Giving the Saints the Right to Vote<\/em><\/p>\n By Anonymous<\/p>\n S<\/span>everal weeks ago, I burned a bridge in my head Being a Southern Baptist has always been a major part \u2014 perhaps the major Not long ago, I returned to Baylor University in Waco, Texas. While walking In the years since I left Waco, I have changed and Baylor has changed. I What I was feelings was stronger than the musings of a disenchanted graduate I began to try to fit my thoughts and feelings into some kind of mental and What was I really feeling? What is \u2014 what will always be \u2014 most important First of all, I have decided that there are a number of religious and social I love the arts and feel uncomfortable in a denomination that distrusts In the past decade, I have been influenced the most by great Christian Many of the Baptists I most admire are people who were, or are, happy being I am tired of being in a proud, defiant, rejected minority of people who And maybe I\u2019m not even a \u201ctrue Baptist.\u201d<\/p>\n I am wedded for life to liturgical worship \u2014 both in music and in the Spiritual pep rallies turn me off. I get angry when I hear the kind of I also have to admit that I am no longer happiest when worshipping in On top of that, I have begun to doubt the radical individualism that is at Let me be clear. The concept of the \u201cpriesthood of every believer\u201d When SBC moderates protested efforts to promote mandated prayers in public \u201cSouthern Baptists have always believed like I believe,\u201d rings Says who?<\/p>\n What authority do those statements have?<\/p>\n Southern Baptists are left with a kind of informal, sociological creed.<\/p>\n This creed of \u201cwhat is or isn\u2019t done\u201d can become a kind of baptism \u201cThe Church\u201d ends up being viewed in terms of American, In a denomination based on a casual form of majority rule, the saints do not Thus, Southern Baptist life has become dominated by the latest charts on \u201cBut,\u201d I hear myself saying again and again, \u201cI have been a Many moderate Baptists have encouraged me to stand and fight for change. The I know that in the future, some SBC congregations and individuals will If I am going to be in a church that has a creed, I would rather have the Also, I have to be honest and admit that I do not believe in the inerrancy So I have grown tired of the current infighting in the SBC.<\/p>\n Sometimes, no, most of the time, I feel as if the Southern Baptist I feel it is time to move to a church I can celebrate. I know I cannot Still, I feel the need to move on. It is my response to a Christ that I The author, a life-long Southern Baptist, requested anonymity for the sake This article was written in spring of 1983, about the time that my wife, It really took me back, typing this text into my computer this morning. Many I have chosen to change two references in this article, for the sake of In the original text, the list of social causes in the ninth paragraph began Also, note this sentence near the end: \u201cI have to be honest and admit Why? At the time I wrote this article, I had only heard the term One final note: It is very ironic that my upbringing in Southern Baptist \u00a0<\/p>\n
\nand in my heart. I made a decision that only sounds simple. I have decided that
\nI will never join another Southern Baptist church.<\/p>\n
\npart \u2014 of my sense of identity. I am a Southern Baptist preacher\u2019s kid. I am a
\ngraduate of the world\u2019s largest Southern Baptist university. I was ordained a
\ndeacon in a Southern Baptist church while in my mid-20s.<\/p>\n
\naround the campus, I felt like I might as well have been at Brigham Young
\nUniversity.<\/p>\n
\nexpected that. But, during my short visit, another set of feelings washed over
\nme. By Southern Baptist standards, Baylor is an open \u2014 and to use an SBC buzz
\nword \u2014 \u201cmoderate\u201d campus.<\/p>\n
\nwishing for a return to the good old days. I realized that if I was rejecting
\nBaylor, and Baylor rejecting me, then I was much further out of the mainstream
\nof Southern Baptist life than I had ever dreamed. I asked myself, \u201cIf
\nBaylor is left of center in the SBC, where does that leave me?\u201d<\/p>\n
\nemotional structure.<\/p>\n
\nto me as a Christian? At some point could my struggles against the majority in
\nthe Southern Baptist Convention hinder me, or warp me, as a Christian?<\/p>\n
\ncauses that will always be important to me: the equality of women and men,
\ncivil rights, hunger in the United States and abroad, the environment, a
\nconcept of economics that does not worship capitalism as a god, a view of
\nchurch-state relations that accepts religious liberty as a given, a bilateral
\nfreeze on nuclear weapons, free speech. I am on the opposite side of the front
\nfrom the vast majority of Southern Baptists on these issues.<\/p>\n
\nartistic people because their messages are often subtle.<\/p>\n
\nwriters such as C.S. Lewis, Garry Wills, Martin E. Marty, Frederich Buechner,
\nAndrew M. Greeley, Madeleine L\u2019Engle, J.R.R. Tolkein, Charles Williams and
\nDorothy Day. There are no Southern Baptists in that list.<\/p>\n
\nrenegades. Many are no ex-Baptists.<\/p>\n
\nbelieve they are the \u201conly true Baptists left.\u201d I want to be in a
\nchurch in which I fit in, in which I can focus on the positive.<\/p>\n
\nliturgy, itself. I see worship as praise to God and a source of spiritual
\nstrength that leads to personal evangelism, behavior based on a Christian
\nconcept of living unselfishly for others and the creation of that strange web
\nof lives that we call the church.<\/p>\n
\npulpit evangelism that crushes personalities and emotions under a steamroller
\nof jargon. Emotion plays a valid role in faith and in conversion, but does it
\nalways have to be linked to simplistic, high-volume sermons? I don\u2019t think
\nso.<\/p>\n
\n\u201cmoderate\u201d Southern Baptist churches, where religious symbolism and
\ncenturies of church tradition are kind of hinted at during festive parts of the
\nchurch year \u2014 just touched lightly, like a frying pan that is too hot to
\nreally grab and hold.<\/p>\n
\nthe heart of Baptist thought \u2014 fundamentalist, conservative and moderate. I do
\nnot love freedom for its own sake. Knowing that I can believe whatever I want
\nto believe and not be kicked out of the Southern Baptist Convention is no
\nlonger enough for me.<\/p>\n
\nis very important to me. However, I have decided that Baptists\u2019 historical fear
\nof church tradition and creeds has had at least one bad side effect. Since
\nBaptists have few, if any, accepted or articulated tenets, there are few
\ntraditions to discuss, interpret and defend.<\/p>\n
\nschools or to slap controls on seminaries, there were few \u2014 if any \u2014 defenses
\nto fall back on.<\/p>\n
\nhollow. Moderates were on the same thin ice that the fundamentalists were on
\nwhen they claimed that the \u201cmajority of Southern Baptists have always
\nbelieved in the inerrancy of the Bible.\u201d<\/p>\n
\nof the lowest common denominator. Southern Baptist church tradition is usually
\nwhatever is popular at the moment in the nation\u2019s biggest SBC churches.<\/p>\n
\nupper-middle-class, usually white suburban norms. With very few exceptions, the
\nmembers of the SBC\u2019s denominational \u201ccloud of witnesses\u201d have been
\ninformally canonized in post-1950s America.<\/p>\n
\nhave the right to vote.<\/p>\n
\nstatistical growth. A simple truth has emerged: it is impossible to out-baptize
\nhuge churches based on a glossed- over view of the recent past that puts the
\nGood News in the hands of an authoritarian minister who claims God has told him
\nhow to solve all of his church members\u2019 problems.<\/p>\n
\nmember of SBC churches that were not like that!\u201d And that is true.
