Culture and Calamity: Where Do We Go From Here?

Now that the Southern Baptist’s Convention is over, we have had a few weeks or more to reflect on what transpired. All in all I would have to say that this was one of the more pleasant conventions in recent years. First, the SBC did not remove itself from any evangelistic body or tell other denominations that they were apostate. Second, the convention did not embarrass evangelicals too much. Third, the convention appears to be addressing the evangelical crisis now. And that’s a good thing. The only lingering question I have is why I cannot find any transcripts of my seminary’s report to the convention. Really, how is my seminary doing? I cannot seem to find out, but I will. For the time being I am only getting reports from seminary students speaking at the convention. But that reminded me.

One of the unspoken themes of this year’s convention appeared to be recognition of the next generation of pastor’s and convention leaders. For several months leading up to the convention, many SBC leaders had either spoken to young pastors and seminary students or written articles in the Baptist Press encouraging my generation to become involved in the convention and the Cooperative Program.

The message to our generation is always the same: “The conservative resurgence was necessary but now it’s over and you have to lead this better convention into the future.”

It appears that the SBC leaders are under the impression that the next generation of Southern Baptists is VERY unsatisfied with the convention and would prefer to not directly associate with it in their future ministries. I think their impression is accurate.

As I talk with seminary students my age I hear a similar refrain: “The conservative resurgence was necessary but it went too far.”

Allow me to analyze the situation. My generation is too young to remember the conservative resurgence, understand that situation, and personally know the people who were accused of liberalism or of being sympathetic to liberals during this nasty episode. They were too young too experience those years and only know of it through second hand information; second hand information they receive from the former accusers. So they hear the accuser’s version of the events and say that the resurgence was necessary and my generation believes it because they do not know any better. However, they do know what is going on now. They do not need second hand information to understand what they are currently experiencing. They know something is rotten in the state of Denmark when their favorite professors and administrators are fired or asked to leave, professors who are fired for either being moderate or, worse, sympathetic to moderates. They see the current practices of their convention and know that such practices are not Christ-like. My generation is correct in this and only errs in thinking that such practices are new and did not occur in the early days of the resurgence when we were children. If they had been adults in the seventies and eighties they would be just as unsettled by the resurgence’s methods as they are today.

Now the SBC leadership knows this and is somewhat concerned by all this unsettlement on the part of my generation. It is true that some of my generation is completely okay with the current developments and those people are and will be picked as leaders in the future. But other leaders will have to come from the rank and file of the convention’s pastors. The next Rick Warren, Beth Moore and company are out their somewhere and the convention needs their support. Thus, the leadership is trying to convince the next generation that the dirty (but necessary) business is over with and clear skies are on the horizon for us to reap the rewards (to mangle my metaphors).

However, they do have a problem, don’t they? On the one hand the SBC leadership is trying to convince my disillusioned and disaffected generation that the resurgence is over with and that they do not have to worry about other ugly episodes. On the other hand the SBC leadership is trying to explain to the older generations why the resurgence has failed to generate the promised evangelical harvest despite a quarter century of “conservative” leadership. In trying to convince the old crowd that the resurgence has not been a total cock-up of monumental proportions, the SBC leadership is saying that it’s not their fault but, rather, the resurgence hasn’t gone far enough and still needs to penetrate the state and local levels. They do have a problem, don’t they?

Now you and I may think that this is a large problem and we may be right, but I doubt that the SBC leadership sees it as such and with good reason.

First, the resurgent leaders are in power and have been for a quarter century. One of the benefits of being in power is that you do not have to (and let me choose my words carefully) “fool all of the people all of the time”; you simply have to “fool some of the people some of the time”. Now let me make it clear that I do not believe that the SBC is thinking they are fooling anyone or doing anything necessarily un-Christian. No, the people who are telling my generation that the resurgence is at an end do in fact believe this to be the case … as far as the national convention, its entities and the seminaries are concerned. But, in a practical sense, the leadership does not have to convince all of my generation of this; they only have to convince some of my generation some of the time. That’s the privilege of those in power. That’s why the status quo works for those in power. It is the problem of those who are not in power but wish to be that the status quo doesn’t work for them. It is their problem to convince all of the people all of the time of their point of view. It might seem a daunting task but it does happen (the Conservative Resurgence is evidence of this). But those in power are overthrown only to be replaced by those who will one day be taken out of power themselves.

Second, and I really do mean this, the SBC leadership really does not care what we as students and as a generation think about how they are running the SBC. Now this is a general and blanket statement and, unfortunately, it covers a lot of earnest individuals who really do care what we think about the SBC. I think Bobby Welch is one such person and there are others. However, in general, they really don’t care. Allow me to give an example: If 99% of the students at an SBC school like a particular teacher but the leadership does not, the SBC leadership will get rid of the teacher they dislike whether it upsets the students or not. Again, understand my words in their precise context. The leadership does care about us; they wouldn’t be good leaders if they did not. The leadership does care about what we think about certain theological, cultural, and ecclesiastical issues; if they did not they would not have been so keen to remove so many professors who thought differently than themselves. However, when it comes to how my generation perceives of the way in which the leaders conduct themselves in “fixing” the convention, I am sad to say it, the SBC leadership does not care. My guess is that 1) they think they know better and 2) once the “dirty” deeds have been done they will be able to rebuild our faith in their leadership. And indeed they might.

