Not That There's Anything Wrong With That

The Gospel Project is a new Sunday School curriculum produced and marketed by Lifeway. Ed Stetzer is the General Editor and Trevin Wax is the Managing Editor. Prior to its official launch, the curriculum has been the subject of some measure of controversy, primarily with regard to disputes over the curriculum's relationship with Calvinism. Is The Gospel Project a new Particular Baptist curriculum? Not enough data is available to come to any hard-and-fast conclusion, but from the data presently available, here's what I would answer:

I suspect that The Gospel Project is indeed a Calvinistic curriculum, not that there's anything wrong with that.

Here's what I mean when I say that The Gospel Project appears to be a Calvinistic curriculum:

1. I would consider people who affirm four points and people who affirm five points to fit alike within the broader penumbra of Calvinism. John Calvin, I think, only clearly affirmed four points. If you're only as Calvinistic as John Calvin was, I consider you a Calvinist, not that there's anything wrong with that. Not at all.
2. I find convincing the detailed case made by Peter Lumpkins and others (see the comment by Jim G giving details of the authors' writings and affiliations) that the proportion of Calvinists (as defined above) creating this curriculum is far higher than the proportion of Calvinists in the SBC population at-large.
3. I believe that the curriculum is poised to gain a welcome reaction and to succeed among Southern Baptist Calvinists and probably among some non-Southern-Baptists who are Calvinists. I'm not suggesting that ONLY Calvinists will purchase and use this curriculum, but I am opining that it will be more popular among Calvinists than among non-Calvinists.
4. I will be surprised if the content of the curriculum gives much attention to the role of the human believer in one's becoming a Christian. A gospel-centered curriculum is going to have to focus on conversion, faith, justification, regeneration, and the like. Calvinism is, after all, an approach to soteriology. It seems to me (and perhaps I am wrong, here) that this curriculum has only four options available in talking about soteriology: (a) It can approach it Calvinistically, teaching almost exclusively about the role of God in salvation; (b) It can approach it from an Arminian perspective, focusing upon the role of the human believer in salvation; (c) It can reject both Calvinism and Arminianism and find a third way; or, (d) It can avoid the controversy by staying shallow in these topics. The historic Baptist Sunday School Board approach (as well as the approach of our statements of faith) has been d (staying shallow enough to avoid these controversies), but that seems to be the outcome that this curriculum is deliberately trying to avoid (in the quest for a theologically robust curriculum). The list of contributors so far are people who would die before they took approach b. I guess that c is a possibility, but I find it unlikely. Considering these four approaches, I think that a is likely the inevitable outcome, not that there's anything wrong with that.

So, I'm surmising, opining, and deducing that the contributors, consumers, and product of this curriculum will all have a Calvinistic bent to them (as defined above). That's what I think, now how do I feel about that?

First, I think that it is a good thing for us to have Lifeway-produced curricula that are more theologically robust. I want to affirm this decision and encourage the cultivation of this kind of thinking at Lifeway. If The Gospel Project is the first-fruits of a new kind of product that we will see coming out of Nashville rather than the final accomplishment of a total package, then I give Stetzer and Wax my enthusiastic amen.

I think it would be appropriate for Lifeway to develop theologically robust Sunday School literature representative of other perspectives in our convention as well. Of course, if you're not a Calvinist you can't use the words "Gospel" or "Grace" to describe your materials (said all in fun, folks!), but even if all of the good titles are taken, I think that the many of our churches that are not Calvinistic could have something theologically robust to offer as well, don't you?

Second, there's really not anything wrong with that: I really don't think that there is anything wrong with the idea that Lifeway would produce Calvinistic materials. We have Calvinistic folks in our convention. Our entities exist to enhance the ministries of those local churches, too, even if there are fewer of them. Especially at Lifeway, where the money comes from market forces rather than from the CP, it is no skin off non-Calvinist noses for Calvinistic churches from within or without our convention to be able to purchase Calvinistic curricula from Lifeway. So long as the produced materials are not so highly Calvinistic (or lowly Arminian) as to violate the Baptist Faith & Message, I'm not bothered by the existence of The Gospel Project.

