Endorsements, Part 2

Dwight McKissic's Resolution on Mormon Racism

I'm giving an entire post just to this resolution. We need to support this resolution. Here's why.

1. It puts secular politics into its proper place.

   It took me a few years to escape the Democrat upbringing that I received in Northeast Arkansas, but since the Democrats succeeded in convincing me that they were making no place for a pro-life Christian in their party (during the Bill Clinton administration), I have never voted for any kind of presidential candidates other than Republican presidential candidates. I want Mitt Romney to win Barack Obama to lose in November. That really needs to happen.

   But, doggone it, if we won't say something negative about Mormonism just because the Republican presidential hopeful is a Mormon, then we've sold our souls and God help us! This resolution will not affect the electoral outcome in November one tenth of a percentage point. We need to speak the critical truth about this lethal cult right now—precisely when it is embarrassing to a GOP candidate—just to prove to ourselves, to the watching world, and to the GOP that we're committed enough to the truth over politics to do so.

2. It puts denominational politics into its proper place.

   Dwight McKissic and I have squared off against one another in denominational politics. More than once. But, brothers and sisters, Dwight McKissic is not my enemy. He's just wrong in public more than his fair share. ;-) But I manage to wind up in the same situation with some frequency, so I suppose I'm the pot calling the kettle black here.

   And so, it's important to note it, folks, that even if you've generally fallen on the other side of things from Dwight McKissic with some regularity, an idea is not bad just because Dwight McKissic was its originator. Whatever feelings of denominational politics Dwight's resolution might engender in you, his resolution about Mormonism is a good idea. The committee should expand it, I think, and make it a full-fledged resolution against the many offenses and errors of Mormonism. Certainly there is no denominational dust-up we've ever had that is as important as telling the truth about this insidious, damning heresy called Mormonism.

3. McKissic has his facts straight and the resolution is historically solid.

4. Playing kissy-kissy, nice-nice with Mormonism is idiotic as an evangelistic and apologetic strategy. The Mormon strategy is to try to build respectability and to try to keep people from knowing about Mormon racism and Kolob and the fact that Mormonism is built upon a fraudulent book telling tales about a fictional civilization that obviously never inhabited this hemisphere. If one would advance the idea that our apologetic strategy should center around being sure not to be so unkind as to get in the way of the Mormon proselytization strategy, then everybody associated with drafting and implementing that strategy needs to be demoted to some department where the most harm they can do is in the area of teaching children what crayon to use to color Moses' hair.

So, if Dwight's resolution doesn't come out of committee either pretty much intact or strengthened, then I hope that he'll try to bring it out from the floor. Either way, we need to be sure to vote to adopt it or something like it.

Holy Spirit Conference Reflections

Pastor Dwight McKissic has forwarded to me the audio CDs of the conference to which he graciously invited me. Having had some opportunity to review them, I can now intelligently comment on the conference. Thanks, Bro. Dwight. Now...in no particular order:

1. My biggest regret is that I so flagrantly violated the time scheduled for my session. That was rude of me. It was not intentional. It bothers me still today.
2. My most cherished attribute of the conference was the opportunity to meet in person so many of the people with whom I have swapped electrons over the past year.
3. I was treated with the utmost of respect and courtesy, even during the infamous "panel discussion" Q&A time.
4. I think that Robin and I may have frustrated some of the folks involved by not tailoring our presentations to some sort of a preconceived concept of "cessationism/semi-cessationism." It is possible that we did not live up to our assignments, but if that is the case (and I do not know that it is), then I think what I actually did was better than what I was assigned to do. It seems to me that sometimes the folks who have tended to argue the other side of our contemporary issues would like for folks like me to step neatly into a theological box, perhaps because their arguments address the box better than they address who we really are? I do not fit into the box, nor do the Southern Baptists I know.
5. I detected very little actual difference in the doctrine of the Holy Spirit among most of the presenters (although I'm not so sure that biblical glossolalia derives from the Holy Spirit speaking "frog" and "locust"). Our differences relate to how we apply our doctrine of the Holy Spirit to the specific phenomena around us. Are the specific Pentecostal/Charismatic/Third-Wave practices in view to be equated with and accepted as the genuine biblical gift of tongues, or are they counterfeits? With fear and trepidation, I violate the Art Rogers Rule and offer my bald speculation that, from my experience, most Southern Baptists do not believe that the ecstatic utterances (oh, wait, we've been forbidden from using THAT terminology now), just make that "the kind of utterances that are not known languages"…that most Southern Baptists do not belive that these kinds of utterances are what the Bible actually means when it refers to the gift of tongues.
6. People who believe in non-communicative tongues struggle between two poles—on the one hand, they wish to avoid portraying tongues as useless; on the other hand, they wish to avoid portraying tongues as something that gives the modern-tongues-speaker any advantage over the non-tongues-speaker. In this conference, if there was a danger of stepping over one of those boundaries, it was the danger of presenting tongues as a gift conveying special advantages to the possessor. By a very few presenters and by many of the participants in the audience, tongues were referred to as a breakthrough-gift for spiritual advancement to the next level, that which empowers one to speak to cancers or demons to be able to effect healing or exorcism, etc. I think that the majority of the presenters deliberately wanted to avoid this kind of approach, but I think that the difficulty is inherent to the question—there is a reason why such a large number of people who have advocated the modern practice have come to endorse it as a distinguishing mark between healthy Christians and less-healthy Christians.
7. I appreciate Jack Maddox, who—unlike many unnamed souls among you—actually did come and participate as a conference attendee sympathetic to mine and Robin's presentations.

