Baptist Parties

Jeremy Roberts just posted about two parties that are emerging in Baptist life. He was present as Dr. Frank Page preached in chapel at Southwestern Seminary. He placed Page in one party and Paige Patterson in the other. So now we have the "i" and "no i" parties or the Page and Paige parties, etc. Roberts created party titles that had to do with wine drinking and beer abstaining. I think a better system would be the "Strong Conservative and Conservative But" parties.
The Strong Conservative label was coined by Ronnie Floyd. Conservative Buts say things like: I am conservative but -
I'm not mad about it.
this is crazy.
I don't want the SBC to become any more narrow.
this method is ungodly.
etc.

I am a Conservative But - it could be worse.

6 comments:

anabaptistblogger said...

I think that the conservative party has over corrected in some areas and now there is a natural adjustment that has occurred. Truth be told, most baptists are conservative in their own minds. The only problem is that there are numerous definitions about what that means. Some say you must be an inerrantist to be conservative. Some say that you must affirm the BF&M 2000 to be conservative. Some say you must be a complementarian to be conservative. Some say you must preach expository sermons to be conservative. Some say that you must oppose certain things, such as the private prayer language issue. Some say that you must be for door to door evangelism to be conservative, etc. There are more than two types of conservatives going around the convention these days.

What is laughable is the notion of liberalism. We have folks being labeled liberals within the SBC that would be labeled fundamentalists in the UK.

To me the issue is not conservatism, but fundamentalism. I am an evangelical but not a fundamentalist. Based on the ambiguity of the term conservative, I do not think it is helpful in determining where someone stands on anything other than they fancy themselves as a strong Christian.

Matt Snowden said...

Bill,

I'm with you. I think the qualifers to conservative render the term useless. That was really my point. I think "Strong Conservatives" are basically Fundamentalist. Moderate Baptists are usually really conservative in the larger Christian community. I have settled on "Conservative But" as a concession to the Baptist addiction to the C-word. Jeremy Roberts (a STRONG Conservative) said he is resisting the temptation to play on the title Conservative But. I quess I am as well.

I fear large rift in the convention. I don't really know what we can do about it. I have decided to focus on our church and hope for the best. Thanks for paying a visit.

anabaptistblogger said...

Matt,

I think you have it correct and I believe every servant of God should first focus on the local church. That is the problem with the SBC, we have career politicians running the affairs of the convention.

We can see what a mess the US is in after having gone to a system that primarily is run by bureaucrats. The US would be a better country if we had more representation from private sector, more school teachers, small business owners, ie regular folks.

The SBC, I submit, would be a much better entity if we had more unknown pastors and dedicated church folk who were not interested in political advancement being elected into office. It is a telling sign when the president of the NAMB feels the need to employ a consulting firm in order to advance his public relations agenda.

Matt Snowden said...

Yep.

Perry McCall said...

When you read the list of SBC Pres. you will find a time when non-pastors were regularly the Pres. Businessmen, Judges, scholars, ect.

Matt Snowden said...

We have also had the same experience in the Mississippi Baptist Convention. Owen Cooper, Charles Pickering, etc. have been really influential in Baptist life.

Perry I would love for you guys to deal with the Gregory quote in my last post.

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