{"id":13150,"date":"2015-04-28T03:00:41","date_gmt":"2015-04-28T07:00:41","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/admin.patheos.com\/blogs\/anxiousbench\/?p=13150"},"modified":"2015-04-28T09:20:59","modified_gmt":"2015-04-28T13:20:59","slug":"ben-carson-and-baptist-identity","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/anxiousbench\/2015\/04\/ben-carson-and-baptist-identity\/","title":{"rendered":"Ben Carson and Baptist Identity"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<\/head>

This week\u2019s column comes from my piece at The Washington Post<\/em> \u2013 \u201cSouthern Baptists canceled an event with Ben Carson. Here\u2019s why it matters<\/a>.\u201d Southern Baptists find themselves in the midst of political controversy again over the upcoming appearance \u2013 now canceled \u2013 of Dr. Ben Carson at their Pastors\u2019 Conference. Carson is a celebrated neurosurgeon, conservative commentator, and likely presidential candidate. A number of Baptist pastors, especially those affiliated with Baptist21<\/a>, spoke out against Carson\u2019s appearance. Their concerns were primarily that Carson, as a Seventh-Day Adventist, presumably holds doctrines that fit uneasily with evangelical theology, and Carson has made statements about Muslims, Jews, and Christians all being \u201cGod\u2019s children.\u201d Hosting Carson and other Republican candidates continues to convey the impression that the Southern Baptist Convention is \u201cin bed with the Republican Party,\u201d as Baptist21 put it. Leaders of the Pastors\u2019 Conference thought better of it and \u201cmutually agreed\u201d with Carson that he would withdraw. This was a welcome outcome to what had the potential to be a serious snafu for the SBC. Whatever the organizers\u2019 intentions, Baptist21 has this exactly right \u2013 hosting any political candidate carries a tacit implication of endorsement. Baptists and other evangelical denominations would do better to stop platforming political candidates at all. (This includes handing out political pamphlets and \u201cvoter guides\u201d at church.)<\/p>\n

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Ben Carson speaking at CPAC 2015 in Washington, DC. Photo by Gage Skidmore, Wikimedia Commons. Creative Commons 3.0 Sharealike Unported license https:\/\/creativecommons.org\/licenses\/by-sa\/3.0\/deed.en<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

The Carson controversy highlights a major question of identity that, as my new book (with Barry Hankins) Baptists in America<\/em><\/a> suggests, has been with Baptists a long time. Are Baptists insiders or outsiders in American politics and culture?<\/em> The early experiences of Baptists in colonial America left no doubt \u2013 Baptists were persecuted outsiders. Horsewhipped for illegal preaching in Virginia, fined for failing to pay taxes to the Congregationalist Church in New England, they were widely reviled as troublemakers and outlaws. Over time, however, relentless evangelism and church planting turned Baptist churches into the largest Protestant cohort in America. In areas of the South, they still function like a kind of de facto established church. But are they still outsiders, \u00a0even if they dominate the American religious landscape? Read the rest here<\/a>.<\/em> [Friends, you can\u00a0<\/em><\/span>sign up here<\/a><\/em>\u00a0for my Thomas S. Kidd author\u00a0newsletter.\u00a0Each newsletter will update you\u00a0on what\u2019s happening in my writing and in the world of American religious and political history. It will contain unique material available only to subscribers, and each will help you keep up with my blog posts, books, and other writings from around the web. Your e-mail information will never be\u00a0shared. Thanks!<\/em>]<\/span><\/p>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

This week\u2019s column comes from my piece at The Washington Post \u2013 \u201cSouthern Baptists canceled an event with Ben Carson. Here\u2019s why it matters.\u201d Southern Baptists find themselves in the midst of political controversy again over the upcoming appearance \u2013 now canceled \u2013 of Dr. Ben Carson at their Pastors\u2019 Conference. Carson is a celebrated […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1000,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[107,5],"tags":[2350,2818,2351,2800],"class_list":["post-13150","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-baptists","category-thomas-kidd","tag-baptist21","tag-baptists","tag-ben-carson","tag-thomas-kidd"],"yoast_head":"\nBen Carson and Baptist Identity<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"This week's column comes from my piece at The Washington Post - "Southern Baptists canceled an event with Ben Carson. Here\u2019s why it matters." 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