The Potency of Proclamations

According to this story, Mayor Tom Hayden of Flower Mound, TX, has proclaimed 2014 to be the Year of the Bible in Flower Mound (complete with website that is performing about as well as healthcare.gov under the increased load that accompanies media attention). Hayden collaborated with area churches in making the proclamation, and he hopes that his community will "connect through the Bible" (those are the reporter's words, not necessarily Hayden's).

If you are a Bible-believing Christian, this kind of thing FEELS good. In an environment of heavy-handed government oppression of the consciences of people like the Green family, the world seems a little less worrisome when local government does something in affirmation of our beliefs. But these uncertain days are no time for us to be navigating church-state questions by the seat-of-our-pants navigation that our feelings provide for us. We need map-based navigation drawn from time-honored and thoughtful ideas about the proper respective roles of churches and government officials in a well-ordered society.

According to those principles, as I understand them, Mayor Hayden has made a mistake. Here are a few reasons why:

1. He has overstepped his authority as mayor. In the Fox4 story Curt Orton complained, "He was elected mayor, not as the spiritual leader of Flower Mound." You might presume (as I'll admit I did at first) that Orton is a flaming liberal secularist. Actually, it appears that he is an active member of Lantana Community Fellowship Church of the Nazarene in Flower Mound and is, in fact, the president of the church's missions auxiliary (see this document that led me to conclude this). I've neither met nor spoken with Orton, but he looks and smells like an evangelical Christian.

   He's also 100% correct in his assessment of the situation and stands in line with the best of historical Christian thinking about church-state issues.

   Although I can see some questions that it does not fully anticipate or resolve, I've never seen a better theory of church-state relationships than Roger Williams's metaphor of the Two Tables of the Law. Williams's rationale safeguards religious liberty for all people without plunging society into erosive amorality. It provides a hermeneutical distinctive that makes sense of the entirety of the New Testament's treatment of the role of the state in the Christian worldview. It's a shame that so few of our fellow believers are acquainted with Williams's approach: We would more deftly handle situations like this one if we were well-versed in the writings of Roger Williams.

   Hayden is free to stand in the pulpit of his home congregation as a church member to proclaim 2014 to be the Year of the Bible as a church member. He is free to stand in a local meeting place as a Christian in Flower Mound and to proclaim with the local ministerial alliance that they consider 2014 to be the Year of the Bible. He is free to stand on his front porch as a citizen of Flower Mound and proclaim that 2014 is the Year of the Bible. But to issue an official proclamation in the council chambers in his role as mayor oversteps his authority.

   One last thing about this before I move on: I am well aware that this is not an official law. I am well aware that the city council did not vote on this question. I am well aware that the ceremonial and non-binding nature of this proclamation may well cause our court system not to regard this as any violation of the First Amendment. But when I say that the mayor has overstepped his authority, I'm not talking about the First Amendment. There wasn't a First Amendment when Roger Williams lived and wrote. I'm not talking about the authority that the Constitution gives to the Mayor Hayden; I'm talking about the authority that God has given to government as His agent. God has given someone the job of encouraging people to read the Bible, and He did not give that job to the government. I'm also completely cognizant of the fact that Ronald Reagan issued a similar proclamation in 1983. I, decrepit old man that I am, remember 1983. Reagan was wrong, too.

2. He has denigrated and misrepresented the Bible. Please read carefully, because this is the way that evangelicals so frequently betray what they claim to believe without realizing that they are doing so.

   Hayden's proclamation, like Reagan's proclamation before it, explained the rationale behind the proclamation, grounding it in the unique role that the Bible has played in American history as a formative influence underlying our legal system and the design of our government. That the Bible has played this role is historical fact. That any evangelical Christian should expend any energy to communicate this as an important message about the Bible is a crying shame. These accidents of history are not on the Bible's résumé. The credibility and authority of the Bible rests upon these items of trivia not at all.

   Here's what's important about the Bible: You're going to Hell forever unless you heed the words God has spoken to us in the Bible and receive the gospel of Jesus Christ. Reagan's proclamation said nothing about that. Although the story did not give the full text of Hayden's proclamation, and although I have not read it, I'm willing to proceed upon the assumption that Hayden's proclamation also said nothing remotely resembling these gospel truths. To do so would be to commit political suicide, to be sure, but to fail to do so is to dilute the Bible's message, transmogrifying its radical gospel message into a bland civil Christianity that encourages people to behave like good citizens while they await perdition.

   Yes, Hayden probably says more about the Bible in private, but the officially proclaimed position of the office of the Mayor of Flower Mound is now this gospel-less view of the Bible, since the proclamation says no more than it does. Yes, there's the possibility that someone will read the Bible because of this proclamation and will thereby encounter the gospel, but who here really believes that God cooked this up as a strategy for sharing the gospel?

   Look at it this way: Twentieth-century Christianity can claim that the Bible has had more influence upon worldwide jurisprudence and political thinking than any other one book (second place probably goes to the Qur'an). First-century Christianity could not claim that the Bible was any more than a collection of obscure writings produced by obscure followers of an obscure religious sect in an obscure backwater region forgotten by civilization. In which of these two epochs did Christians enjoy greater effectiveness in pointing people to the Bible's true message?

