Southern Baptist leader’s critiques of Trump and his supporters are having an impact beyond the election.
Source: Is It Too Late for Russell Moore to Say Sorry? | Christianity Today
There is more trouble in the Southern Baptist empire. Russell Moore dared to challenge the shameless Trump supporters in SBC, and they are now taking revenge. No surprise there. It’s just the usual thing since the fundamentalist coup d’etat in SBC, a few decades ago.
Russell Moore, who presides over the political arm of the Southern Baptist Convention, called out religious right figures who supported Trump notwithstanding his “serious moral problems.”
Source: Russell Moore, Evangelical Leader, Faces Backlash For Anti-Trump Comments : NPR
The Southern Baptist Convention is turning quickly into Trump Baptist Convention. And Moore’s days in it are numbered, it seems. A real pity!
By: Brian Kaylor Southern Baptists at their annual meeting adopted a pro-Israel resolution deemed by some Arab Baptist leaders as unbiblical and harmful to their peacemaking efforts.
Source: Southern Baptists Adopt Controversial Resolution on Israel – EthicsDaily.com
A new act of political prostitution and blatent injustice in the Southern Baptist Convention.
Shame, Paige Patterson!
9 THINGS YOU SHOULD KNOW ABOUT THE SOUTHERN BAPTIST CONVENTION | Istorie Evanghelica.
Good to know.
Mind the racist past of SBC and the shrewd excuse they gave to trying to avoid it: ‘making a non-issue of slavery’. I wonder what is the next non-issue they will try to brush under the carpet. It seems that, at this time, the issue they try to avoid engaging with openly is sexual abuse in SBC congregations.
The presentation avoids talking about the fundamentalist take over that took place in this denomination, by use of the most perverse political means – it seems that, for SBC, ‘the end justifies the means’.
What is heresy? (an interview with Justin Holcomb).
This in response of a a SBC taliban accusing Rachel Held Evans of heresy.
Russell Moore, the ‘ethics’ champion of the Southern Baptists has discovered a new charismatic (!?!) dimension of his fundamentalist faith: exorcism.
In a recent presentation made at a recent national gathering of the Council on Biblical Manhood and Womanhood, Moore, president of the Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission of the Southern Baptist Convention, said that gender is “an issue of spiritual warfare.” He also suggested in this peach that the non-believing world is “a patriarchy of the most pagan kind.” (!!!)
We should, I guess, feel relieved. It is not SBC that is promoting misogyny. It is pagans. And Moore is going to exorcise them. We are safe now! Bot not from SBC, and their fundamentalist ‘hawks’, unfortunately.
See HERE a commentary on Moore’s statements, from Bob Allen, from ABPNews.
A new curriculum line introduced Aug. 1 by LifeWay Christian Resources is exceeding all expectations in terms of sales, but some are concerned about perceived bias toward a Calvinist theology.
By Bob Allen
A Southern Baptist college president says new curriculum by LifeWay Christian Resources is biased toward a theological viewpoint not “representative of the vast majority of Southern Baptists.”
Emir Caner, president of Truett-McConnell College in Cleveland, Ga., wrote Aug. 27 on the blog SBC Today that he and other conservatives were initially encouraged when the Southern Baptist Convention publishing house announced the Gospel Project, a new flagship curriculum line designed to go deeper than old Southern Baptist literature he described as “shallower than an oasis in the midst of the Mohave Desert.” Continue reading “Calvinism Troubles Again Southern Baptists”
Southern Baptist Decline by Martin E. Marty.
Another interesting analysis by Martin Marty. Here is a quotation:
‘The Baptists of the Southern/Great Comission persuasion were supposed to be exempt from (largely) white-Protestant-wide downward trends. Yet in convention in recent days they announced declines in membership every year of the past five, with more decline most recently. You can be sure that leadership will work strenuously to reverse trends, and one may hope with them that they will recover, but . . .’
A former SBC president says “a new kind of Calvinism” is causing division in the Southern Baptist Convention, and the time has come to talk about it.
By Bob Allen
A former president of the Southern Baptist Convention called the rising influence of Calvinism “the elephant in the room” that must be addressed in order to preserve unity in the nation’s second-largest religious body.
Jerry Vines, the retired long-time pastor of First Baptist Church in Jacksonville, Fla., and SBC president in 1989-1990, wrote in a blog June 6 that he has long enjoyed fellowship with Calvinists including Southern Baptist Theological Seminary President Albert Mohler, regarded a leader in the rising theological movement described with terms like the “New Calvinism” and “Young, Restless and Reformed.”
But Vines said he is now concerned about “a new kind of Calvinism among us.” Continue reading “Neo-Calvinism – The Present Day Fundamentalism”
Associated Baptist Press – Editor warns of encroaching Calvinism.
Gerald Harris expresses what we, here, in Eastern Europe, know too well through the missionary imperialism of SBC: they are on a mission to ‘Calvinise’ Baptists all over the world. Harris says:
“There is a growing perception that Southern Seminary has become a seedbed for a brand of Calvinism that is quite different from the Reformed theology of its founder, James Petigru Boyce, and also a training ground for Reformed church planters,” Harris said. “Therefore, it appears that some of our institutions and agencies are giving, at the least, tacit approval to Reformed theology or are, at the most, actively on a path to honor, if not implement Reformed theology and methodology in their institutions.”
Battle for the Bible Translation | Christianity Today | A Magazine of Evangelical Conviction.
This CT editorial shows why the ideologically based decision of SBC to ban the latest NIV translation of the Bible is dumb.
