You probably won’t be surprised to learn that Presidents Clinton and Carter didn’t invite the Southern Baptists to their new movement of left-leaning Baptists (read about it here). I thought about blogging on this weird presidential alliance, but I can do no better than Russell Moore has done in his excellent piece: “Bill Clinton and Baptist Unity.” Moore is right on the money with this one. Go read it.
One Comment
Art Stauffer
As someone who was born into the Southern Baptist Faith, and having a very rich tradition and faith into this, I actually relish the opportunity to look at a more “left” version of our denomination. The extreme fundamentalist stance taken by the church on certain issues such as the boycotting of certain and companies that don’t meet the SBC requirements for their extreme stance against homosexuality such as Ford, Disney, and even Wal-Mart seems to be a huge waste of energy. Issues such as the ever increasing rule of the SBC over independent churches on giving to the CP (of which I support, but much like tithing shouldn’t it be done in the spirit of giving) to even more ludicrous ideas that the water that Christ turned into wine or was partaken of at the Passover feast that became our Lord’s Supper was made from “unfermented grapes” is one of the most bizarre things I have come across in sometime. Perhaps if the SBC were to accept the Atkins Diet and new doctrine could spring up that the bread that Christ used to feed the multitudes was not made up of flour, so it was ok. I grew up Baptist, my great grandmoter lived to be 100 years old, was in the first women’s graduating class of Baylor and played the organ at her church until she was 95. I was saved at Falls Creek, but the ever increasing closed mindedness, not on major issues, but on trivial issues has simply caused me to go somewhere else in search of my church life. Instead of seeing this as yet another attack on a world that the paranoid SBC sees as attacking them, why can’t you see the CBF as a “brotherhood of Baptists”. Do we really want a denomination that has essentially become a denomination of Stepford Wives that goes along with what ever the SBC says, just because they say so? Don’t we want our children to ask certain questions concerning faith and God so that as Christian and Baptist parents we can look to ourselves and to God for the correct answers to give them? I would ask Baptists all over the world to really consider looking at the SBC and CBF as working together and having the potential to strengthen, not divide Southern Baptists.