   The Bible ought to be revered as the words of eternal life. To be regarded as the cornerstone of American civilization would be a high honor for any other book, to be sure, but it is an insult to the Bible to treat it as merely that.

3. It distracts government officials from their true God-given jobs as government officials. I think God would be more pleased if government officials would put an end to no-fault divorce and the epidemic of child poverty and child dysfunction the proliferation of divorce has created. Perhaps a mayor could drive payday lenders out of the city or end the way that city governments wink at illegal gambling operations like the "eight-liner" game rooms that are proliferating in North Texas.

   Don't misunderstand: I do not offer this critique out of any jaded cynicism that suspects that Mayor Hayden does not really care about these things. In fact, quite the opposite is true: I offer this suggestion precisely because I suspect that he does care about being the kind of mayor God approves. Because his energies, when directed towards his actual God-authorized job, are likely to be discharged in a good and godly way, I want him spending his time THERE, doing his job well rather than doing mine poorly.

   And although I'm in pretty much 100% in line with the planks of the old Moral Majority platform, at least this much critique of the old "culture war" campaign is healthy and necessary: It was always a lot more effective at producing good proclamations than good laws.

4. It distracts Christians from their true God-given jobs as Christians. On this we do agree: Proclamations are indispensable to New Testament Christianity. It's just that Mayor Hayden and the good folks in Flower Mound have chosen the most impotent kind of proclamation over those that are actually effective. Proclaim the gospel from the pulpit. Proclaim the gospel in the marketplace over the water cooler. Proclaim the gospel in the neighborhood by witnessing to your neighbors. Proclaim the gospel at the family dinner table. Undergird your proclamation of the gospel by being careful in the way that you spend your money, your time, and your energy. Treat other people in your relationships in ways that are strategically supportive of gospel proclamation. Too many of those Christians who will celebrate "The Year of the Bible" will not share their faith with anyone in 2014 (or, dare I say, do the hard work required to deepen their own).

   The real-life proclamations about the Bible, in contrast to political resolutions, are potent. Two thousand years of Christian History vindicates that claim. State-sponsored Christianity is utterly impotent. Visit Germany and see what became of Martin Luther's Landeskirche. I think sometimes we forget that effective spiritual warfare consists of more game, less pep rally, and strategically speaking, mayoral proclamations about the Bible accomplish little more than the rustling of pom-pons. I like a good pep rally as much as the next guy; it's just that history teaches us that this pep rally takes place during the game, in an offsite venue, and with free food and drinks. I can't help but suspect that it is funded by the other team.

An Open Letter to President Obama

Dear Mr. President:

I am one of the pastors at First Baptist Church of Farmersville, Texas. For many years, our church has housed and administered a food pantry. Ours is the only food pantry operating in Farmersville. During the years of your administration, the demands upon our food pantry have greatly increased. Several months ago, our church initiated a conversation about the possibility of moving the food pantry into its own organization, separate from the church. We believe that the food pantry would benefit from such an organizational change, and we were well on the way to formalizing this decision.

At this moment, those plans are completely on hold, and you are the person responsible. Your recent actions regarding Obamacare have made it clear to us that you and a sizable number of people in your political party do not regard the religious liberty of church-related ministries as inalienable rights that you must respect. Rather, you have signaled an intent to withdraw religious liberty from church-related ministries. Today you would force such ministries to fund abortifacient drugs contrary to their religious convictions. Since our food pantry does not employ anyone, your current directive would not affect our food pantry…yet. But once it becomes a settled matter that church-related ministries do not merit the same level of religious liberty that a church enjoys, then we can hardly anticipate all of the draconian dictates yet to come that WOULD affect our food pantry.

And so, the only wise course of action is for FBC Farmersville to refrain from allowing ANY of our ministries to achieve separate legal status from our church. This may not be the ideal circumstance for our ministries, but we're not confident that your policies will allow us to do what is in the best interest of serving those in Farmersville who are hungry. Perhaps you have not considered the overwhelmingly negative impact your astonishingly narrow construal of religious liberty would have upon church-related ministries. It seemed important to me to make the harm done by your policies clear to all.

Why Condemnations of Last Saturday's Political Conclave of Evangelical Leaders Are Dangerous

In the "Magazine of Evangelical…" um…something (Christianity Today), David Neff has taken Paul & Nancy Pressler and around 150 other evangelical leaders to task for holding a meeting last Saturday at the Pressler ranch in an effort to unite behind a single conservative GOP candidate in this year's primary elections. The title of Neff's essay was "Why Last Saturday's Political Conclave of Evangelical Leaders Was Dangerous."

Neff's piece represents well a rising sentiment among a new generation of those who attend Evangelical churches. Popularity, however, does not always correlate well with sound thinking.