Overall, it was a great privilege to be able to participate in the conference. Nobody has ever asked me to do anything like that before, and as far over time as I went, nobody ever will again! So, I'll just have to bask in this experience as long as I can. :-)

Absent from the Roundtable

I had planned to attend the Roundtable today as an observer. Unfortunately, I've got a serious cough and some laryngitis this morning. J. R. Graves would suggest that I wouldn't have these problems if I would grow a great big beard. Tough luck, J. R.: I'm staying clean-shaven.

Anyway, I have consented to defend my views at the Baptist Conference on the Holy Spirit in April. Today we'll find out who else will be on the panel with me. I'll be watching from home.

Also, I would encourage Wade Burleson (see here) to be careful in speculating as to the motives of attendees. Many of those attending are not seeking to model anything. Many probably would not have attended if they had suspected that they would be cited as a part of a number of people trying to model some new approach of theological leniency.

UPDATE: The live feed is not working at all for me. I guess I'll wait for second-hand reports of the meeting.

McKissic: It's All Been Said

Concerning the situation with Dwight McKissic and his sermon at SWBTS, I've already given my opinion here. Although I have not much more to add, perhaps it is appropriate in the midst of the maelstrom to mention that I support the action of the seminary trustees. Furthermore, I want everyone to note that Dwight McKissic and only Dwight McKissic put this item on the seminary's agenda. If he didn't want a ruling on this, he should not have gone to such lengths to provoke one. There is no credible way that this week's events can be construed as a part of some sinister campaign to narrow participation in the SBC. The agenda was not Patterson's or the trustees'; it was McKissic's. When the SBC comes to a similar verdict, he will complain again, as will all the usual suspects. But when it happens, remember again that Dwight McKissic was the one who publicly demanded that the SBC vote on this issue.

Ask yourself the simple question, would speaking in tongues have been on the SWBTS trustee agenda at all if Dwight McKissic had not put it there?

Orangutans in a Cornfield

I wish to clarify that some key members of the Memphis Declaration movement have distanced themselves from McKissic's actions. This post does not apply to any such person. See the comment log for more details.

One of the wisest things I ever heard James Dobson say: "Many parents of teenagers don't know what they want their teenager to do; they just know that they aren't doing it."

It seems to me that there are a great many people out there with their traps flapping these days who don't seem to know what they want the Southern Baptist Convention to do; they just know that they aren't doing it. If Jerry Sutton proposes revisiting the BF&M, he is lampooned because he is an "insider" with whom we're dissatisfied. If Dwight McKissic proposes exactly the same thing, he's a champion because he is not an "insider" and we suddenly like him. Do we want a stricter, more specific BF&M or not? Maybe we don't know. Maybe we don't care so long as whatever process we employ strikes down the people we want stricken and leaves us in charge.

I heard a missionary tell this tale when I was a little boy at summer camp. I have no real reason to believe that it accurately represents the nature of orangutans, because I've grown up enough since then to know that missionaries fabricate as many illustrations as do preachers here in the good old US of A. But it is a good story, so I repeat it with my disclaimer.