Third, in an aspect that I haven't seen being discussed, this curriculum strikes me as an invasion by "senior pastors" (and I hate that term) into what has been previously the turf of "education pastors." To put it another way, How many MDivs are contributing to this curriculum versus how many MAREs? I don't know how to comment on this without being controversial, other than to note that I have an MDiv and a PhD, so my colors are clear.

These authors have studied about and have written about theology. People are able to identify that the contributors to this curriculum are predominantly Calvinsts. What did you know about the contributors to the LAST curriculum that you purchased from Lifeway? Probably not nearly as much. I like the idea that Lifeway is enlisting well-known prominent authors who are theologically minded, substantively educated, and about whom we can know quite a bit.

In summation, I think that there's a lot to like about The Gospel Project. I don't have plans to use it at FBC Farmersville, but this KIND of project, associated with a different set of names and done in a way that was less lopsidedly Calvinistic, might be precisely the kind of thing that I would promote to our Sunday School classes here. For that reason, what I want to do, rather than try to get Lifeway to regret having produced this curriculum by complaining about the predominant Calvinism of the contributors to The Gospel Project, is to encourage Lifeway to double-down on their effort and produce yet another similar curriculum embracing other points of view.

A Non-Angry Post about the Lifeway PPL Report

As a part of my Mea Culpa, I retract the entire post about Biased Researchers. Unless anyone objects, I will remove it entirely from the blog. Although I would step back from my tone in some of the other posts and comments, I reiterate my other questions about the research as representative of my thought.

Mea Culpa

Since Thursday morning, I have been angry. My anger grew steadily from then through this morning. With each blog post of the past twenty-four hours, I injected more and more anger into my writing. "...the anger of man does not achieve the righteousness of God." (James 1:20) Although the question of whether the Holy Spirit inspires non-language utterances is a matter of some contention among us, we all ought to be able to agree that the Holy Spirit convicts us quite eloquently when His children are of the wrong heart. I have to give a little narrative to get around to apologizing to everyone. I have to keep the narrative very vague and uncompelling in order not to make matters any worse. Late Wednesday evening, I first learned of an inappropriate (I came to conclude later) circumstance relating to the upcoming PPL report. Indeed, this is how I came to know that a PPL report was even coming out on Friday. Thursday morning I lit up phone lines across the nation trying to get into a position of equity. At points along the way on Thursday morning, I discovered the inappropriateness of the circumstance. Thus a very strange conversation with Dr. Brad Waggoner on Thursday morning—I had called earlier that morning to try to achieve some equity in the situation and had not gotten through. By the time he called me back, I was starting to learn unsettling things about the situation. At that point, I didn't know whether to beg him, accuse him, tattle to him, or what. I simply spoke with him briefly about my admiration for Lifeway Research—which, at that point, was still how I felt. Nevertheless, that obviously was not why I had called him. I misled him. For that, I apologize publicly. I mention this because someone in a comment had made reference to that phone call, and an explanation is in order to whoever that was. As the day progressed on Thursday, I learned positively that the circumstance had indeed taken place, and in a manner that bothered me even more than what I first thought had happened. I grew very, very angry—all the more so because I felt so foolish about my earlier telephone call to Dr. Waggoner (whom I shall be calling and to whom I shall apologize personally on Monday morning). Then the Lifeway report came out, missing any numbers for SBC laity—an absence barely enabling people to claim that the majority of Southern Baptists believe in PPL. I connected this bewildering and convenient feature of the report with "Situation A" described above, and moved from angry to livid. And that, quite obviously, has been the attitude behind my recent posts. But today, during the wedding, while I was preaching to a young couple beginning a life together, talking about the biblical pattern for marriage, the Holy Spirit reminded me of the awesome destructive force of anger. Yes, sir. Guilty as charged. So, I repent of my anger and my angry words. I have spoken with and apologized to a certain blogger. I apologize to all of the other bloggers who have had the misfortune to cross my path in the past twenty-four hours. I apologize to Dr. Ed Stetzer—although I never alleged that he was a part of the inappropriate circumstance, I did mix his name into all of this, highlighting chapters of his life in the past year that he would probably rather forget. I'll be calling him Monday morning, too. I wasn't ever angry at Dr. Stetzer, but I stirred him into a post marked by my anger toward others. I don't think I wrote clearly enough in my anger for a reader to be able to tell that I wasn't accusing Dr. Stetzer of anything other than being a human being in a difficult position (a fact that he himself acknowledged in the podcast). I apologize to Dr. Waggoner. I never got to my final post in this series, where I was going to point out that, even with all my doubts about the Lifeway report, I would be surprised to see the appropriate corrections lower the PPL fraction by more than a 10-point swing. Thus, I think that the "majority" thing is very dubious, but this report still shows the PPL fraction to be much higher in the SBC than I thought it was. So, where does all of this end up? I've lost a little faith in Lifeway Research. The things that I chose to get angry about are inappropriate and still concern me, even though I am putting away the anger. People make mistakes. Other people ought to forgive. I've lost a little faith in the Southern Baptist people. Azusa Street has made tremendous inroads into the Southern Baptist Convention. My opinion of that is clear, and there's no need to deny it. The trend is also clear. I do not think that the 50% figure is accurate today when describing all Southern Baptists (pastors and laity alike), but clearly that is the direction that the statistics are moving. In a century, we may be thoroughly charismatic as a denomination (I hope that Jesus comes back long before a century has elapsed, for reasons other than this conversation). But mostly, I've lost a lot of faith in myself. God's servant may indeed get angry, but it is unbecoming for anger to be in control of God's servant. I apologize not only to a certain blogger, Brad Waggoner, and Ed Stetzer, but also to you, my readers. I realize that, with all the intentional vagueness, this sounds pretty foolish. I feel pretty foolish right now. If you knew the details, it all might make more sense to you. Others know the details, and it makes sense to some of them. But I can't clarify further. Think of me as foolish if you wish, and that way I'll think twice before I write in anger again. Dear friends, we disagree. I'm not going to quit disagreeing—to pretend I believe otherwise than I do just to please men. But I will not be angry about it. Let us follow our polity to resolve our differences. Let us leave what happens in the hands of a sovereign God. Let us be honorable in our speech and deeds. I will be praying that Southern Baptists will see through the "Charismatic Chaos" and stem the tide. Some will pray otherwise. But I will pray what I pray in love for you all.

