It was so refreshing to read the article in the May 11, 2006, edition of the Religious Herald! For as long as I have been involved in the Southern Baptist Convention as a youth pastor's — and now senior pastor's — wife, I have waited for something like this to happen. The conservative “take over” took place just as my husband was beginning his seminary training, and it was hard to follow and understand at that time. But as time passed it became more and more nauseatingly clear that the SBC was going to be changed forever. Each year as the convention met, I remember thinking that maybe this was the year that things would change, but the grip became tighter and tighter with each passing year.
Now, at last some men and women in ministry positions have determined that the SBC has finally gotten “too big for its britches.” No one has the right, whether a group of SBC leaders or an individual church body, to dictate to anyone how to run our “autonomous” churches, what to think, what to preach, what to teach, what to read, what to think about the Bible or anything else like that. It is my prayer that this group of leaders will have enough positive, yet non-political influence to spread this spirit of repentance throughout the convention.
It is time for the SBC to become what it once was — a body of believers whose main goal is to reach people for Christ here and across the world, without subjecting its membership to an authoritarian attitude that will cripple everything it tries to accomplish. Thank you for the Memphis Declaration!
Rae C. Pond, Gloucester