Roger Olson Asks CBF Liberals to Drop ‘Moderate’ Label

An article by Bob Allen, from Baptist News Global.

A quarter century after forming to resist fundamentalism in the Southern Baptist Convention, theology professor Roger Olson says the Cooperative Baptist Fellowship is increasingly polarizing over liberal views gaining ground in the originally moderate group.

A professor at a moderate Baptist seminary says some individuals within the Cooperative Baptist Fellowship are starting to sound more liberal than moderate, prompting others to worry the quasi-denomination is drifting leftward and away from its evangelical roots.

Roger Olson, professor of theology and Christian ethics at Baylor’s George W. Truett Theological Seminary, said in a Patheos blog Feb. 22 that a division is developing in the 1,800-church network founded in 1990.

On one hand, he said, there are those who want to elevate the Baptist concept of “soul competency” to question traditional orthodoxy. Others “want to hold to basic Christian orthodox and evangelical commitments while avoiding rigid, narrow dogmatism over secondary matters.”

Olson said Cecil Sherman, the founding coordinator of the CBF who died in 2010, was by all accounts the figurehead leader of the moderate Baptist party that left the Southern Baptist Convention to establish a truly moderate — neither liberal nor fundamentalist — Baptist group in the South.

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