Responding to the fundamentalist takeover of the Southern Baptist Convention, the Cooperative Baptist Fellowship was founded by Moderate Baptists seeking to reclaim the historic Baptist principle of soul freedom. While this effort was successful, such soul freedom made it difficult for Moderates to hold diverse viewpoints together in unity within the context of a covenant community. Borrowing from the Christian contemplative tradition, which offers a set of shared spiritual practices capable of constructing diverse covenant communities, it is the purpose of this project to offer a process for applying contemplative spiritual practices to the life of Moderate Baptist congregations to reframe Baptist soul freedom as that which allows for personal liberty within the context of a diverse covenant community. / 2025-01-25T00:00:00Z