SBCOutpost

Baptist Press gets it wrong sometimes. Today, they played nasty.

The headline for the story on Jonathan Merritt’s efforts to help coalesce Southern Baptist leaders to address environmental issues more boldly and consistently reads as follows:

“Seminary student’s climate change project is not SBC’s”

Editor Will Hall has made sure that great lengths were pursued to distance the national convention from the efforts of several prominent Southern Baptist leaders, including current and former presidents. Richard Land was quoted ad nauseum in opposition to the initiative.

Of course, if Southern Baptists measured the sweat pouring off Richard Land when he walks more than a half block, we’d be convinced that global warming was certain.

What really grinds my gears is that Will Hall and the propagandists at Baptist Press are greatly concerned to headline this story in a way that makes sure nobody assumes the Southern Baptist Convention approves. But let Richard Land flap his jowls with insensitive and arguably anti-Semitic invectives, and place your bets whether Baptist Press publishes this headline:

“Denominational executive’s disdain for New York Senator not shared by Southern Baptists.”

Jonathan Merritt tries to do something constructive, and BP wants to make sure we know he’s just a “seminary student” who is out of step with the national convention. Let Dick Land make an ass of himself and we get a First Person so loaded with double-speak and counter-assault that Dick Nixon could have written it.

And bloggers get a bad rap for agenda-driven reporting . . .

Just think what would have happened if Al Shackleford pulled stunts like this. Oh wait, we know what happened to him.

One more thing: Dick Land wants us to be sure that he and the ERLC are responsible to endorse, affirm, and promote only those positions adopted by the messengers of the Southern Baptist Convention. Unless, of course, it is the Cornwall Alliance, which was endorsed by Dick’s right hand Duke, according to Baptist Press.

And while I’m at it: Baptist Press republishes the text of the 2006 and 2007 resolutions on the environment and global warming, presumably to show what Southern Baptists truly think on the matter. Assuming Southern Baptists think, that is. But I suggest that those resolutions were so confusing . . . so complicated . . . as to make their adoption meaningless and to necessitate further amplification of what Southern Baptists truly believe by leaders like Danny Akin, David Dockery, and Jack Graham, and Timothy George.

Sound familiar?

Evangelicalism in general and the SBC in particular may be at a crossroads.  We can already see the rift in our own convention that the blogosphere has exposed.  People who’s theology is not six inches apart are polarized over a variety of lesser things, mostly politics of either a denominational or governmental sort.

The pages here at SBC Outpost reveal that all too often.  The things that divide us can be seen in posts about global warming and presidential portraits.  In a denomination of [ahem] 16 million - give or take nine or ten million - we can see reflections of evangelicalism as a whole.  The question is: where will the future take us?

There are those who advocate a return to the good old days.  Bring back John Dagg.  Resurrect 18th Century Associational church life.  Let us be what we used to be.  Re-establish the old landmarks [snort, snicker - pun intended].

Opponents of this view warn that it will lead to obscurantism.  First we’ll become like Independent Baptists, railing against cultural evils to ever-shrinking crowds as we develop a “remnant” mentality awaiting the second-coming so that God can rescue us from this great big mess.  Then in twenty years we’ll become like the Amish.  Cute.  Odd.  And irrelevant.  Proponents see it as the only way to be faithful.

There are others who advocate a new day.  Recognize that the SBC/evangelicalism has never been as homogeneous as it is being portrayed and rally around those things which are essential and with which we all can agree.

Opponents of this view warn that it will lead to a slippery slope into the well-worn path already cut out by mainline denominations.  First we’ll talk about cooperation, then poverty and AIDS, then we’ll give up on the Bible and adopt an anything-goes ethic.  Proponents see it as recapturing the main thing - the gospel.

Bill Leonard warned that this sort of rift would lead to a splintering of the SBC.  The New York Times suggests evangelicalism as a whole may be right there with it.

Are these our options?  Does anyone care whether we come together or not?

about why the majority of the “40 most influential evangelical leaders” do not support Mike Huckabee: 1) he does not allow himself to be beholden to special interests [read: he cannot be “controlled”], and 2) that which it always comes down to….drumroll, please…. money.  He raised taxes and doesn’t apologize for it.  It appears that for some it is better to have a firm fiscal conservative who has a questionable past on social issues than it is to have a firm social conservative who has a questionable past on fiscal issues.

I guess Bill Clinton was right after all: “It’s the economy, stupid.”

The SBC and politics has always been a strange thing to me.  It appears to me that at every turn we are more than happy to do the politically expedient thing even at the expense of our overarching principles.  The loudest “amens” and cheers that I heard in Greensboro were given by flag-waving (literally) Southern Baptists to a pro-abortion, drinking Presbyterian who had just said that we would not stop until we eliminated (not prayed for, but eliminated) our enemies.  Well…I do suppose that applause was rivaled by the unveiling of the Billy Graham idol statue.

In the paraphrased words of Ronald Regan:  There we go again.