Here are, as best as I can discern them, the major points of Neff's attack:

1. The meeting somehow went beyond "political action" to address "the social, economic, and moral threats to a healthy society" (which Neff affirms as something he would support) and transgressed instead into "playing kingmaker and powerbroker." The people at the meeting apparently did this by "conspiring to throw their weight behind a single evangelical-friendly candidate."
2. This is a bad thing, according to Neff, because it feeds "the widespread perception that evangelicalism's main identifying feature is right-wing political activism focused on abortion and homosexuality."
3. Please note a key facet of Neff's argument: It isn't that these brothers and sisters went about doing these things wrongly (selecting the wrong candidate, following the wrong procedure, inviting the wrong people, etc.), but that they did it at all.

I submit to you that Neff's essay represents a nonsensical halfway covenant of sorts, the main appeal of which is its vague feeling of protest, essentially against the personalities involved.

Before engaging in point-by-point analysis, we ought to take a moment to ask ourselves what really happened at the ranch in Brenham (and I was not in attendance). A group of Christians (not a church) gathered. They share a common viewpoint about what are "the social, economic, and moral threats to a healthy society." They believe that the outcome of this year's presidential election will be relevant to those concerns. Having that belief, they found themselves motivated toward "political action." Strategically, they determined that the wisest political action to address their concerns would be to select a candidate whom they could support in the primary elections. Their process for deciding which candidate to support was to conduct a ballot vote. Everyone who came to the meeting came voluntarily. No one in the meeting is in any position to coerce anyone else at the meeting to abide by the decision.

OK, so somewhere in that preceding paragraph, we have to find something that makes it all "dangerous" in the manner that Neff has alleged.

Neff's first allegation is that the meeting went beyond "political action" and transgressed into the realm of "playing kingmaker and powerbroker." How, I wonder? The substance and procedure of the meeting was no different—not one iota different—from what happened at the Iowa Caucuses or the New Hampshire Primaries. A group of likeminded people (in the case of Iowa or New Hampshire, Republicans), believing that they should, for strategic reasons, consolidate their support behind a single candidate for an upcoming election (in this case, the general election in November), hold a vote (or a series of votes, in the case of Iowa) to decide which candidate will be the one for which they will campaign and vote in the days leading up to the general election.

I suppose there is a way in which the Iowa caucuses are, indeed, instances of kingmaking and powerbrokering. The only political processes that would not run afoul of this characterization would be, I guess, political processes that never result in decisions.

Neff must LOVE Congress.

Is this process something beneath Christian individuals? Does it soil them to engage in it? If so, then we need to disavow politics altogether, and certainly we need to refrain from going to our individual polling places and casting our ballots whenever the primary elections take place in our respective states. The substance of what happened in Iowa and what happened in Brenham is absolutely indistinguishable, except for size. And if such strategic politicking is out-of-bounds for Christians, what "political action" is left over for Neff to use in his "urgent" endeavors to address the "threats" that bother him?

There's nothing out of the ordinary about the process of this political meeting, or even about the role it plays in the larger process. Neff's argument against this particular political process can hardly be anything other than an attack on political strategy in general. Neff's argument is an Anabaptist one. He should go the whole way, for the sake of consistency, and abandon secular politics altogether. I admire the Anabaptists. Although I am not convinced of their position, it is internally coherent, makes a good argument, can make some biblical case for itself, and has a certain winsome appeal to this sometimes-idealist. Neff's position is remarkable for having none of those things. His halfway covenant—that Christians should join the rest of the nation in the political process, but must do so in a more foolish, less organized fashion than everybody else—is untenable.

Or, perhaps Neff isn't opposed to such political strategy and organization, per se (and I suspect that this is the case), but is simply reacting negatively toward the particular people involved in this meeting. If so, then he should have made it clear that he was writing a personal attack rather than an attempt at a reasonable philosophy of Christian political involvement. I think we're all at the place where we have to ask ourselves, if Rick Warren had hosted this meeting at his home in California to consolidate evangelical support behind a candidate promising to wipe out AIDS, would Neff have written a demeaning attack piece or would he have asked for time off to attend?

The second grievance in the article is that such meetings (or the existence of such people?) feed what is, in Neff's estimation, a bad perception of evangelicalism: "that evangelicalism's main identifying feature is right-wing political activism focused on abortion and homosexuality." We don't have any reliable indication that abortion and homosexuality were the only items on the agenda in Brenham. Indeed, another critique from a more widely respected press organ flatly asserted the opposite today: That the reason for this meeting was explicitly to go beyond abortion and homosexuality and to meddle in economics and foreign policy and the like.

French's analysis has to be accurate. If the question were simply about abortion and homosexuality, then there would be no need for a Brenham meeting. The people who went to Brenham are all in agreement already about abortion and homosexuality. They had no need to confer about that. This was a meeting to choose WHICH pro-life, pro-marriage candidate (among several) would be the better candidate based upon their differences in OTHER areas.

So, Neff is attacking a meeting that was about neither abortion nor homosexuality, claiming that the mere existence of such a meeting reinforces a perception that evangelicals are concerned, above all else, about abortion and homosexuality. Let's ask ourselves, is this "perception" something that we might categorize as a reasoned observation or an unthinking prejudice? The question matters a great deal. If it is the former, then the fault lies with evangelicals. If it is the latter, then the fault lies with those who hold the prejudice.

