I'm not a member of the SBC. Despite all the bad press they get, I do admire their resolve. They just had their annual meeting down in Indianapolis this weekend where they elected Rev. Johnny Hunt their new president.
Scott from Scotteriology has chimed in with some (warranted?) criticism. He begins with a few quotations gleaned from the speakers at the conference, the best of which is this one:another former president of the SBC Jimmy Draper who observed...“I hate to say it, but we are not plateaued. We’re not even just declining. We’re in a free fall.” “You know why we don’t win the lost?” Draper asked. “Because we don’t like them. They are different from us. We don’t care for them. We have no real love for them.” “People just don’t touch eternity when they are around us,” Draper said. “We’re too self-absorbed.”In addition to those statements they also voted on these motions:
A motion by Harold M. Phillips of Pleasant View Baptist Church in Port Deposit, Md., that all Southern Baptist colleges and seminaries teach creation science.
A motion by Jeff Purvis of First Baptist Church in Pevely, Mo., that SBC bylaws be amended to require that people who serve on boards and commission “agree to abstain from drinking alcoholic beverages and using any other recreational drugs,” agree with the BF&M and be a member of a CP-giving church.
A motion by Eric Williams of Long Prairie Baptist Church in Belle Rive, Ill., asking that messengers not allow the HCSB [Holman Christian Standard Bible] “or any translation that questions the validity of any Scripture passage or verse” to be used in any SBC publication or at the podium of any SBC meeting.Scott's perception is that while they might be recognizing their declining numbers they're not doing a whole lot to reinvent themselves. I'll keep my opinions to myself, but I do have a few questions.
There's a point to which Christians need to be relevant to their culture, but what does this quotation, '“People just don’t touch eternity when they are around us,' Draper said. 'We’re too self-absorbed.'" mean for the SBC? Should the SBC relax a bit on these doctrines they've historically defended in order to keep members? Do you think they're saying one thing and acting in another way? Other thoughts?
If any SBC members want to jump in to offer some more insightful commentary, I'd welcome it.
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Let's be real about the SBC. It first separated itself out from other Baptists in the early 19th century, because the Baptist church generally condemned slavery and favored manumission with (not that they used this exact phrase) all deliberate speed. However, since the great revivals of the 18th century, some Baptists had become rich enough, and some plantations owners pious enough, that there were Baptists who had a serious economic investment in human capital. The SBC has, in one way or another, been imposing their own rigid notion of Biblical Truth ever since. True, they no longer endorse slavery, nor even racial discrimination, they have expressed appropriate regrets for their institutional predecessors' sins, but, they still reflect an approach to Truth that belies their ancestors' reliance on the Act of Toleration.
Jimmy Draper has it about right. You don't have to endorse prostitution to reach out to prostitutes, but you can't win them if you shun them. You can't find a consensus that most of your fellow citizens can live with on controversial subjects like abortion if you don't stop to listen to other sincere viewpoints, and then reiterate your own, taking what you just heard into consideration. If you get enthusiastic about the sound of your own voice proclaiming the virtues of Creation Science, you miss out on your brother or sister who gently suggests that evolutionary biology was first revealed in the first two chapters of Genesis.
The SBC has no obligation to cease teaching the literal truth of Biblical revelation. They might reconsider whether their particular assembly of fallible human beings is always right in its understanding of what they are all so diligently reading.