October Surprise

So far, we've explored the fact that, based upon the overall survey of Protestants, the Lifeway report includes with regard to Southern Baptists solely the category (pastors) most likely to yield the desired high number of PPL-endorsers. As a result, the one question that the report cannot answer is "What do Southern Baptists believe about PPL?" We've also explored the evidence that Lifeway Research conducted this research amidst exclusive coordination with pro-PPL bloggers—that, honest, honorable, and faithful people that they are notwithstanding, the folks at Lifeway Research appear to have more friendly connections with pro-PPL than anti-PPL folks in the SBC. The first factor could easily have been remedied by taking some more time and incorporating an actual survey of Southern Baptists—an unlimited general survey of Southern Baptist pastors and laity alike. But Lifeway Research did not take additional time. The time of publication is also an important component of factor two, since coordination of the report's release with pro-PPL bloggers appears to have been a part of the communication between Lifeway Research and bloggers. What is the timing of the report? On the eve of the Southern Baptist Convention Annual Meeting in San Antonio. I can imagine an innocent, non-partisan reason for this timing: The report is going to generate a lot more interest if released right now as opposed to September. If Lifeway Research wants to grab headlines and generate interest in their work, then releasing this report at this particular time is just the way to do it. That's one reason why an honest researcher might have chosen to release this report on the eve of the convention. Of course, for the political machine that has been at work throughout the past year, the timing could not have been better if made-to-order. As for my thoughts, the presidential elections of 2000 & 2004 come to mind. Networks came under fire for the practice of using exit polls to declare (wrongly) the results of the presidential election in key states while voting was still underway on the West Coast. For some reason, exit poll errors seem to occur in the favor of Democrats. The more conspiracy-minded among us suggest a concerted effort by networks and pollsters to skew the election. Not me. I acknowledge that the exit polls have recently tended to err in favor of Democrats when they err, but the reasons are likely related either to subtle, inadvertent bias on the part of the researchers or to the fact that human behavior and opinion are difficult to survey with great precision. Also, to borrow from our physicist friends, one must consider the observer effect—when you point a camera at it, it changes. People have this strange habit of sometimes saying what they believe will make a pollster approve of them as people. These are explanations more likely than deliberate political conspiracy, in my opinion. Nevertheless, even though I do not believe that the networks and Voter News Service are engaged in a political conspiracy, I support the severe limitation of the use of exit polls during national elections. Why?

