The Great Divide

One snowy morning a few years ago while elk hunting, I walked over the Continental Divide in Colorado. Theoretically, the snow under my right boot would end up in the Atlantic Ocean and that under my left boot was headed toward the Pacific Ocean. It’s an awesome thought. At one point I could straddle the divide but the distance would become more significant as every drip and stream and river headed toward their respective coasts.

I was asked more than once by reporters at the SBC meeting in San Antonio if this meeting would be such a watershed for the convention. It struck me as a silly question, that the 4,000 (of 8,000) messengers who actually voted on an issue during our meeting were going to “change things forever.”

The longer answer is that we can’t know. The whole idea of a watershed is proved by the water’s ultimate destination. Standing on the divide, it’s hard to tell.

On one hand, the two sides are not that far apart. Those who feel passionately that the Resurgence has gone too far still affirm that receding historical movement. They are inerrantists and many have served (or still serve) our institutions in various capacities.

These “reformists” honor the Baptist Faith and Message and actually believe it to be more than the committee that crafted it would say that it is. Those who convinced the messengers to “affirm” the BF&M as a guide for our institutions apparently believe the confession enumerates exhaustively the doctrinal issues our agencies should be allowed to apply in the conduct of their very diverse ministries.

Those the press has unkindly dubbed the “status quo” also honor our confession of faith as a useful and sufficient, though not exhaustive guide. Further, most of them also think of themselves as reformers. They study the challenges faced by the denomination and seriously apply themselves to solutions. The vision of reform they embrace is admittedly not so broad or rapid as the non-status quo Baptists embrace, but it is not unrecognizable.

But, the two groups seem to be going in different directions. The 2006 debate over alcohol use was mostly between two sides who did not, themselves, use alcohol and who adamantly opposed drunkenness. Some were users, though. Others disagreed about whether we should preach abstinence as the best and biblical way, or embrace the freedom and sensual delight of a nice glass of wine with dinner. It was a difference in philosophy and thus direction.

The debate on tongues was similarly between those who overwhelmingly do not speak in tongues publicly or privately but who disagree regarding what teaching on this doctrine we should allow agency trustee boards to bless or ban among faculty members and missionaries. Again, not so far apart but facing different directions.

In fact, I think we’ve moved further apart during the past year. The Tuesday night discussion over the nature of the BF&M was more important than last year’s debate regarding alcohol use. The latter is one of practice that implies a view of our foundational principles. The former is all about those principles.

That said, the messengers did not imagine that they were changing the way the agencies would do business when they affirmed the BF&M as the guide they already believed it to be. And the messengers did not in effect change anything for our boards and agencies by that action.

In fact, not even the SBC Executive Committee (which wrote the “guideline” statement on the BF&M) intended to control the business of the agencies, according administrative subcommittee chairman C.J. Bordeaux. In the June 11 TEXAN he said, “We cannot tell the entities what they can do,” and later, “…When we came to this thing about the BF&M, there was the realization that we can’t make them do what we want them to do They’re their own private entity, and that has to be up to the individual entity to determine.”

Those who were arguing for the motion do have some drastic and unworkable changes in mind, though. For them, the motion will be an amplifier to raise the volume of their criticisms of trustee actions. The debate will go on, it will spread to other specifics, and it will be louder.

Maybe we’re back to conservatives and moderates. Conservatives, remember, have conservative convictions that compel them to conserve something. Some moderates also have conservative convictions but are less clear on what to do with them. A classic definition was from Cecil Sherman, Cooperative Baptist Fellowship coordinator in the early 1990s. In a note to Baptist Press regarding the doctrine of the Virgin Birth, he said that he believed that doctrine to be biblical and embraced it himself but, “A teacher who might also be led by the Scripture not to believe in the Virgin Birth should not be fired.” Sherman was the archetype for SBC moderates. He believed the Virgin Birth to be biblical but left room for an SBC employee to derive from these same Scriptures the teaching that Jesus was not born of a virgin. Sherman’s reasoning had to do with his belief that the Virgin Birth was not one of the “big doctrines” and that the discussion was a “diversion.”

In the context of our current discussion, we might say that the Virgin Birth was a secondary or tertiary doctrine and that the debate was pulling us away from missions and evangelism. No one who participated in the debate in San Antonio applied this reasoning to the Virgin Birth, but the reasoning itself sounds remarkably similar–“I do not drink because it is a biblical conviction of mine, but…,” or “I do not encourage speaking in tongues at my church but?” The very fact that we are discussing whether or not our seminary professors should advocate the practice of tongues has been characterized by some inerrantist, pro-Resurgence, loyal, CP-loving Baptists as a diversion from the main thing of missions and evangelism. Baptists will always have doctrinal debates (reform, remember), regardless of what others prefer. I’m always suspicious of those who only despise debates once they become doctrinal.

Our new-wave moderates also agree with old-line moderates in confusing kindness and fellowship with denominational partnership. The standards for denominational leaders should be much more focused than evangelicalism, a belief in scriptural authority, and monetary contributions through the SBC. Those who believe in these things but who will not expect it from those they appoint or supervise are inadequate representatives of our churches or our convention. They proved themselves inadequate in the 1980s and they’ve proved themselves to be that by forming a new denomination, the CBF, alongside the SBC since that time.

Relationships are not everything, at least in the choosing of leaders, committee members, board members, etc. Listen to his words; evaluate his actions, especially those in public forums. This is much more important than meeting him personally and gazing into his eyes. What a man does publicly says more about his leadership than what he says to you in private. It follows that whether you like him or not is quite irrelevant.

Remember this as the rhetoric heightens this year. The fact that you will hear from our current minority is proof that they have been neither disenfranchised nor muzzled. They have not been removed from fellowship and will not be unless they remove themselves. This discussion is doctrinal, political, and practical–three good words that enjoy warm fellowship in my dictionary. And one opinion will prevail when we convene for business or a board meeting. Like it or not, those are the rules and the proven road of SBC reform over the course of our long history.
A final word on boards: When we hear of a “runaway” board in Fort Worth or Nashville or wherever, we’re talking about Baptist pastors and laymen who were appointed by the only legitimate human authority the SBC recognizes, the messengers. They are from your churches and they are as fallible, well-meaning, and noble as the rest of us. They aren’t puppets of one or a few shady men in smoke-filled rooms. They’re yours and you’ve chosen them to be the policy makers for our institutions. Those who would change that process need a better reason than simply that they are tired of losing the debate.