So where does all of this leave us?

Well, in order to justify the conservative resurgence and justify their explanations of why it hasn’t yet worked, the SBC leadership will have to continue their goal of creedal conformity and the sifting of tares from wheat or vice versa till all perceived heterodoxy is eliminated. Unfortunately, they have dug themselves into a hole from which they are trying to dig themselves out. My generation and subsequent generations will continue to become dissatisfied with the convention, seeing it as an incompetent and largely irrelevant, bureaucratic social club. This will be a sad but inevitable outcome.

I’ve often argued that the conservative resurgence was not a reformation as the leaders suppose or wished it to be. Rather I would suggest that the conservative resurgence was a counter-reformation. I would argue that the real conservative reformation began during the years following World War II and is continuing today. What we have been seeing since the 1960s and, specifically, since the 1980s is the response of those who have been opposed to this reformation.

Following the Protestant Reformation of Luther, Calvin and Zwingli, the Roman Catholic Church launched a Counter Reformation to secure and codify those aspects of the Roman Church that the Reformers were protesting and those aspects of the Church that Rome was protecting. More than anything, the Roman Catholic Church believed that they were securing the true faith of the church and its orthodoxy from liberal professors such as Luther and his ilk. This was their thinking, but, instead, they were merely putting into their creeds the very aspects of heterodoxy that the Reformers were protesting.

Now the Protestant Reformation was very much a product of its time. By this I mean that we would not have had a Protestant Reformation if we had not had a Renaissance. Furthermore, we would not have had a proliferation of Christian bodies if we had not had an Enlightenment Period. I would go one step further and state that our current church polity, structure and methods of fulfilling our Great Commission duties are largely a reflection of our culture and our era. This reflection is true of all denominations and local church entities regardless of culture or place on the theological spectrum. We’d like to think that our manner of interpreting the methods of “doing Christianity” is steeped in the New Testament example. In a certain sense, this is more or less correct; we do apply many of the New Testament examples and principles in our own, unique way. However, each culture in Christendom’s long, diverse, and expansive history has adopted these principles to suit the culture in which they witness. For instance, the earliest New Testament churches were structured very similar to the Jewish synagogues. As the church ventured into the Greek world, the local churches began to take on a more Greek feel (a change that upset many in the Jerusalem church). The church in Rome took on a very Roman structure which was eventually modified by the Medieval European culture. To this day the Roman Catholic Church has many traditional structures that date back to the traditions of ancient Rome and the Middle Ages. Jump forward several hundred years, the Southern Baptist Convention in its structure of national, state, and local associations is very similar to the Federalist system of American governmental structure of national, state, county and city. In fact, much of the ways in which we fulfill our Great Commission duties and apply the New Testament principles is greatly influenced by our culture and the age in which we lived, the modern age. Yes, much of the polity, structure, and methods of the SBC are directly influenced by the modern era, i.e., the period of time roughly between the years 1789-1989. This is a rough idea of the period because it encompasses methods and ideas that came from the previous era and that era which follows.

What am I getting at? The Protestant Reformation was very much a product of its culture and time. The ideas that came out of the Renaissance had a profound effect upon Christendom in that it aided the Reformers in recognizing the flaws of Roman Catholicism and the lapse in Church orthodoxy. Now the general response of the Roman Church was the Counter Reformation and the codifying of their threatened practice and theology, practices and theology that was largely the result of Roman and Medieval thinking. The Roman Church actually codified the ancient Roman and medieval culture into their creeds with all its false theology and outdated methodology. Now the neo-orthodox movement that began with Soren Kierkegaard and was brought to fruition with Karl Barth, Emil Brunner, and Reinhold Niebuhr among others was carried into the Southern Baptist Culture by the work of Dale Moody, Frank Stagg, Ralph Elliott, Morris Ashcraft, E. Earle Ellis, and many others. This neo-orthodox movement was, as always, way ahead of its time. It refuted the errors of both liberalism and conservatism but maintained the benefits of both. Furthermore, as the ideas of the movement spread from culture to culture across Christendom, the areas which it took root blossomed into more effective witnesses of Christ to the lost culture, i.e., the Southern Baptist Convention from 1946-1979. But just like the Protestant Reformation, the SBC Reformation had its own Counter Reformation with which to deal. There were many in the convention that were tied to the traditional and culturally-conditioned methods of “doing Christianity” and were convinced that their culturally-conditioned conception of the faith was the only orthodoxy allowed by the Bible. They believed that all of those professors who were teaching Biblical principles and methods counter to their own practices were liberals and modernists. Actually, and with much irony, those threatened traditionalists were the modernists and the professors were the post-modernists. But in order to protect Christendom and the SBC from neo-orthodoxy and the encroachment of liberalism, those opposed to the conventions reformation launched a Counter Reformation to defend their practice and polity and codify their traditions, i.e., the 2000 Baptist Faith and Message.

