." His family tree sprawls so far that some of the branches have precious little in common... and yet, we are still family!