1. Because the polls themselves affect the outcome of the election when results are released before voting is complete.
2. When the stakes are that high, the inaccuracies of the method cease to become an academic footnote and become very, very important. The egg on the networks' faces amply demonstrates that such polls are not reliable enough to be allowed to play such an important role.

And that's not to mention the partisan political polls ordered by and coordinated with a particular candidate's campaign. Of course, the American people have grown suspicious of such partisan hack polls released on the eve of an election. In the case of the Lifeway Research PPL Report, we have a poll regarding a very important question released just prior to the Southern Baptist Convention Annual Meeting. It is released at a time when it is inevitable that Southern Baptists will interpret the report to speak to the beliefs of Southern Baptists as a whole, when it does not even purport to answer that question. Just like the polls mentioned above, this report is likely to influence the results of the SBC meeting. This report, due to the inadequacies mention in the preceding posts, is even less reliable than the infamous exit polls. Releasing this report with these deficiencies at this particular time is reckless at best.

Another View

If you are interested in reading the viewpoint of perhaps the only blogger in the SBC who has kept his blood pressure down today, check out Joe Stewart's blog. There you'll find neither triumphalism nor scorn, but more of a yawn. There haven't been many of those today!

Biased Researchers

No...no more biased than any of the rest of us. But I doubt there is a dispassionate soul in the entirety of the SBC right now, as regards these issues. Certainly I think we can show that Ed Stetzer would have to be superhuman not to have personal bias germane to this topic.

1. Entities, blogs, etc., within the SBC have rather strongly polarized over these issues over the past year.
2. Pro-PPL bloggers include people who have tried to advance Ed Stetzer as the man to lead NAMB, people with very intimate connections with Lifeway Research, and the people for whom Lifeway Research initiated the study to begin with (remember the Roundtable?). Some of his most passionate cheerleaders in the SBC have disproportionately been pro-PPL folks.
3. Anti-PPL folks in the SBC, on the other hand, include many people who have been harsh critics of Ed Stetzer and Acts 29. Here I go speculating again, but I'm willing to guess that word of that criticism actually made it back to Ed Stetzer (since it has been reported all over Baptist Press). By the way, please note that today is the first time that Ed Stetzer's name has ever been mentioned on my blog.
4. I don't know Ed Stetzer, but I'm willing to offer once again the bald speculation that he is, indeed, a human being, and as such, vulnerable to being influenced by such things as the #2 and #3.
5. Lifeway Research has publicly stated that they have been in conversation with bloggers throughout this process. I know that Lifeway Research hasn't been in any conversations with me over this (although I think Lifeway belongs to me as much as it belongs to any other Southern Baptist blogger)—could any anti-PPL blogger tell me about having been in conversation with Lifeway Research about this project? If not, then I guess that Lifeway Research has been in conversation with only one side of a partisan divide as this research has progressed. Can anyone think of a good excuse for Lifeway Research to be coordinating this project with vocal participants from one particular side of this debate? Don't such actions call Lifeway Research's objectivity into question? I don't think that Southern Baptists are well served by a research division that gets cozy with one side in a polarized debate that the division is researching.