Apparently, one orangutan can destroy an entire cornfield for two ears of corn. To hear the missionary tell it, he enters a row of corn, reaches up with his right arm, and plucks an ear, placing it under his left armpit for safe keeping. But then he sees an ear of corn on his left, so he reaches up with his left arm (the first ear of corn, of course, drops to the ground in this process) and plucks the second ear of corn. But wait, there's another ear on the right! And so the process repeats until the orangutan leaves a hundred ears of corn to rot on the ground to walk out with one ear under each armpit. By casually taking whatever he can get, he leaves a wake of destruction behind him, destroying the hard-won labor of those who were there before he came.

As I have said, I have no real reason to believe that this story accurately portrays the nature of orangutans. The nature of orangutans is immaterial to the effectiveness of this story because we can all recognize immediately that it so aptly depicts the nature of human beings. We react so rapidly to charges that someone somewhere is abusing power that people all over the world can, with very little effort, incite rioters to burn down their own neighborhoods and then go home somehow convinced that they have dealt a blow to someone other than themselves.

It seems to me quite destructive to stir up an insurgency with no clear objectives other than change and vague diatribes. The conservative resurgence was easy to define and understand: Fill the institutions of the SBC with employees who affirm the inerrancy of the Bible and who discharge their duties according to that belief. What, exactly, is this new movement trying to accomplish? You won't find it in the amorphous platitudes of the Memphis Declaration—a document that belongs on the next episode of Oprah. Sometimes the objective appears to be the defense of Dr. Rankin. Sometimes it appears to be the reinstatement of CBF folks like Wade, Glazener, Vestal, etc. Or is it about speaking in tongues? I've been watching since this Spring, and I still can't put my finger on it.

Maybe there is no well-formed constructive objective. And in my opinon, that just might be the worst answer of all for the future of the SBC.

I Want to Be McCareful Here

Dwight McKissic was one of the speakers at a Paul-Timothy Conference that I attended with SBTC. I enjoyed his comments and his wisdom. Bro. McKissic has taken an active role in the SBTC, and I have appreciated his leadership. I doubt that he would remember me, but I remember him, and I have been thankful for specific ways that his comments have contributed to my ministry and my thinking. But I want to differ with him on a couple of specifics from this week.

First, let us consider the issue justly raised by McKissic and summarized by Wade Burleson here about "public statements that contained charges never communicated privately and personally." I think it is a good and biblical observation. I wish Dr. Patterson had mentioned to Dr. McKissic, "Your sermon criticized a sister agency, and we can't put that on our web site. And I disagree with you about your interpretation of the text." I think that is only fair, and Dr. Patterson should have extended that courtesy to a brother in Christ.

But that's a road that runs both ways. McKissic knew about the present controversy. He knew about Dr. Patterson's position. He was preparing a sermon to criticize the IMB and Dr. Patterson publicly at the seminary while Dr. Patterson was sitting on the platform. Now, I ask you, what would be the courteous and Christian and biblical thing to do? Did McKissic communicate with Patterson "privately and personally" about the ambush that he was setting? I doubt it.

And if not, I lay the fault at the feet of McKissic, because he did what he did with forethought and deliberation. Dr. Patterson, on the other hand, had to respond on the spur of the moment. I would have been in shock. I wouldn't have known what to say over lunch, much less at the conclusion of the message. And for setting this trap, McKissic ought to apologize publicly to Patterson.

By the way, this first point illustrates well what I've been saying about a double standard. Because others who would criticize Patterson for failing to communicate privately before publicly will conspicuously refrain from any criticism of McKissic for a more egregious act of the same character. And I don't even know that they do so consciously. But the double standard is obviously there, nonetheless.

Second, let us consider race. Seriously, why play the race card here? I've searched the New Testament over, and I cannot for the life of me find a racial connection to the debate over speaking in tongues. I find it highly inappropriate that McKissic resorted to a sort of racial ultimatum. Let this issue rise and fall on the merits of the New Testament, not as a ransom paid to racial blackmail.

Dr. McKissic and I are not friends, but I hope that we will be someday (our paths just haven't crossed one-on-one yet). We are not friends, but we are brothers in Christ. I regret that a critical exchange will come so early in our acquaintance, but I have written what I believe to be the truth. I've tried to be careful and precise, and now I am anxious to be quiet and hear what you all have to say.