\nIndividual congregations can do many wonderful things. They can also be cut off
\nfrom the flow of Baptist life.<\/p>\n
\nfew liberal Baptists I know have told me not to care so much about what the
\ndenomination does. Baptist congregations are absolutely free, they stress.
\n\u201cForget what those yahoos do at the national convention,\u201d they
\nsay.<\/p>\n
\nchoose to remain free and will be happy doing so. However, with the continuing
\nrapid growth of the SBC in the more conservative parts of the Southwest, I am
\nconvinced that the swing to the right that started in the Houston and St. Louis
\nconventions will continue and have lasting effects on the national, state and
\nmaybe even associational levels.<\/p>\n
\nNicene Creed than one written in Del City, Okla.<\/p>\n
\nof the Bible, at least as that term is defined by today\u2019s Southern Baptist
\nleaders. The Bible is a book that is both human and divine, carrying a message
\nthat is both inspired and authoritative. But the words in the Bible are not the
\nWord. Jesus Christ is the incarnation, not the Bible. The words of the Bible
\nare like waves moving out from that event \u2014 tied to it, part of it, but not to
\nbe confused with the event itself.<\/p>\n
\nConvention has cut itself off from the rest of Christ\u2019s Church. Year after
\nyear, SBC leaders make thinly-veiled (or in the case of Bailey Smith, obvious)
\nattacks on the worship and traditions of other denominations. There is no sense
\nof humility in these attacks. There is no sense that if the SBC can teach other
\nchurches lessons on evangelism and church growth, then perhaps other churches
\ncan teach the SBC about social justice, prayer or beauty in worship.<\/p>\n
\nexpect to find a perfect tradition or denomination. I don\u2019t think that I\u2019m
\nbeing naive.<\/p>\n
\nbelieve wants me to get on with the business of worship, service and witness. I
\nam very, very tired of fighting.<\/p>\n
\n
\nof family.<\/p>\nA 1995 POSTLUDE: For online friends<\/h3>\n
\nDebra, and I left the Myers Park Baptist Church in Charlotte, N.C., one of the
\nfew Baptist congregations in the world that can accurately be called
\n\u201cliberal,\u201d and began attending St. Mark\u2019s Episcopal Church. We left
\nMyers Baptist Baptist, in large part, due to a conflict over the church\u2019s
\nproclamation of universalism.<\/p>\n
\nsections are stunningly ironic, in light of recent years in the Episcopal
\nChurch. \u201cI am very, very tired of fighting,\u201d indeed.<\/p>\n
\nclarity.<\/p>\n
\nwith the word \u201cfeminism.\u201d Why did I change this? At that time, I had
\nno idea about the various schools of feminism \u2014 gender vs. economic vs.
\nwhatever. At no point in my life could I have been considered a gender feminist
\nand the same is true of Debra. By the way, it was in 1980 or so that my views
\non abortion began to change, as I was exposed to the views of conservative
\nliturgical Christians and to the views of the pro-life left.<\/p>\n
\nthat I do not believe in the inerrancy of the Bible, at least as that term is
\ndefined by today\u2019s Southern Baptist leaders.\u201d The second half of this
\nsentence is new.<\/p>\n
\n\u201cbiblical inerrancy\u201d defined by leaders on the right and left wings
\nof SBC life, in clashes that focused on issues of history and science. Since
\nthen, I have been exposed to the views of many others \u2014 such as Dr. Kenneth
\nKantzer, or the Anglican theologian J.I. Packer \u2014 who use different
\ndefinitions of biblical inerrancy that stress doctrine and context. I felt I
\nmust clarify this sentence, since I didn\u2019t know enough about what I was talking
\nabout, at that time.<\/p>\n
\nlife had left me cut off from mainstream evangelical life and thought, as well
\nas that in historic churches. In the past, Southern Baptists have been pretty
\nmuch a kingdom unto themselves \u2014 cut off from everyone. This is changing. In
\nthe years since writing this, I have found numerous evangelical writers whose
\nnames I would quickly add to the list of those who have most influenced me.
\nStill, C.S. Lewis would lead the list.<\/p>\n