Please note, I am not calling anyone from Lifeway Research a liar. I'm just calling them human beings with lopsided connections (at least for some of them) in this particular debate. Please also note, I do not use these facts to say, "Throw the research away! I'm right and you're wrong!" No, I simply say this: Lifeway Research's contribution to this debate is hobbled by these and other factors. Let's not settle for this confused state of affairs. Let's commission a survey by an external, professional, objective polling company. Let's let theologians from both sides of the question, working with polling experts, come to agreement on good questions and good sampling and presentation methodology. If this is done, I promise to acknowledge the results as an accurate depiction of the status of the SBC, whether I like what I see or not. Perhaps I'll make a motion to that effect in San Antonio.

A Bizarre Sample

I have drawn two conclusions from the Lifeway Report:

1. The percentage of Southern Baptists tempted by the Charismatic Movement is much larger than I had guessed.
2. The same percentage is likely much smaller than reported by Lifeway Research.

Does anything seem asymmetrical to you about the research sample?

	Pastors	Laity
Protestant Non-SBC	602	1,004
SBC	403	???

Where are the Southern Baptist laity? I raised this question earlier at Marty Duren's blog, and here is his response, presumably from Lifeway Research, unless Marty is otherwise somehow personally aware of the particulars of the research methodology for this survey:

The entire sampling was of 1,000 or so lay people (all Protestant) and 1,000 or so pastors (all Protestant, but with enough SBC pastors [405] to form an oversampling). The purpose of the survey was not to determine what Southern Baptist laypersons believe versus other Protestant layperson regarding the PPL issue, but what Protestants believe, with an emphasis on Southern Baptist pastors (who were oversampled to provide a large enough pool for statistical accuracy).

So, either (and I'm not sure which is the case) some number of Southern Baptist laypeople actually form a portion of the "Protestant laity" group, but have not been broken out to give us their views statistically, or all 1,004 of the laypeople surveyed were non-SBC. Either way, from what I've told you at this point the refusal to give statistics for SBC laity is merely a curiosity. But when you look at the data, you realize that it is not merely a curiosity. In the Protestant category, the laypeople broke decidedly away from a belief in PPL. Indeed, in the podcast, one of the commentators (Stetzer, I think) remarked at how strongly and surprisingly Protestant laity differed from pastors in rejecting PPL. A full 15 points (or 13, there appears to be an error in the slide I have in front of me) separates Protestant pastors and laypeople on this question. So, the very category that moves the statistics dramatically away from support of PPL is the category excluded from consideration as regards Southern Baptists. I note in this regard:

1. Overall, Southern Baptists were far less likely to support PPL than were Protestants at large.
2. If there were SBC laity in the Protestant laity sample, they may well be the explanation for this dramatic separation between Protestant pastors and "Protestant" laity. In which case, if Southern Baptist laity were considered separately (as they should have been), the resulting SBC number would be significantly lower than 50%.
3. If there were no SBC laity among the 1,004 Protestant laity, then we might expect SBC laity to be as different from Protestant laity as SBC pastors are from Protestant pastors. In which case the inclusion of SBC laity would still result in an overall number far below 50%.

Of course, I'm speculating. Of course, I am left in a situation where I have to speculate because the data have not been given to us...because of a strangely sculpted categorization of the sample. I cannot imagine how the categorization could have been accomplished in a fashion more favorable to the pro-PPL group, even if one were trying. If there were SBC laity in the survey, I call upon Lifeway Research to publish the percentages for SBC laity responses to the various questions.

