Al Mohler gaming the Kentucky senate race

[Stephen Fox]

http://religiondispatches.org/why-al-mo ... e-debates/

I hope folks wise as a serpent and harmless as a Dove challenge Mohler's tactics well versed in the recent revelations of Randall Balmer on Carter's experience with this cabal; Packer's easily googled New Yorker piece on the ascendancy of Reagan; and Norm Ornstein's piece on the Lost soul of the GOP not to mention the bleaching article I just referenced in the Life and Liberty thread; and Christiane's Stansell's denfinitive piece Holy War in the New Republic on the "mendacity" in the perfected politics of abortion strategy

[Sandy]

Of course, in any article offering a religious-political opinion, someone is going to drop in the word "fundamentalist" somewhere. Neither Mohler, nor Southern Seminary, nor the Kentucky Baptist Convention, are "fundamentalist."

Beyond that little bit of bias, I'm not particularly surprised at this development. McConnell is in trouble, especially if you take a look at the independent, non-partisan polling data, and his re-election, which is critical to any possible hope the Republicans have of getting a Senate majority, is looking more and more unlikely. Turnout is going to be the key, and with the United Mine Workers endorsement of Grimes, McConnell doesn't have a core constituency to tip the balance his way beyond Evangelical Conservatives. The moderate Republican wing in the state seems to be interested in getting rid of McConnell, and willing to stay home on election day to let Grimes do it for them.

The name dropping and your attempted connectionalism, Stephen, doesn't help your point. You sometimes make some good observations and post some credible articles, but your insistence on mentioning your pseudo-intellectual cabal distracts from the main point. At least you didn't work Molly Worthen into this post.

[KeithE]

[Sandy]

The two most recent Kentucky newspaper polls I've seen, the Bowling Green Daily News,and the Courier Journal from Louisville both had Grimes at +3 Friday. I believe Nate Silver has moved the odds in that race to 50-50, as he did for Michelle Nunn as well. The only polls in which McConnell leads are the traditionally GOP leaning polls that factor in things like "voter enthusiasm" and previous voting trends, and even in those, he's inside the margin of error.

The term "Fundamentalist" is both self-described, and defined by those who have distinguished a set of "fundamentals of the faith" that they believe universally apply to the true church. These include 1)the belief that the true church, and the lineage of true believer's baptism by immersion can be traced through a series of dissenters all the way back to John the Baptist's baptism of Jesus, 2) Believe in the inerrancy and infallibility of the verbal, plenary inspired 66 books of the old and new Testament, 3) the "preserved word of God in English" as the KJV, 4) acceptance of no other canon of scripture except the Massoretic text, 5) the seal of salvation is baptism and membership in only those churches which are doctrinally correct and have "received" the word of God. Mohler, and 99% of the rest of the SBC aren't there at all.

[KeithE]

[Sandy]

Those are doctrinal points which define a very broad, and large segment of Evangelical Conservatives, of many denominations, and most non-denominationals, not fundamentalist Southern Baptists. I would bet that the collective attendance in American churches I'd say you'd be hard pressed to find more than a small percentage of CBF'ers who don't accept all of your points. The term "Fundamentalist" is a derisive term used by moderate Baptists to attempt to separate out their denominational-political perspective, and gain more followers of their own. It was never applied to Southern Baptist conservatives, at least, not to as many as turned out to be conservative, prior to the 1979 controversy in that context. Mohler isn't a fundamentalist, and no fundamentalist who wears that as a badge would see the president of Southern Seminary as anything less than an apostate, misled liberal. He's a conservative, and a Calvinist.

The segment of Baptists that are defined as Fundamentalist aren't exclusively KJV, though I doubt you'd find a single church among that self designation that doesn't consider the KJV as "the preserved Word of God in English" and rejects members who don't believe that. Nor would you find many, if any, non-landmarkers when it comes to marrying Baptist origins with John the Baptist. Inerrancy defines the entire Evangelical movement, from the conservative side of most mainliners all the way to the non-denominational megachurch movement, and everything in between. Verbal plenary inspiration, and premillenial dispensationalism defines Fundamentalism.

[KeithE]