Though I missed the spirited debate over the invitation to Mike Pence, which occurred about an hour before I arrived at the SBC gathering Tuesday morning, I did hear a motion proposed to limit any such speaking invitations in future years to local political leaders.
The most interesting motion I heard discussed was to defund the Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission (ERLC), a proposal obviously targeted at punishing its president, Russell Moore, for his pointed criticism, during the 2016 U.S. presidential campaign, of SBC & other evangelical leaders’ support of Donald Trump. Richard Land, Moore’s predecessor, spoke in opposition to the motion but he did not step away from the microphone before expressing a desire that the ERLC return to the starkly conservative approach he had pioneered during his 25-year tenure.
As it turned out, the motion to defund the ERLC failed miserably – there were only a few scattered votes in support of it. That was one of the hopeful signs at last week’s SBC meeting – that maybe a new generation of SBC messengers is ready to listen to an ERLC that speaks prophetically TO it (the model of the old Christian Life Commission under Foy Valentine) rather than an ERLC that is a mouthpiece for a political party and for SBC leaders.
Russell Moore’s approach as president of the ERLC has been markedly different than Land’s. Whereas Land blatantly aligned the ERLC with GOP politics, Moore has carefully kept his distance from any such political alignment. Whereas Land was harsh to those who disagreed with him, Moore has been respectful. Whereas Land emphasizes a God who condemns, Moore emphasizes a God who redeems.
Early in Moore’s tenure, I discovered a key reason behind his gracious demeanor . . . the influence of T. B. Maston. Moore studied Christian Ethics at New Orleans Seminary under Joe Trull, a Maston student and a longtime member of the T. B. Maston Foundation Board of Trustees, on which I serve. In 2014, when I was chair of the Maston Foundation, Joe asked me to send Russell Moore a copy of Both-And: A Maston Reader, the book our Foundation had published a few years earlier. After I sent it to him, I received a most gracious response from Russell Moore, thanking me for the book and telling me that T. B. Maston and Joe Trull had been “formative” for his life and his sense of Christian ethics.
Another hopeful sign for the SBC is the reaction to both the invitation to Vice-President Mike Pence and the speech he gave Wednesday morning. Though attempts to rescind the invitation failed, it was encouraging that there were multiple such attempts and that they received broad support. Further encouragement arrived in the reaction to his speech; some messengers left the hall, refusing to listen to a political speech, and others used social media to object to Pence’s use of the SBC meeting to deliver what was, in essence, a campaign stump speech for the reelection of Donald Trump. Even the newly-elected president of the SBC, J. D. Greear, tweeted following Pence’s speech, “I know that sent a terribly mixed signal. . . . make no mistake about it, our identity is in the gospel and our unity is in the Great Commission. Commissioned missionaries, not political platforms, are what we do.”
Such is a hopeful sign – that so many in the SBC, including its new president, are speaking out against allowing politicians to co-opt it for political purposes, and against aligning the SBC so closely with a political party.
Greear referred to mixed signals regarding Southern Baptists’ emphasis of the gospel vs. that of politics. The convention also sent mixed signals regarding its treatment of women. Yes, Paige Patterson is gone from Southwestern Seminary and didn’t attend the meeting; yet his wife Dorothy, a co-conspirator in his treatment of women over the years, was accorded a seat of honor at “Tea at 3,” the traditional women’s pre-convention gathering hosted by Southwestern. Old loyalties are hard to break, aren’t they?
Several resolutions were offered regarding treatment of women by the SBC, its churches, and its seminaries. I commend Ken Camp’s Baptist Standard article to you if you’re interested in more details of these resolutions. The bottom line is that the SBC is trying to reckon with the abuse of women – and the tendencies of SBC ministers and leaders, exemplified by Paige Patterson, to enable and protect abusers and to shame and punish their victims.
I’m glad to see them finally doing something about this; however, they stubbornly refuse to consider that their theology is the real problem here. They refuse to consider that their interpretation of scripture might be wrong, that they might be twisting the holy words of scripture to support an unholy agenda. They cling to their emphasis of a few carefully selected scriptures to the exclusion of the balance of scripture, particularly Jesus’ treatment of women as equal partners in carrying his gospel to the world AND equal partners in human relationships, including marriage.
The problem with the SBC today is the same problem as decades ago, when the Fundamentalists gained control of it. They pick-and-choose scriptures that, unleavened by the rest of scripture: (1) portray God as hateful, condemning, and vengeful; (2) give authority to a few leaders rather than to the Holy Spirit within each believer; and (3) give authority to men over women in the church, in marriage, and in society. The result is to intimidate both women and men whom the Holy Spirit might be leading in a direction contrary to that preached by the self-anointed high priests.
If anyone dares question their scriptural emphases and interpretations, they accuse them of not believing the Bible!
Their faith is not in God, it is not in Jesus, it is in themselves.
These are the attitudes of the SBC leadership. I think many members of SBC churches don’t necessarily endorse such attitudes. Tragically, though, they have allowed such attitudes to carry the day.
Thus, God is mocked, and lives are destroyed.
It’s time for the SBC to exhibit the humility of Christ and examine its theology. God’s revelation didn’t end with the biblical canon . . . God is still revealing himself to women and men today. A static theology does not honor Christ . . . it fossilizes him.