Lifeway Study Analysis: Part 1

I'm performing a wedding. I'll only get bits-and-snatches of time to post over the next 24 hours, so I'll break it into chunks. Perhaps that will be better, anyway. We can all confine our comments to the proper thread dealing with the proper subtopic, and that will facilitate better discussion. There's one big-ticket topic to get out of the way right up front: Knowing how vocal I have been in this controversy, can anything that I would say about this topic be trusted by anyone who disagrees with me? No doubt, many have concluded a priori in the negative. But, since there's not a doggoned thing I can do about that, I'm not going to worry about it. Others will be reasonable listeners. I hope that they will hear me. I am perfectly willing to let the statistics say whatever they actually say. First of all, they confirm what I've said all along—that the preponderance of Southern Baptists do not believe non-linguistic utterances to be the same as the biblical gift of tongues. If our differences are truly over whether God is giving people the gift of speaking Mandarin without having studied it, then I see great hope for resolving our difficulties quickly: Produce for me one of these Mandarin-speaking Alabamans who has not studied the language, and I am indeed disproven. I am open to the possibility of that—God can do whatever God wills. But the practice affirmed by the Lifeway study is talking about a verifiable gift, in which case I answer, "Then let's verify it." So, the study results surprise me, but they are in no way lethal to my position. And indeed, presuming that I harbor the most hostile of sentiments toward the modern practice, I still sincerely desire to know what is the honest state of our convention. I see survey results all of the time that disturb me about our convention, yet without feeling some need to dispute that half of our members are not-to-be-found or that a vast number of our attending members are rather biblically illiterate (results of previous statistical offerings I have seen). If Charles Fox Parham's cheap parlor trick has genuinely infected 50% of the Southern Baptist Convention, I want to know about it. Some want to know in order to dance around in a victory parade—I want to know in order to call a day of fasting and prayer. Whether you believe the true situation to be a positive situation or a negative one, denial is helpful to nobody. So, as I raise what I believe to be valid questions over the next few posts, I know that irresponsible bloggers will raise charges of "crying in the sandbox." I hope that others will at least take the time to listen.

Dr. Malcolm Yarnell's Response to Lifeway PPL Report

I post this on the fly and on the road. I will offer my analysis later tonight or tomorrow morning. Here are the thoughts of Dr. Malcolm Yarnell (please pardon any formatting issues that may have resulted from a hasty conversion into HTML):

Commentary on the Lifeway Research Division Study of Private Prayer Language

“A Perfect and Just Measure Shalt Thou Have”

Prior to recognizing and surrendering to the call of God upon my life, I was a practicing economist and financier. Statistics and accounting—the discipline of mathematics applied to social trends and the management of money—were the focus of my daily thoughts and deeds. The statistical side of economics in comparison with the reporting side of accounting brought greater joy to this former practitioner of the financial arts as economics involves understanding human behavior. Yet, like other social scientists, economists deal with both the measurable and the immeasurable precisely because they are dealing with the attitudes and actions of human beings. The social sciences have long had a mysterious hold on the American imagination, because their scientists are deemed the experts who know the people better than the people know themselves. The mystique of the statistical disciplines—economics, political science, sociology, etc.—is enhanced by a modernist pretense that true scientific disciplines depend upon mathematics, unlike those disciplines that involve more variable factors—psychology, history, journalism, etc. The Enlightenment taught the inhabitants of Western cultures implicitly to trust the mathematical and doubt the non-mathematical. At a popular level, this means, inter alia, that a “scientific” study or statistical survey in an Enlightenment culture carries substantial authority. Yet the mathematical is subject to the foibles introduced by humanity’s created limitations and, even more debilitatingly, by its chosen depravity. These theological truths—humanity’s limitations and depravity—were brought home to me in the field of economics. It quickly became apparent that statistics may be inappropriately constructed or interpreted, whether with or without cognition, by the social scientist. In other words, some studies are worthy of more trust than others, due to the manipulation of the data to which the mathematical tools of statistical analysis are applied. Moreover, no study may claim perfection, simply because social studies are human endeavors involving human subjects, human objects, and human agents. Statisticians are taught to qualify their results by assigning variation measures—for instance, “this study has a 98% confidence factor and 3.2% sampling error”. To the layman, such measures appear to deepen the trustworthiness of the survey, while to the professional, they may serve merely as so much preliminary window-dressing. The Word of God is less confident regarding the ability of human beings to declare themselves possessive of a high confidence factor and low error rate. Of the economist and financier, as of any other social scientist, God demands one set of weights “in thy bag” and a “perfect and just” set of weights at that (Deut. 25:13-16). God commanded his people to engage in, not just honest and consistent math, but perfect and just math. My own experience with statistics taught me that obtaining and utilizing a “perfect and just” set of measures is a very difficult, if not ultimately impossible, task. Every step that involves human decisions opens the door further for the loss of perfection. In a statistical survey, critical decisions have to be made from the very beginning that may obfuscate rather than elucidate the answer one seeks. For instance, one must decide how to ask a particular question for which an answer is sought; whether to accept this stream of data or that; how to filter data properly; when to trust the study of another or commission a new study. When dealing with surveys of human opinions rather than the raw data of sales and purchases, the problems become especially difficult, for the way a question is asked and who is asked the question and who asks the question and exactly what question is asked may skew the results of a survey one way or another. This does not mean that the pollsters that I hired were necessarily untrustworthy, but that human factors necessarily distort, often quite unintentionally. Moreover, the final step in a statistical survey—interpreting the data—introduces non-mathematical factors that cannot be allayed by high confidence factors and low sampling errors. Confidence and sampling error estimates regard only the relation between the sample and the subject population. These estimates, which may be and often are wrong, say nothing about the surveyor’s intentions. Yesterday, the difficulties inherent in the social sciences, especially those that seek to conduct their business with recourse to the apparently unarguable results of statistics, were brought to mind once again.

