SBCOutpost

Your good, green friends at the Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission have joined together with historian (no snickering please) David Barton, the ever lovely Janet Parshall, an apparently less family-focused James Dobson, a few organizations supported by oil money, a handful of Southern Baptist theologians like Russell Moore and Daniel Akin, Singer Pat Boone — who apparently got off the the Crazy Train in time to sign — and Oklahoma’s entire Senatorial delegation

Ergun “Butch” Caner apparently did not sign this declaration either.

Go check out the We Get It campaign as it rolls out of Nashville coming to a convention near you.

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?

Count Dickula has caught the attention of the folks over at Ethics Daily for a recent lecture at the Criswell College wherein he referred to New York Senator Charles Shumer as a “shmuck,” a word of interesting Yiddish derivation.

Senator Shumer is Jewish.

Of course, this bit of news has distracted us momentarily from following the ERLC president’s acrobatics to support John McCain in light of the campaign failures of his preferred candidate Fred Thompson Mitt Romney.

More episodes like this and Criswell College President Jerry Johnson will have to lower his asking price to sell the school.  In related news, it has been reported that Criswell College is receiving an on-site accreditation review today.

“The second thing I feel strongly about is that personally as a Southern Baptist Church member for the last 35 years, I have been deeply hurt and offended by agency heads of the Southern Baptist Convention who have intruded themselves into the process of the selection of our convention presidents. I will not do that. Just as there are responsibilities and privileges that go with working on a gubernatorial staff, [so] there are also responsibilities and privileges that go with being the head of a Southern Baptist agency or institution. There are some things that a pastor of a church may be free to do and to say publicly but an agency head, in my opinion, loses that privilege when he accepts the privilege and the responsibly of being the head of an institution which belongs to all Southern Baptists.”

Taken from Richard Land’s 1988 job interview with the Board of Trustees of the Christian Life Commission (ERLC) Quoted from Volume 4 of James Helfley’s “Truth in Crisis” (pg. 179-180). Subtitled is “The Controversy in the Southern Baptist Convention”

Surely there would be a couple of easy deductions from Dr. Land’s position pertinent for today’s entity heads. Interjecting “white papers” through “Lieutenants” into entity affairs may give “plausible deniability,” but it strikes a blow to one’s ethical framework according to Dr. Land’s assertions.

And, lost in a recent comment thread is the question of ethics for an entity head serving in a capacity (SBC President) that would afford him a position of influence over those who would then be elected to serve as his Board. The commenter serves in an environment where that would not be possible as it is surely a conflict of interest. Here, it seems Dr. Land suggests that once a person assumes the position as entity head he/she forfeits certain privileges. Running for President of the SBC would then seem to constitute both a conflict of interest and assuming a privilege given up once serving an institution that belongs to all Baptists.

Would have been good to find this quote before other entity heads donned the title, “President of the SBC.” Maybe it will help us keep from repeating past mistakes.

Cough! Cough! [He brushes away the cobwebs around here.]

In February, 2005 Time Magazine named Richard Land one of the 25 most influential evangelicals in America.  What we here at SBC Outpost would like to know is: who exactly does Richard Land influence?  Does he influence you?  In what way?  If you’re a balding pastor are you wanting to know who did his hair plugs for him?  If you are fashion-challenged are you wanting to know where you can get your own pair of two-tone wing tips?  If you have an eating disorder are you curious about his secrets to a robust figure?

Ok….those last few comments were just silly and can be ignored.  We don’t want a bunch of humorless whiners complaining in the comment section about how mean we are.  But seriously, what was the last thing you heard or read from Richard Land that influenced you and how did it influence you?  Of all the people we would expect to be influenced by Dr. Land we would think it would be involved and informed Southern Baptists.