I submit to you that it is the latter. By any reasonable measure (where evangelical money goes, where evangelical time goes, what evangelical children wind up doing with their lives, etc.), political engagement is far from the main identifying feature of evangelicalism. The idea that this is the primary feature of evangelicalism is nothing more than a prejudice. The funny thing about prejudices is that they require very little in the way of evidence in order to survive. Neff's speculation that evangelicals would not suffer from such humiliations if Paul Pressler would discontinue such meetings is simply that—speculation. I think it is naïve speculation at that.

In point of fact, the grave embarrassment for evangelicalism these days is Rob Bell and Mike Licona, not Paul Pressler. It is the fact that the word "evangelical" has come to mean nothing substantive. It is the fact that so many rank-and-file evangelicals have very little idea what the Bible says, have only the vaguest notions of what they believe, and have very little firm intention of living according to any of it should it become uncomfortable to them. It is the fact that most evangelicals, if they encountered the rich young ruler today, would commission a self-study immediately after the encounter to try to determine why they weren't reaching the leaders of the next generation. To suggest that evangelicalism's public-relations ills are the fault of Paul Pressler et al is wishful thinking.

Christians need not apologize for being involved in the political process. Christians need not apologize for trying to do so wisely, so long as they are doing so honestly. Churches shouldn't be endorsing particular candidates in this primary election, in my opinion, but individual Christians citizens will be, for a few seconds on the Tuesday after the first Monday in November, the sovereign rulers of this nation. As such, they are responsible before the Lord for everything the Bible teaches us about being good, godly rulers, so far as their influence reaches. I'm thankful that there are people who take that responsibility seriously. If a Christian can honorably vote, there's nothing wrong with campaigning. If you're going to campaign, there's nothing wrong with campaigning in an organized fashion. To pretend otherwise is to demand that Christians participate in the electoral process, but always in a passive fashion. David Neff's opinion notwithstanding, I think THAT is a dangerous outcome.

Aaron Weaver's "James M. Dunn and Soul Freedom" and Baptist Identity

Aaron Weaver. James M. Dunn and Soul Freedom. Macon, GA: Smythe & Helwys, 2011. List price is $18.00, but you can get a better deal than that at Amazon.com…just over $14.00 at the time of this post.

Weaver's seminal work has received strong reviews already from a diverse group. Here is a brief bibliography of online reviews:

• Marv Knox: Book Reviews: James M. Dunn and Soul Freedom (2nd item)
• Peter Lumpkins: James M. Dunn and Soul Freedom: A Review by Peter Lumpkins.
• Russell Moore: New Book on James Dunn and Soul Freedom

Lumpkins gives the best classical review of the book, providing a good chapter-by-chapter summary of the book's content, critically assessing the most important aspects of the publication, and then concluding with his recommendation. Knox's treatment is terse. Moore's piece is more of a reflective essay upon having read the book than a detailed review.

My post today is, stylistically, more like Moore's than any of the others. I will pay Weaver's book the highest compliment: It has made me think and has prompted me to write. Before settling in on the main theme of my article, I'd like to pose a key question to my readership: How will you account for James M. Dunn in your own Christian history? I'm speaking primarily to Southern Baptists here (or erstwhile Southern Baptists, as the case may be). For those on the left in Southern Baptist life like Weaver, Dunn must be placed (ranked?) within a cadre of those ousted by the Conservative Resurgence…consequently, the Founding Fathers (er…Initial Guidance Personages?) of a new Baptist Left. Among Dilday, Valentine, Parks, Sherman, and Vestal—and a whole host of others from the Gatlinburg Gang and beyond—where does Dunn rank? For Southern Baptists on the right like myself, will we make some caricature of Dunn a stock-character bogeyman for our history, or has enough time passed for us to undertake a more objective assessment of men like Dunn as a part of our history, too. Moore's essay, by the way, represents in my view a good step toward the latter, superior, alternative.

Aaron Weaver and I have a lot in common. We're both Baptists who care about our Baptist identity. We're both alumni of Baylor University (although his Baylor athletic experience has been a great deal more enjoyable than was mine in the late 1980s). We're both staunchly committed to religious liberty. We both have a keen interest in politics, both secular and denominational. We're both academics, both focusing upon Baptist History. We're both bloggers. We both know where we fall on the ideological spectrum, and we both appear to be comfortable with that.

What fascinates me is the strange juxtaposition of these commonalities and our significant differences. I haven't voted for a Democrat since I left the party of my grandfathers in college. I'd be willing to bet that elephants are less endangered in the urban Northeast than they are on Aaron Weaver's marked ballots. He voted for Barack Obama; I voted for the candidate who was not Barack Obama. He attends the CBF, the BGCT, and the New Baptist Covenant (while supplies last); I attend the SBC, the SBTC, and the occasional BMAT meeting. He spends quality time with James Dunn; I furtively slip the occasional bite of food under the table to Paige Patterson's dogs.

