Were the "Moderates" Right?

[Sandy]

So I've been visiting the SBCVoices blog site since Jon posted the pic of the JD shirt, and talked about the campaigning for the SBC presidency. There are some comments there, and some posts, which may indicate that the predictions of moderate Baptists during the conservative resurgence may have been prophetic.

They predicted that the inerrancy controversy would not be the last, and there would be other theological controversies that would erupt. They predicted that the resurgence leadership would not be successful in their efforts to reduce membership and attendance decline in the convention's churches, or the declining CP revenues. They predicted that churches would follow the example of the megachurch leadership in cutting cooperative missions giving in favor of a "do your own thing" way of giving, and that CP giving would decline to the point where it put mission programs and seminaries in danger of financial insolvency.

Wander over there and take a look.

[William Thornton]

[Tim Bonney]

[Jon Estes]

[Tim Bonney]

[Dave Roberts]

While I'm not directly involved with the SBC any more, one thing that I realized during the Takeover was that the structure of the SBC lends itself to continuing conflicts. Truth and process are both continually being defined by majority vote. Just look at the process of the Baptist Faith and Message statements. The original was adopted in 1925 to address the modernist controversy. When new controversies arose in the 1950's, a revised Baptist Faith and Message was adopted in 1963. When family became a focus, revisions were adopted in 1998. Then, to establish the power of the new controllers of the convention, another Baptist Faith and Message was adopted in 2000. That's four revisions in 76 years which says that controversy is the only SBC structure for solving things, always by majority vote. What intrigues me is that the scriptural witness is almost always that God was working through minority movements.