The Southern Baptist Convention’s Executive Committee president, Frank Page, hopes the convention can unify. (See “Team named to address Calvinism in SBC,” Herald, Aug. 20, 2012).
He’s not talking about those of us who adhere to the 1963 Baptist Faith and Message. They don’t want to unify with us — except to have us continue to send Cooperative Program monies to the Executive Committee. So acknowledging this caveat in their desire to unify, Page appointed a committee to look into how the convention can hang together despite the polarizing potential of Calvinism. By way of review, Calvinists generally believe these five points:
Jim White
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• Human beings are so evil that they cannot turn to God unless God causes them to do so (Total Depravity).
• God decided before the creation of the world that he would cause some to turn to him while the others, whom he has not caused to turn to him, will perish (Unconditional Election).
• Jesus died for those whom God causes to be saved (Limited Atonement).
• God’s power to save is so great that those whom he has decided to save cannot resist the call to come to Christ (Irresistible Grace).
• Those whom God has saved cannot become unsaved (Perseverance of the Saints).
An embargoed report of the committee has been emailed to editors, myself included, requesting that we not publish it until after the Executive Committee’s publication, SBC Life, has a chance to be mailed and reach church mailboxes on June 3. On that date we will make these documents available. Having read them, I don’t think you will find any surprises.
I am all for unity, and I am fully supportive of the John 17 Scriptures (v. 21 especially) Page uses to promote the unity of Christ-followers. Although I am reasonably certain this passage would have been included in the original autographs our SBC brethren prized so highly, it seems to have been recently discovered after the conservative takeover. If they were aware of these verses from the lips of Jesus then, they weren’t talking about them. Then their speech was laced with references to doctrinal purity rather than unity.
No doubt, you have detected a note of irony and even satire in my remarks. Having confessed these, let me press on to make other observations. I hope the SBC will avoid becoming even smaller in its thinking and its influence by maintaining unity within the fellowship.
As we all know, we can win battles and still lose wars. I sincerely hope that the SBC will become the great force for Christ’s kingdom that it once was. The world needs it. The lost need it. But for this to happen, the convention will have to wrest itself free from personages with big egos and small minds.
In the mid 1980s, I was editor of The Deacon, a quarterly magazine produced by the Baptist Sunday School Board (now LifeWay Christian Re-sources), and a member of Nashville’s First Baptist Church. Occasionally James L. Sullivan, a former president of the BSSB, would teach our Sunday school class. This man was one of the truly great statesmen of Southern Bap-tist life. I remember one Sunday morning we asked him to share with us his concerns about what was then the rising fundamentalism within the SBC.
He replied by saying that his concern with fundamentalism was that it always needed an enemy to validate itself. Because of this, it had the tendency to continually narrow the field of who was acceptable. He predicted that if they managed to drive out all those who did not hold to the verbal plenary theory of inspiration they would then turn on each other because fundamentalism must have an enemy to fight.
I have, for the most part, admired and supported Frank Page beginning with his election as SBC president. Despite asserting that women should not serve in ministry, a position at odds with that advocated by his Ph.D. dissertation at Southwestern Seminary, I believe Page is a man of integrity.
He is certainly statesman enough to see the need for unity in the SBC despite its diversity. The trouble is, there are too many influential individuals who believe so completely that they are right and everyone else is wrong that they see anything less than the total conversion of everyone with opposing views as unacceptable. I’m not suggesting that these folks are totally depraved, even though the Calvinists would disagree. I know people can change. Perhaps they will. For the good of the Kingdom, I hope so. But can they do without an enemy?
Republican Party fundamentalism
Perhaps the Tea Party will serve as an example of fundamentalism turning against those who are not quite conservative enough. Revealing its own small-mindedness by criticizing New Jersey governor Chris Christie for welcoming President Obama to Atlantic City as it prepared to re-open following Superstorm Sandy, Tea Party political fundamentalists have begun the process of exclusion. All this may work in Christie’s favor, however, since most Americans seem to be tired of being polarized. Christie’s 67 percent approval rating is something other Republicans and the Tea Party, in particular, should pay attention to.
Is this to say we may be seeing a swing by the Republican Party back toward a more moderate conservative center? It’s too early to tell, but Michelle Bachmann’s retirement and Christie’s refusal to be cowed by Tea Party criticism are good signs.
Global fundamentalism
We can only hope that on a global scale fundamentalism will eventually play itself out. While that hope lacks evidence to this point, perhaps thinking people will see the “all or nothing” mentality of fundamentalism to be the polarizing force it is.
Economists say, “When you find yourself in a hole, stop digging.” Perhaps our own government and military will discover ways to stop producing new Muslim fundamentalists. But drone strikes, renegade soldiers who kill civilians and continuing to hold detainees who we don’t have evidence enough to charge but who we are afraid to let loose, are not helping.
Jim White ([email protected]) is executive editor of the Religious Herald.