“For It Is Not Ye That Speak, But the Spirit”

Private prayer languages are a controversial issue among some Southern Baptists at this point in our history. The International Mission Board of Trustees [IMB] and the Trustees of the Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary [SWBTS] have made it clear that private prayer languages are not to be countenanced among new employees of those institutions. Yet, a leading administrator of the IMB has publicly affirmed private prayer languages and a prominent trustee at SWBTS believes the denial of private prayer languages is unbiblical. And today, the administration of LifeWay, the old Baptist Sunday School Board, released a study by its new Research Division. The study, a statistical opinion survey, is entitled, “Private Prayer Language and the Gift of Tongues: Protestant Pastors and Laity and Southern Baptist Seminary Graduates.” It has been released, most intriguingly, right before the meeting of the Southern Baptist Convention [SBC] in San Antonio, Texas, where the issue of private prayer languages promises to appear on the agenda from the floor. The timing of the study’s release is problematic, but even more problematic is the study itself, both in methodology and in interpretation. For instance, with regard to methodology, some of the questions that are asked are woefully inadequate, and the fact that two surveys were combined into one report further complicates the picture. Methodological Problems with Question Two For instance, question two is the critical one from which the surveyors concluded, “Half of Southern Baptist pastors believe in Private Prayer Language.” Unfortunately, such a conclusion is essentially without substantive meaning. Indeed, the question itself may be affirmed by a person who does not actually believe that ecstatic, unintelligible speech directed toward God is a spiritual gift defined by Scripture.

Q2 Do you believe that the Holy Spirit gives some people the gift of a special language to pray to God privately? Some people refer to this as a Private Prayer Language or the “private use of tongues.”

The question is unclear as to its meaning, first with regard to meaning of “the gift”: (A) Is the “gift” to be taken as one of the charismata discussed in 1 Corinthians 12-14? Or, (B) is the “gift” to be taken as one of the graces that accompany the reception of the Holy Spirit at salvation? Or, (C) is the “gift” to be taken as one of the common graces applied to human beings by the Holy Spirit by reason of their creation? A second problem with clarity in the second question concerns the meaning of “special language”: (A) Is the “special language” to be taken as a heavenly, angelic language previously unknown to the speaker? Or, (B) is the “special language” a learned language that has been heightened in understanding by reason of the Spirit’s guidance? Or, (C) is the “special language” to be taken as the “barking of a dog” or the “croaking of a frog” in emulation of the Toronto Blessing and its rather bizarre manifestations? Although it is public knowledge that Malcolm Yarnell most certainly does not believe a private prayer language as ecstatic, unintelligible speech to be a spiritual gift defined in Scripture, even I could answer the second Lifeway Research Division question affirmatively by opting for B in both of the above instances. After all, I do believe that the Holy Spirit comes at salvation as the gift of God and that he brings to me many graces as a result of salvation (Romans 8). Moreover, I do believe that the Spirit helps every Christian pray to God rightly (Ephesians 6:18) and that the Spirit is promised to help us speak our own language intelligibly in witness of the Gospel, for instance when persecuted (Matthew 10:17-20). Yet, I would vehemently disagree with “special language” being the barking of a dog, and I find the idea of that unintelligible private language is a spiritual gift to be biblically insupportable. Another problem with this question is the terminology of “some people”. Is “some” to be taken as a Christian elitism? Or, are these “people” Christians or not? Finally, perhaps the greatest problem with the second question is its blatant assumption that a “gift” may be used “privately”. Paul is quite clear in 1 Corinthians 12:7 that a spiritual gift is for the common good, and he spends much of chapter 14 arguing that speaking gifts must be used only for public edification. The questionnaire’s equation of “gift” with “privately” may suggest that the surveyor himself (or herself) believes that a private activity is a spiritual gift. Not only is such an equation indicative of either an inappropriately constructed or insufficiently educated survey, it suggests an implied contradiction of the Pauline doctrine of spiritual gifts. Methodological Problems with Question Four Also worthy of consideration regarding the survey’s methodology is question four, concerning the definition of “tongues”. Question four does not directly address the critical issue at stake, but bypasses it in favor of less controversial matters.