We're both passionate proponents of Baptist identity, but we each understand what it means to be a Baptist with a slightly different nuance. Upon the occasion of Aaron's excellent book, I'd like to identify what I perceive as three approaches to Baptist identity, interacting significantly with the life of James Dunn as represented in the scholarship of Aaron Weaver, particularly in this book.

Soul Freedom as the Core of Baptist Identity

This is James Dunn's position. It clearly appears to be Aaron Weaver's position. Weaver accurately identifies E. Y. Mullins as the source of this emphasis in Dunn's theology. I'm content to call this the Mullins/Dunn/Weaver viewpoint. Both Mullins and Dunn explicitly identified Soul Freedom (for Mullins, "Soul Competency") not just as a plank in the Baptist platform, but as THE doctrinal conviction defining what it means to be Baptist. According to this viewpoint, all other Baptist concepts flow out of the idea of Soul Freedom.

To put it another way, this approach essentially makes anthropology (the nature of man…that he is free) the core doctrine of Baptist Christianity

One can easily see how local church autonomy and religious liberty might arise out of a conviction about the freedom of the soul. The scope of this theory, however, reaches beyond these ideas. Baptist conversionism, from this vantage-point, arises from an emphasis upon the individual choices of free souls either for or against the gospel. Baptist church membership in this tradition emphasizes individual voluntarism in the gathered church. The primary emphasis of congregationalism in such an approach is upon the "democratic processes" mentioned in the BF&M. Although I admire Weaver for his fair and consistent use of the more biblical phrase "priesthood of all believers," this is a tradition of thinking that has at times emphasized explicitly the idea of the "priesthood of THE believer."

The Mullins/Dunn/Weaver approach of elevating Soul Freedom has had a distinguished history in Southern Baptist life. It harmonized well with previous similar, if not exactly identical, Baptist emphases upon religious liberty. It held utter hegemony in Southern Baptist theological thinking for most of a century. It established a platform upon which widely disparate Baptists were able to unite through organizations like the Baptist World Alliance.

Nevertheless, this approach faces challenges today. The most important challenge that it faces is the fact that Soul Freedom, in the sense that Mullins, Dunn, and Weaver seem to employ the word, is difficult enough to support as a biblical doctrine at all, much less as a doctrine that ought to serve as the central, defining conviction of any group of Christians. Dunn considered the concept of Soul Freedom to be "axiomatic" (and Mullins's approach to theology involved identifying such axioms). Dunn did volunteer the imago dei in Genesis 1 as the unnecessary biblical justification for the doctrine of Soul Freedom, but this is hardly satisfactory—how, precisely, people exist in the "image of God" is a topic with a wide variety of interpretations and with very little guidance from the text. No strongly persuasive reason exists to conclude that this doctrine relatively absent from the remainder of the Bible is, in fact, the real meaning of the imago dei.

The waxing influence of Calvinism among young American Christians also poses a threat to this philosophy. Although the Mullins concept of Soul Freedom seems to entail something more than a mere psychological freedom—a sense that the freedom of the soul is, if not the highest good, at least one of the great goods of creation and is an umbrella doctrine in the Bible—Soul Freedom does depend upon an idea of human freedom and an emphasis upon human freedom that seems to be at odds with most understandings of Calvinistic determinism.

Even if a concept of the freedom of the human soul were retained as a theological conclusion drawn from other premises, I do not see a robust future among Baptist biblicists for Soul Freedom as an axiomatic postulate from which to draw all other conclusions.

The Gospel as the Core of Baptist Identity

If Baptist biblicists cannot enthusiastically embrace Soul Freedom as the core doctrine of their common faith, whither shall they turn? One answer that is presently increasing in popularity is to emphasize the gospel as the bedrock concept of Baptist identity. Perhaps the clearest articulation of this point of view has come from Nathan Finn, who, although he was never a Baylor Bear, shares every other commonality with Aaron and me that I listed earlier in this post. Finn authored a nine-post series developing a framework in which the gospel is the core doctrine of Baptist identity. The best starting-point for the series is here.

Like Soul Freedom, the gospel as the core of Baptist identity depends heavily upon the individual experience of conversion. The concept of Soul Freedom approaches this experience explicitly from the human side of the equation, emphasizing human autonomy and choice. Finn's theory, in contrast, emphasizes the transformation of the individual by divine initiative and power. God's transforming action in the gospel, rightly understood and fully realized, adapts people to be members of Baptist churches. Baptist baptism best illustrates the gospel. Finn's series suggests that religious liberty can only claim biblical support by means of (presumably eisegetical) proof-texting, but affirms it nonetheless on other-than-biblical grounds. Religious liberty is not the highest good, but is instead a mere adaptation to sinfulness, destined to perish along with the rest of the curse at the final restoration. Religious liberty is good in a utilitarian sense—because we have discovered through the lessons of history that the best opportunity to spread the gospel occurs in contexts of religious liberty.

Soteriology, not anthropology, becomes the core doctrine of Baptist Christianity in this approach.

