One of the things that I praise God for is the conservative resurgence within Southern Baptist life. This year marks the 30th anniversary of Adrian Roger's election as President of the SBC, an event that almost all Baptist historians say changed the face of the convention forever. Since that monumental event, we have consistently seen conservative leaders who hold strongly to the inerrancy of God's Word voted in as president of the convention. We have seen trustee boards that were once dominated by liberals slowly begin to fill up with conservatives. We have seen seminary leaders who were liberal retire or resign, and solid conservatives replacing them to train men and women for ministry. We have seen faculty changes that has produced the best scholarship available today in our SBC Seminaries. In a word, we have seen a move of God that is unparalleled in the history of the church. For those who are interested in reading more about the transition years, two books stand out in my mind. The first is "The Bapist Reformation," by Jerry Sutton, a Southern Baptist conservative who now teaches at Liberty University. The second is "Uneasy in Babylon," by Barry Hankin, a moderate baptist historian who teaches at Baylor University, but delivers a well-researched and balanced evaluation of the movement and its impact on SBC life.
In light of God's grace to us in the last thirty years, this article reminded me of where we could be today were it not for the grace of God. This article was published as an opinion piece in the Associated Baptist Press, and it essentially accuses Jesus as being a racist until he encountered a woman who challenged his bias and helped him to "see" his error. After that he "learned" his mission was to the entire world and left his prejudiced views of Jewish elitism.
While there are many disagreements being aired within SBC circles right now regarding a host of topics, let's all thank God that all of them are being done from the perspective that God's Word is infallible, inerrant, and sufficient for our faith and practice!
Click Here for ABP Article
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1 comment:
Jamie, I see the residue of the years of moderate control at the associational level. I have been strongly considering a proposal to draw new associational lines around theological integrity instead of geographical proximity.
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