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In a move which continues the Southern Baptist
Convention's twenty-five year jihad against anyone who dares to disagree
with them, the SBC has announced its decision to withdraw from the Baptist
World Alliance.
The SBC's decision to quit comes after years of futile attempts at
hostile takeover of the 47 million member international organization
formed in 1905. With 210 worldwide conventions and associations from
Nicaragua to Nepal, the BWA had no intention of being held culturally
captive to Southern Baptist provincialism.
The religious zealots at the SBC simply cannot tolerate those who don't
conform to their totalitarian program of creedal conformity.
"This decision is really the triumph of ideology over doctrine," said
BWA General Secretary Denton Lotz. "In the end, it became a question of
power and control and the desire of forcing Baptists of the world into one
particular mode of thinking."
Thus, the SBC pullout, made public December 17. "A decided
anti-American tone has emerged in recent years," the report said to
justify the withdrawal.
Translation: the BWA's passion for hunger relief and human rights isn't
nearly as important as the SBC's goal to color Baptists of other cultures
in its narrow political and doctrinal beliefs.
This BWA globalism doesn't derive from any New World Order mumbo-jumbo.
It comes from Jesus. "Go into all the world and preach the gospel," Christ
commanded, "making disciples of all nations." In the SBC's practice of
"peace and goodwill toward all people," the withdrawal announcement was
timed for release just before Christmas, so that it would escape news
agencies' attention.
Secretary Lotz is not exactly a Baptist-come-lately. He chooses his
words carefully when he calls this action "a form of McCarthyism."
"I fear for the Southern Baptist Convention because this decision
follows in a long line of other decisions that, I believe, will ultimately
lead to the dissolution and self-destruction of the SBC," Lotz said.
Lotz didn't enumerate, but we knew what he meant: we've seen two
decades of firing of theologians who dissent from the fundamentalist party
line; the attacks on women who seek pastoral roles; the condemnation of
Muslims, Masons, and Mormons. Good Baptist laypeople aren't responsible
for this inquisition. That responsibility lies with the denominational
politicians and bureaucrats.
All freedom-loving Baptists of goodwill in Southern Baptist churches
should hasten this "dissolution" of the SBC by doing their own defunding.
At present, their churches serve essentially as collection agencies for
the SBC thought police.
Church members should advocate in their congregations an immediate
diversion of funds away from the Southern Baptist Convention and directly
to the Baptist World Alliance. At the least, they should make sure not one
penny of their own offerings go to the SBC.
Why should we continue to underwrite the demise of our own cherished
Baptist values of religious freedom?
It's time for the Southern Baptist faithful to remind the controlling
oligarchy that real Baptist power is still located in the pew and the
pulpit, not in the politburo now controlling the Southern Baptist
Convention.
Author's note:
Charles Foster Johnson is senior pastor of the
Trinity Baptist Church of San Antonio, Texas, and a member of the
Christian Ethics Commission of the Baptist World Alliance.
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