Here are two quotes:
The translation principle the resolution refers to is properly called “dynamic equivalence” or “functional equivalence.” Such translations try to do something on the order of common sense: When arriving at a word or phrase that literally says one thing but functionally means another, they choose the functional meaning.
In biblical times, speakers would address a mixed group of believers with the greeting “brothers.” Such was the practice even in English a generation ago. If a speaker were to do that today, many people in the room would assume the speaker was addressing his remarks only to the men present. If we translate the Greek word adelphoi as “brothers” in many biblical passages, it would lead the modern reader to the same conclusion. In short, it would mislead the reader. Hence, the need for functional translations.
…
To be clear, no contemporary, evangelically based translation changes the gendered names used in God’s self-revelation. The first person of the Trinity is still called “Father,” and Jesus is his “Son.”
One SBC concern is ideology, a commitment to complementarianism, the view that men and women have different, divinely appointed roles in church and home. We all should be concerned about any translation that lets an ideology shape its language. But we should not let ideology—egalitarianism or complementarianism—determine whether a translation is valuable or not. The only criterion for a good translation is this: Does it accurately convey what the authors said and what the original listeners heard?
Gender Debate: SBC Pastors Denounce NIV | Christianity Today | A Magazine of Evangelical Conviction.
SBC does it again. These guys never stop in their blind fundamentalism.
“Southern Baptists have asked their denomination-owned retail chain to stop selling a best-selling Bible translation, saying it contains errors when it comes to language about gender.”
Associated Baptist Press – Zimbabwe Baptist seminary principal fired.
Another act of ecclesial imperialism by the Southern Baptist Convention in the US. This time in Zimbabwe.
Whoever does not play according to their rules are prompt;y sanctioned. Of course, all for the glory of their manipulative god.
They have tried, unsuccessfully, to do the same thing in Romania a few years ago, through the hand of their faithful servant in my country.
Bill Leonard is one of the best known Baptist historians alive. He retired recently from the position if founding Dean of the School of Divinity at Wake Forest University.
I met Professor Leonard a few years ago, during a research conference organised by the Baptist Faculty of Theology at Bucharest University (he is a friend of the Dean of this faculty, Prof. Dr. Otniel Bunaciu, the President of the Romanian Baptist Union) and I was impressed by his scholarship and Christian realism.
Bill Leonard has published recently on ABP about the current identity crisis of the Southern Baptist. To be fair, I doubt SBC leaders will listen to this analysis, as one of the comments to that article indicates. It takes a lot of humility to listen to your critics, a virtue that is great demand among SBC leadership.
Continue reading “Bill Leonard on the Southern Baptist Identity Crisis”
Julie Pennington-Russell
Cu ceva timp in urma, Conventia Baptista de Sud (SBC) a primit sugestia de a crea o baza de date centralizata cu aceia dintre slujitorii ei care au fost acuzati de abuzuri sexuale, mai ales contra minorilor. Liderii SBC au respins cu oroare sugestia, replicind ca principiul autonomiei bisericii locale impiedica amestecul birocratiei SBC in chestiunile bisericilor locale in care slujesc clericii SBC.
David Gushee, Distinguished Professor of Ethics at Mercer University, and a moderate Baptist himself, reflects in an article published by the Associated Baptist Press about the identity crisis of moderate Baptists after the fundamentalist turn of the Southern Baptist Convention.
The term ‘moderate’ is really a misnomer, because under its umbrella we find both true Christians – in the Biblical, historical sense of this word, as well as straight liberals – in the real (as opposed to the manipulative) sense of this word, as people who deny the basis tenents of historic Christianity. Thus, ‘moderate’ means, in this context, rather ‘non-SBC’, which is mostly a structural, denominational label, not a theological one.
Yet, the same is true with the term ‘Evangelical’, rightly argues Gushee. Because SBC has ‘taken captive’ this label, for most ‘moderate’ Baptists ‘Evangelical’ really means ‘fundamentalist’ (whish is, thus, a also a structural term). Now, obviously, not all SBC Baptists are real fundamentalists, from a theological point of view, though its leadership may be so. Many of them are real Evangelicals, in the general, theological sense that this term has received after 1950, when applied to the ‘new Evangelicals’, as opposed to the theological fundamentalists, who become, consequently the ‘old Evangelicals’.
In this context, ‘moderate’ Baptists have a real identity problem (nevertheless, it seems that SBC Baptists are beginning to feel the same way, although they are not yet ready to admit it).
Where will the future of ‘moderate’ Baptists take them, asks Gushee? Read his (tentative) answer HERE.
“The Southern Baptist Convention is an archaic denominational dinosaur with a bloated bureaucratic infrastructure on the fast track to irrelevance,” he wrote. On the other hand, he continued, the SBC “does more missions work than any other organization on this planet and has many other vibrant and impactful ministries.” (Jonathan Merritt)
Read HERE an Associated Baptist Press on this topic.
Doug Weaver publică pe site-ul Associated Baptist Press un foarte interesant articol în care argumentează că baptiştii au jucat un rol esenţiat în promovarea libertăţii presei în societăţile occidentale.
Acest lucru poate părea straniu unora dintre noi, care ştiu că preluarea controlului în ce mai mare denominaţie baptistă, Southern Baptist, de către o facţiune fundamentalistă din cadrul acesteia s-a realizat şi prin restrângerea scandaloasă a libertăţii presei din cadrul acestei confesiuni.
Persona 