For All the Saints

Today, November 1, is All Saints' Day. If you know a saint, call them up! But them a steak dinner, maybe, or some flowers.

But seriously. Today is the day on which the church celebrates all those who have been saints in the past, whether or not we remember their names. I think that it is an especially appropriate day to remember the brave women and men that first gathered together in England during the early 17th century and began the movement of free churches that we now call Baptist.
Many of these souls were willing to suffer fines, imprisonment, or worse, just to be able to worship in the way that they felt was pleasing to God.

Baptists, unlike many other groups within Christianity, aren't able to point to one person (or small group of people) when describing their origins. Methodists have the Wesleys, Reformed Christians point to Zwingli and Calvin, Anglicans and Episcopalians can point to Cranmer and Hooker, but Baptist beginnings were so humble that the exact circumstances of our birth are foggy at best. John Smyth and Thomas Helwys, while important, pale next to the mostly unnamed persons who led the JLJ church into a Baptist expression of faith through adult believers' baptism.

I think that perhaps this tendency towards anonymity, the emphasis of the religious leadership and experience not of bishops and nuns but of everyday people, sets the Baptist movement apart. Today, however, many Baptists shun anonymity, working to build the biggest church, the biggest programs, and the biggest name. This early tendency is in jeopardy.

Do you think that anonymity is a desirable quality in the Christian life? Is it being lost in Baptist life, and if so, how might we begin to recover it?