I predict that Finn's approach will increase in popularity. The major challenge that it faces is that many people who want to emphasize the gospel are also people who view Baptist distinctives as threats to the form of evangelical ecumenism that they desire (as Finn himself acknowledged in the series). Also, the clear implication of making the gospel the core doctrine of Baptist identity is that those who are not Baptists are defective, not merely in their ecclesiology, but in their soteriology, in at the very least some secondary way.

The Lordship of Christ as the Core of Baptist Identity

Malcolm Yarnell shares many of the same commonalities that link Barber, Weaver, and Finn. He has argued for the Lordship of Jesus Christ as the central doctrine of Baptist identity (for example, see his essay here). According to this theory of Baptist identity, the experience of regeneration in the gospel is coupled with a surrender to the lordship of Christ. Church polity is an exercise in following Christ's lordship. Local church autonomy is a refusal to put in lordship over the church any office other than those instituted by Christ. Religious liberty, in the style of Roger Williams, arises out of the question of the boundaries of authority given by Christ respectively to the state and to the churches. Because Christ is Lord over all and over everything, those to whom He has delegated authority (the state, the churches) must not overstep the boundaries of authority that He has set for them.

This is my own view, although I appreciate the strengths of the other approaches. I must confess that some elements of the preceding paragraph arise as much out of my own thinking as out of Dr. Yarnell's writing. The effect of this approach is to make Christology, and specifically the intersection of Christology and ecclesiology, the central doctrine of Baptist Christianity.

I believe that this approach has the strength of allowing for a strong biblical defense of religious liberty, rooted in Jesus' own statements about the extent and location of His kingdom, as well as in passages like the Parable of the Wheat and the Tares. Because Jesus has made statements about His authority and the manner in which He has delegated it in matters of faith and politics, we can derive from those statements a doctrine of religious liberty.

I will leave it to others to identify the weaknesses of this approach.

Conclusion

In many cases, I believe that those who follow any of these three approaches might arrive at precisely the same conclusions on various questions with approximately the same fervor. Should the United States of America have an official established church? Should the proclamation of the gospel and conversion to Christianity be considered capital offenses in Afghanistan? Should churches be required to follow all federal anti-discrimination practices in hiring pastors? Dunn, Weaver, Finn, Yarnell, and Barber would all arrive at the same conclusions on all of those questions.

A few more difficult cases would probably put on display the nuanced differences among the three approaches.

This much is important to me: Conservative Southern Baptists must be no less vigilant in embracing and defending religious liberty than are our more liberal brethren. Aaron Weaver's excellent homage to James Dunn challenges us who support the Conservative Resurgence and who remain in the vital core of the post-1979 SBC: Who are our zealots for religious liberty? Names certainly come to mind, for Richard Land is committed to religious liberty and Paige Patterson refers to it as the First Freedom. Nevertheless, the historic Baptist commitment is vulnerable on both the left and the right flanks, and Southern Baptists must take care that the move away from the thought of E.Y. Mullins does not result in any erosion of our historic defense of the liberty of all people to practice their faith, even if they do so wrongly, or not at all.

Robert Jeffress Endorses Rick Perry

By now perhaps you already know that Robert Jeffress has endorsed Rick Perry. Rick Perry is the Governor of Texas and is a candidate for the Republican nomination for President of the United States. Robert Jeffress is the pastor of the First Baptist Church of Dallas. I believe that Dr. Jeffress's endorsement was a mistake.

I like Robert Jeffress and have admired his unflinching courage. He and I agree about many things. Also, I find that there is much to admire and appreciate about the Perry candidacy. I am not finding fault with the man, and I am not finding fault with his particular choice of candidate.

First, I do not believe that this is an election in which pastors should be endorsing a candidate. I am not one of those who would say that pastors should never endorse political candidates. If Adolf Hitler were running against Billy Graham, I hope that I would be one of those with the courage not only to express a personal opinion but also to lead my church to take sides, and decisively so. Sometimes it may be appropriate for a pastor and a church to make a candidate endorsement.

This just isn't that time.

Second, I do not believe that Jeffress's reason is the right reason to use for endorsing a candidate. If Nebuchadnezzar was God's choice to lead Babylon, if Cyrus was God's choice to lead Persia, and if Nero was "God's agent" as the Emperor of Rome (Romans 13), then I don't see how we can declare that God couldn't possibly be supporting Mitt Romney over Rick Perry (or even, just possibly, Barack Hussein Obama over the entire GOP field?). God does what God does for God's own reasons.

I don't see myself voting for Mitt Romney, but neither do I believe that we ought to have any religious test for office, either formal or informal. If I were to impose such a test, I imagine that I would be throwing out some baby with the bathwater. I don't know how much confidence the New Testament leads us to have in the eternal salvation of the average person who is "religious without going to church," and yet that was the way that Ronald Reagan described himself (and was the obvious practice of his life).

