A Southern Baptist âresolutionâ is in the news, so before we look at the dismal substance of that, letâs have a quick refresher on what Baptist resolutions mean.
The âCâ in SBC stands for âconvention,â not for âchurch.â We Baptist types â even in the SBC â arenât comfortable with the idea of formal âdenominations.â In sociology-speak weâre sect, not ecclesia. No hierarchies, magisterium, bishops or bosses. This isnât a mere quirk, but itâs central to Baptist identity â nobody else can tell us what or how to believe. Hence the name. We get baptized when we choose to do so, and nobody else gets to make that call. Soul freedom and all that.
This is still true even among more authoritarian-friendly Baptist communities, like our cousins in the SBC. They may prefer hierarchical structures in nuclear families and in local congregations, but theyâll still bristle and get their Baptist up if anyone suggests to them that there should be a Southern Baptist âheadquarters.â And the word âdenominationâ still irks them.
Despite our sect-ish disinclination toward formal structures and organizations, we Baptists still do need to work collectively on various things. We still need economies of scale. We have large mission boards and pension boards and educational presses that produce Sunday school curricula, and we have to decide collectively on how weâre going to work together to run those in ways we all can approve of.
We also have lobbyists, sort of. We have people who speak on behalf of our communities with lawmakers and government to ensure that our rights are protected and our interests are considered. A host of different Baptist associations help fund the Baptist Joint Committee, which has defended the core Baptist principle of separation of church and state since 1946. The American (Northern) Baptists have an office of governmental relations in the God Box across from the Capitol. And the Southern Baptists have their thing, which changes its name every decade or so but now goes by Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission.
Given the lack of any other formal national âheadquarters,â the head of the ERLC is the closest thing the Southern Baptists have to an âofficialâ spokesperson. But Russell Moore isnât technically a spokesperson for the Southern Baptist Convention, only for the ERLC â which is only permitted to advocate positions agreed to by the representatives of the conventionâs member congregations.
This is where those âresolutionsâ come in. These are, roughly, position papers setting the agenda for the ERLC, instructing it and authorizing it to act and speak on behalf of the larger community. The SBC has a formal âResolutions Committeeâ that regularly drafts and crafts their statements, often in coordination with ERLC staff who want to ensure that theyâre representing â and are supported by â the concerns of the people theyâre meant to represent. But resolutions can also be proposed and introduced by, well, just about anybody on just about any topic, and still work their way toward a vote.
These resolutions and the votes on them tend to get reported as official Southern Baptist pronouncements â as analogous to papal encyclicals or edicts issued by the bishops of formal denominational churches. Thatâs misleading. These resolutions donât present official denominational dogma because there is no official denomination. They simply direct the ERLC or some other cooperative Baptist entity, providing guidelines for their work. (Thatâs why there are also more mundane âresolutionsâ on topics like the percentage of pension funds to be invested in Treasury bonds. These tend not to make headlines because theyâre really, really boring.)
SBC resolutions have to be passed by a vote of delegates at the conventionâs annual, um, convention, which brings together representatives of local member churches and associations in a gloriously messy exercise of congregational democracy.
The Southern Baptistâs annual convention is wrapping up this week, in Phoenix, which is why its resolutions are in the news just now. The one thatâs getting the most attention didnât originate with the formal Resolutions Committee, but was instead drafted and proposed by a local pastor â the Rev. William Dwight McKissic Sr. of Cornerstone Baptist Church in Arlington, Texas.
McKissic seems to have caught the predominantly white delegates of the predominantly white Southern Baptist Convention by surprise with his proposal, a âResolution on the Condemnation of the âAlt-Rightâ Movement and the Roots of White Supremacy.â
Delegates and SBC leaders did not exactly cover themselves in glory in their initial or eventual responses to this proposal. My point here is mainly that, despite all the hubbub around them, Baptist resolutions arenât usually a big deal. But the struggle to understand them, and the reluctance to consider them â well, that can sometimes be a very big deal indeed.
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