(ABP) — The most prominent Baptist bloggers who led a two-year revolt against the Southern Baptist Convention establishment have abandoned their Internet-fueled campaign, but they insist they will continue the crusade for more openness in the SBC with other methods.
Marty Duren, Benjamin Cole and several other young voices in the denomination announced this week that they won't be blogging about SBC issues anymore.
“Bloggers have been successful at guiding conversation,” Duren wrote on www.sbcoutpost.com June 14, one day after the annual SBC meeting. “But for lasting change to take place, it must move into larger realms with more participants at more levels.”
But Wade Burleson, whose dispute with fellow trustees of the SBC International Mission Board in 2005 became a rallying cry for the online revolution, says he will continue to blog, even “redoubling” his efforts, for the sake of the missionaries.
The bloggers are widely credited with electing South Carolina pastor Frank Page as SBC president in 2006. They used the election to broaden participation in the denomination beyond the entrenched conservative leaders, who themselves rose to power on a reform agenda almost three decades ago.
After Page was re-elected June 12, the young reformers' candidate for first vice president was defeated. But they achieved their second big victory a day later by getting denominational approval for a statement declaring the SBC's revised doctrinal statement — the 2000 “Baptist Faith & Message” — “is sufficient in its current form to guide trustees in their establishment of policies and practices of entities of the convention.”
That edict, designed to halt the “narrowing of parameters” that has pushed some charismatics, Calvinists and other minorities to the SBC's margins, may not have its intended effect — several SBC agency presidents immediately said the “Baptist Faith & Message” is a “minimal” statement, not an “exhaustive” one.
But the bloggers insist they won that battle and are not leaving the fight discouraged.
“I am abandoning no effort to which I have committed myself for the sake of reforming and refocusing the Southern Baptist Convention,” Cole told Associated Baptist Press after announcing his change of focus on his blog (www.baptistblog.wordpress.com).
“I am shifting to new methods,” said Cole, a pastor in Arlington, Texas, whose attacks on Paige Patterson, president of Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary, have shocked even his supporters. … “[N]o agenda for reform will succeed if bridges are burned at every turn. I have become a polarizing figure, and I knew that was an unavoidable consequence of raising the concerns that I have in the manner that I chose.”
Duren, a pastor in Buford, Ga., said he will be going back to school, spending more time with his family, focusing on ministry, and blogging occasionally but not about SBC politics.
“It is time for the conversation to expand beyond the blogosphere, way beyond the blogosphere,” Duren told ABP. “In fact, if those who have merely been watching the conversation do not begin contributing to it, it may cease — and sooner rather than later. If reform in the SBC is dependent on a few blogs to bring it to pass, then the old ship is closer to the cliffs that we thought.”
In addition to Duren and Cole, other Baptist bloggers — including Art Rogers (www.twelvewitnesses.com) and Allen Cross (www.downshoredrift.typepad.com) — announced they will stop blogging or change topics.
Burleson, who Duren described as “ever-optimistic,” said he will continue commenting on SBC issues. His blogging about new restrictions on missionaries in 2005 so upset his fellow IMB trustees that they tried to remove him from the board — a historical first.
“I have decided to stick it out for the good of the missionaries on the field and the future of the SBC as a whole,” Burleson, a pastor in Enid, Okla., said in an interview. “It has never been about me. It is about two competing visions of what our convention should look like in the years to come.”
“In the end, the broad, cooperative, conservative, peace-loving, gospel-telling, missions-oriented view of the SBC must win out,” Burleson said by e-mail. “I'm committed to ensure it does.”
Duren, Cole and Burleson said the movement they helped start will continue.
“I believe that there is incredible momentum for swinging this convention back toward the center of conservatism, rather than follow a few leaders into their headlong rush for independent fundamentalism,” Cole said.
“I hope that a new crop of 'dissenters' have been emboldened to step forward,” Duren said. “The reality is that only the leaders of the SBC … can address many of the issues that need to be addressed.”
Others in the blogosphere admitted more discouragement with the lack of reform and level of resistance. Many said they will focus their efforts on networking outside the SBC or with others committed to non-traditional ministry.
“I entered the Baptist blogosphere for the ultimate purpose of opening doors for younger leaders in the SBC to have a voice that was not being sought and not being heard,” Duren wrote in his blog. “To some degree this has been accomplished. This [blog] has been a place where their voice could be heard. But it does seem that more and more younger leaders are simply walking away for non-denominational pastures.”
But Burleson said the recent changes in the SBC have been “astounding” and predicted “other young, reformed-minded bloggers will arise” to replace the first generation.
“The movement has incredible momentum,” he said. “It will not shrivel up. There is now in place a very real sensitivity to the narrowing of the parameters of cooperation in the SBC that was not present just two years ago.”
“Change is happening. Of course, any time new ideas and people begin to arise, the status quo pushes back. Opposition is to be expected. But the men and women I've met are not easily dissuaded from their objectives of advancing the kingdom of Christ through the SBC.”
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Read more:
SBC: doctrinal statement ‘sufficient,' but impact on hiring remains unclear
(6/13/2007)