Figuring out how to live and to lead as a Christian in these crazy times is often difficult. Dr. Jeffress is a thoughtful man, and I'm sure that he has given careful thought and prayer to his decision. Although I think that he heard wrongly during his prayer time and that he has made the wrong decision, I feel many of the same struggles and do respect him greatly still. Nevertheless, I would encourage my readers to refrain from making political endorsements like this one except in the most extreme circumstances.

Separation of Ministry and State

Baptists have embraced the biblical office of pastor/elder/overseer and the biblical office of deacon. The nature and function of those offices have varied widely down through the centuries among the Baptist multitude, along with some variance as to the qualifications and membership of those groups.

Generally speaking, however, Baptists have avoided clericalism. The officers of our churches are not seen by us as grace-dispensing sacerdotes et pontifices. We have no priestly class. Our pastors and deacons are, substantially and significantly, brothers among the congregation. Not shepherds, but under-shepherds; co-laborers rather than management. The result has been that, in Baptist life, the line between "clergy" and "laity" is not nearly as bright as it has been among some other Christians.

Southern Baptists have, over the past half-century, greatly multiplied the number and nature of "in-between" offices in the church. We now hire professional ministers to work with youth, children, recreation, religious education, senior adults, singles, families, and a whole host of other specializations. Are these staff members pastors? Some of them are, and are explicitly identified as such. Some of them are non-pastors, and are explicitly identified as such. Some exist in the murky mists of inference. Most of them exist in some state in-between "the congregation" and "the pastor." This phenomenon, yet unresolved, has enormous implications for Baptist ecclesiology.

Also, Baptists have, from time to time, emphasized the idea of vocation as a category much larger than "vocational ministry"—large enough to be rightfully inclusive of the expended talents of every faithful Christian believer. We expect our young adults, whether they are bound for employment in a local church, a local hospital, a local factory, or a local news bureau, to choose their respective "callings" in life in response to the direction of God and to embrace their work as unto the Lord.

These three factors—anti-clericalism/anti-sacerdotalism, an emphasis upon vocation as pertaining to all believers, and a multiplication of quasi-pastoral employment positions in local churches—converge perhaps the most poignantly in the field of Christian Counseling.

Giving counsel has long been considered a feature of the ministry of pastors/elders/overseers, particularly associated with the "pastor" portion of the office (it is instructive that, in contrast to the frequency of the term "pastoral counseling," one is hard pressed to find references to "episcopal counseling" or "presbyterial counseling"). Counseling has also flourished in the last century as a separate, secular discipline. In the middle are those pastors who have received, in addition to their pastoral counseling, secular training in psychotherapy or counseling-related disciplines and who offer what many would regard as an enhanced counseling ministry within the context of pastoral ministry. Also in the middle are those non-pastors who have received training as counselors and who work as staff members of local churches or in counseling ministries closely associated with local churches.

The existence of these ministries poses something of an under-recognized dilemma for Baptists in particular. Counseling, as a secular pursuit, is licensed by the state. Service as a pastor/elder/overseer is not. And this lack of governmental oversight with regard to pastors is no oversight (wordplay intended) on the government's part. Once upon a time, governments did license pastors, for many of the same reasons given for governmental oversight of counseling today (to protect people from inept, lecherous practitioners, etc.). The ministry of "religious professionals" came to be outside the reach of governmental licensure through the tireless effort and sacrifice of great Baptists like Isaac Backus. For our heroic forefathers, religious liberty necessarily entailed the separation of ministry and state. If the government can set and enforce standards for the qualifications of ministers or the practice of ministry, then we do in fact have a state church, whatever we may name it.

So, which is the case with counseling? Is it a ministry, or not? Certainly, there is a sense in which pediatric dentistry and forensic accounting and petrochemical geology can be ministries, but is counseling a church ministry? Is it the sort of thing that a pastor/elder/overseer can and should do? If it is not, what are the implications of that fact for the aggressive expansion of churches into this sort of endeavor? If it is, what are the implications of that fact for religious liberty and state licensure of counseling?

These are difficult questions. I write today not so much to pronounce a verdict as to call the trial to order and invite you, my readers, to make your opening statements.

Resolution on Religious Liberty

Here is a draft of a resolution I plan to submit to this year's Committee on Resolutions for the Southern Baptist Convention:

ON RELIGIOUS LIBERTY

WHEREAS, Jesus declared “My kingdom is not of this world. If my kingdom were of this world then my servants would be fighting so that I would not be handed over to the Jews; but as it is, my kingdom is not of this realm” (John 18:36), indicating that Jesus has not authorized any earthly realm to pursue aims related to His kingdom by resort to physical coercion; and,

WHEREAS, Jesus taught in Matthew 13 in the parable of the tares and the wheat that He has not authorized the removal of the tares from the field of the world until the end of the age, knowing that the persecution of men for cause of religious conscience always results in damage to the wheat as well as to the tares; and,

WHEREAS, the Apostle Paul has reminded us that “the weapons of our warfare are not of the flesh” (II Corinthians 10:4), indicating both the wrongfulness and ineptitude of all attempts to win spiritual battles by resort to physical coercion, which is not “divinely powerful for the destruction of fortresses”; and,