Q4 Which one of the following two options best describes your understanding of the term “tongues” used in the New Testament? 1. “Tongues” refers to the God-given ability to speak another language you had not previously been able to speak, 2. “Tongues” refers to special utterances given by the Holy Spirit meant as messages to the congregation with the help of an interpreter.

The question does not even offer the option that is most critical in the current debate. A balanced survey would have given this as a third option: “3. ‘Tongues’ refers to ecstatic, unintelligible utterances given by the Holy Spirit to only certain believers for their private edification.” After all, this is what current proponents of private prayer languages admittedly mean when they refer to “tongues”. If I, as a surveyor, wanted to confuse rather than clarify the issues at stake, I would not directly address the critical issue. Unfortunately, the questionnaire effectively leaves the primary issue at stake unaddressed and opts for questions that may be affirmed without great controversy. Moreover, if I wanted to confuse rather than clarify the issue at stake, I would ask a question that might be answered not as an “either-or” but as a “both-and”. Although I would not personally affirm number two, there are sincere Baptists who are not neo-Pentecostals that would. Perhaps the question’s lack of clarity due to insufficient breadth of options explains why the responses were all over the place. It should be noticed that many opted for a third response that was not even given as an option: “Don’t know.” The fourth question, like the second question, leaves the issue more confused than clarified. It is reported that Ed Stetzer responded to the survey by noting that there are “two sizeable yet contradictory positions among SBC pastors.” My response would be that the contradiction is not with the respondents, but with the questionnaire itself. The survey’s methodology is such that it does not clarify the issue, but confuses it. Two Surveys, Not One Another problem with the methodology of the survey is that it was not conducted by one surveyor, nor was it even a single survey. Rather, LifeWay has combined the results of two surveys that were independently conducted by separate surveyors. This introduces yet further problems that prompted one of the surveyors to conclude that the pastors of the Southern Baptist Convention appear to be contradictory. The problem, however, may be that the surveys themselves are contradictory.

“Be Ye Therefore Wise as Serpents, and Harmless as Doves”

The command of Jesus in Matthew 10:16 is one that Southern Baptists need to take to heart. Engaging in theological discourse demands both wisdom and innocence. The recent survey on private prayer languages conducted by LifeWay’s Research division is a singular disappointment. The survey and its release are alternately methodologically insufficient and denominationally unwise. Whatever the real intent of LifeWay’s administration in releasing such a report at this time, it certainly gives the appearance of theological partisanship rather than innocence. Why did the surveyors construct the second question so that almost anybody could answer it positively? Why did the surveyors not offer a response in the fourth question regarding the critical issue at stake? Why did the surveyors combine two surveys which probably followed different methodologies? There are other questions, but alas, what has been shared with the public is insufficient for a thorough analysis of the survey itself. Unfortunately, few people will look into the methodology utilized, and even fewer will understand that the survey itself is theologically inadequate, perhaps even theologically skewed. What many people will remember is that apparently half of our pastors now believe in private prayer languages. LifeWay should conduct a sweeping review of its research methodology.