We can't just MOVE ON

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From the time since I started my blog in June 2002, it seems that I was often running across things that made me shake my head and felt compelled to comment,  like various statements made to the media by an SBC representative about the impending war in Iraq (see an article I wrote in response to an NPR interview with three Church related spokespersons).  There were also the continuing "theological police" raids on various "remaining infidels" within SBC ranks.  These things make me very nostalgic for the days when the SBC atmosphere was one of ecumenical cooperation (likely the same thought occurred to the "dissidents" who formed the "Cooperative Baptist Fellowship" in order to form support structures to keep people at work in the things to which they have been called,  and who found themselves getting pressured, fired,  and villified in the publications of the "takeover groups",   which has spread to most of the Seminaries and official Southern Baptist agencies and State Conventions.

It seems that some State conventions have resisted this "takeover" and forced the "fundamentalist takeover types" to form their own "dissident groups" within the states to "whip those renegade, liberal state groups into shape".  It's all pretty sad,  but I certainly don't subscribe to the notion that the CBF and other groups should "just move on".  I've had some of my more conservative acquaintances tell me that.  "It's clear that they've lost so why don't they just move on". 

I don't know about you,  but who was it that dropped the name "Baptist" from their publication agencies and Bookstores in favor of "Lifeway"?  Perhaps they should form a new group and change the name of all the Churches who wish to follow their lead and "sign on" into the the new "Baptist Faith and Message" document (why didn't they call it the "Lifeway Faith and Message?"). But I don't think this is the way.  The way had been ecumenicity and cooperation.  And it worked for over a hundred years (now I'm sounding like the traditionalist,  but in this case,  the traditionalists are the fighters of the "status-quo";  the new "status quo".

Other mainline denominations have thus far managed to keep a center.  Perhaps the local autonomy emphasis of the Baptist theology has been its undoing in the SBC (although it has been a "local autonomy" so narrowly defined by its adherents that it becomes theological intimidation by public campaign.  The defintion of the "local autonomy" by the "theological police" as that which advances a theologcial agenda which is cast as "requirement" flies in the face of the idea which has heretofore allowed Churches to nurture a diversity of theolgical emphases. I think this attempt (and often successful) by the present SBC leadership to predefine some theological boundaries of what is legitimately "Christian" is a cancerous form of orthodoxy.

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© Copyright 2003 Dale Lature. Last update: 9/23/2003; 3:39:36 PM.