What I am saying is that while the Southern Baptist Convention may in fact codify its traditions and own particular brand of orthodoxy, the culture is changing and the rest of the Western World has arrived in the Post-modern Age. If the modern era of Western Christianity, in terms of structure and polity, were characterized by denominations and cooperation via such monolithic entities and, specifically, if American Southern Baptist polity was structured along the Federalistic system inherent in its surrounding culture, then we can expect the unrestrained future of Southern Baptists polity, structure, and methodology to reflect the new post-modern culture … which means greater choice!

Yes, the proliferation of choice that has come with the development of High Capitalism has allowed for greater selectivity and greater choice among consumers, including that of Christians. Yes, my generation, children of this new era, will continue to see the errors of their parents, grandparents and of the modern era of Southern Baptist Christianity and will select what polity and practice they are going to adopt for the future. The convention or denomination as a vehicle for the spreading of the Gospel message will forever diminish in importance and effect until it is only a mild curiosity of a by-gone age.

Oh, it will continue to have some effect and will occasionally make good on its Great Commission duties; even the Roman Catholics have some effect. But where the RCC has the best effect is in Third World Countries that haven’t yet reached the modern era let along the post-modern era. And how many of us want to be a part of that body of believers? Perhaps the SBC should find a relatively undeveloped culture in which to set up shop?

No, the future of Christian cooperation lies in loosely and temporarily aligned unions with a multitude of various organizations, i.e., the CBF, the BWA, Team Church, Hope Ministries, local associations and large churches with their own national and international ministries; and all of these organizations are going to have confessions of various levels of Biblical accuracy reflecting the strengths and weaknesses of their own culture. Such organizations and entities will have multiple associations with other organizations and entities and work with others in so far as those others are useful.

So what of my generation and the future of the Southern Baptist Convention?

Well, my generation will pick up its duty of leadership and make right decisions and wrong decisions until another generation picks it up and makes similar right and wrong decisions. Unfortunately, the way in which the 60s generation has codified their errors into the fabric of Southern Baptist culture gives little hope that my generation and its children will make more right decisions than wrong ones, if it would even matter.

Yes, the Conservative Resurgence (the Counter Reformation) will continue to be a failure. The SBC will continue to codify their errors and wonder why all the effective evangelism and discipleship are being done outside their increasingly diminished sphere of influence.

No, the future of the transmission of the gospel message in terms of its effectiveness lies elsewhere and ultimately, thankfully, in the hands of God. This should give us great hope for the intermediate future of our Church in whatever various cultural forms that it takes.

Therefore, I have decided to officially cease my public criticisms of the Southern Baptist Convention and its various entities. At this point in history I feel that making analytical observations of the positives and negatives of the actions and trends of the SBC fulfills no practical purpose for furthering our obligations as believers. In fact, to make such opinions known in today’s shifting climate would be akin to either arguing over 16th century papal misjudgments or critiquing the political maneuvers of the Carolingian Empire. The results are not worth the effort.

But allow me to finish this article by making final predictions regarding the near future of the SBC and by suggesting my own solutions to the current evangelical crisis.

With regards to the SBC’s near future the current crop of evangelically-minded leaders are guided by the assumption that effective evangelism results from correct theology. Therefore, if evangelism is not effective then there are those within the body that do not have the correct theology. In order to protect the correct theology and make sure that neither heresy nor heterodoxy takes root within the body, the SBC leaders have adopted the Roman Catholic method of preserving such orthodoxy, namely, the creed. The orthodox creed of our body is the 2000 BFM. Thus, in order to protect our theology and insure effective evangelism, the SBC has required intellectual agreement of all its national and international employees, including professors and missionaries. With this mindset and its subsequent practice, those who believe that they have a correct theology by which God will bless them will necessarily find the lack of God’s blessing as evidence that some in their body are harboring false theology. Therefore, I predict that in the name of protecting orthodoxy within the body, the SBC will continue its recent creedal quest by urging all state and local entities, including Baptist colleges to adopt the 2000 BFM. Furthermore, I predict that eventually all seminary students who receive funds from the Cooperative Program will be required to adopt the 2000 BFM. Finally, I predict that the overall structural trend of the convention will be the gradual elevation of governing authority to the upper levels of the body and away from local associations and churches. All of this will be in the name of the protecting orthodoxy and creating effective evangelism.

With regards to my solutions for the current evangelical crisis I would like to offer practical answers that the convention could accept without necessarily abandoning their current agenda. In my view the convention is currently quite incapable of reforming itself to the degree in which effective changes will have lasting effect. I am under no illusion that our leaders will abandon their current goals of creedal conformity, structural consolidation and political activism. However, perhaps some help can be administered to the SBC that will alleviate much of the rapid decline in baptisms.

Therefore, in the coming weeks I will offer my own modest solutions for the greater strengthening of our evangelical witness. Solution which I hope will stir the mind of all who consider them and, perhaps, make some small contribution to the greater work that we do as believers.