WHEREAS, Southern Baptists, along with other Baptizing churches and other members of the free church tradition have historically used our influence as citizens to advocate for complete religious liberty for all people; and,

WHEREAS, the United States of America is presently involved militarily in Iraq, Afghanistan, and Libya, the governments of which deny their citizens religious liberty; and,

WHEREAS, the government of the United States of America, through the United States Agency for International Development, campaigned on behalf of constitutional revisions in Kenya to implement Sharia law among Moslems in Kenya; and,

WHEREAS, Sharia law makes conversion away from Islam a civil crime subject to punishment as severe as capital punishment; and,

WHEREAS, Said Musa was convicted in Afghanistan of a crime and sentenced to death before being exiled from his country for his having converted to Christianity from Islam; and,

WHEREAS, the United States of America enjoys tremendous influence in world politics; now, therefore, be it

RESOLVED, that we, the messengers to the Southern Baptist Convention meeting June 14-15, 2011, in Phoenix, Arizona, affirm complete religious liberty as God’s plan for all human beings; and, be it further

RESOLVED, that we believe that the military forces of the United States of America, whenever they place American soldiers into harm’s way, should number among their primary objectives the provision of complete religious liberty to all peoples; and, be it finally

RESOLVED, that Sharia law or any other separate system of legal jurisprudence is entirely incompatible with religious liberty and with the First Amendment to the Constitution of the United States of America.

Preserving the First Freedom for Others As Well As Ourselves

I hope to resume my Great Commission series soon—the culmination of my hectic summer is at hand.

Furor has arisen over plans to build a thirteen-story mosque named Park51 (initially named Cordoba House) in Lower Manhattan in the vicinity of Ground Zero. Because the 9-11 attacks were inspired by Islam and were carried out entirely by devout Muslims, many people have objected to the idea that a mosque could be constructed in the neighborhood consecrated by our most recent date to live in infamy.

I'm in favor of there being no mosques anywhere. Islam is a false religion. The Islamic Allah is a false god. Mohammed was a false prophet who misled people. I do not agree with what the Qur'an says about Mohammed. I pray for the day when every mosque has been abandoned, replaced by a church (who clearly call themselves a church) populated by Christians (who clearly call themselves Christians).

But if we're going to have a mosque anywhere on Planet Earth, I can't think of any better place for there to be one than in the vicinity of the spot where the World Trade Center towers once stood. The attacks of September 11 cannot be characterized as Islam attacking Christianity. Islam was certainly attacking, but Christianity was not the target. Airliners were not flown into church meeting houses. Hong Kong may be more Christian than New York City is.

Rather, our recent War on Terror is best understood as a war between those who despise religious liberty and those who champion it. Both the Bush administration and the Obama administration have lacked some something that they needed to characterize it in this manner—insight, honesty, courage? But this is the nature of the war nonetheless. We may largely disagree with Islamic theology. Let's face it: We may be suspicious of Muslims in our midst. But we still welcome Muslims to live among us while practicing their faith openly and building their mosques anywhere that we Christians might be able to build a church.

I can't think of any edifice that might more clearly exemplify this commitment on our part than the construction of an enormous mosque right where the shadow of the twin towers ought rightly to be falling. I also think that it speaks of the strength of Christianity. Islam is so weak that they have to threaten people with death if they convert. They can only keep adherents if their followers are terrified to leave. The gospel of Jesus Christ is strong enough to hold people even without the intimidation that comes from bullying and threats.

It might also serve as a good reminder to us, for we need to renew our own commitment to religious liberty. Today's Baptist Press feed included an article denouncing the Obama administration's covert support for the pro-abortion modifications to the Kenyan Constitution. The meddling of USAID and the State Department in internal Kenyan politics was a prominent topic when I visited Kenya earlier this summer. I even fielded a question in my Church History class related to the proposed constitutional changes.

As bad as the abortion provisions are, and as unseemly as it is for USAID to be pushing Kenya toward abortion, I think that Baptist Press buried the lead a bit in their reporting (and they did better than the rest of the press). The new constitution proposed for Kenya is a disastrous step backwards for religious liberty, establishing Sharia courts for the noisy Islamic minority in Kenya. It seems strange that our nation would, on the one hand, shun the construction of a single mosque in our own country while, on the other hand, we pressure a small African nation that presently enjoys religious liberty to adopt constitutional modifications that weaken religious liberty in that country and initiate the first step toward Islamic intolerance.

Baptists have a consistent history of defending religious liberty for four centuries. Where others have merely sought to manipulate the government to obtain religious privilege for themselves (such as the more Reformed folks in Massachusetts Bay), Baptists fought for religious liberty for ALL. May we avoid the temptation to let hot-button issues distract us from the importance of defending the First Freedom for others as well as for ourselves.

Baylor, Baptists, and Bill Clinton's Nemesis

Ken Starr Should Be Free to Choose His Own Denomination and Church

By now you've heard the news: Ken Starr is Baylor University's New President. The story states that Starr's wife is Jewish (although apparently a Christian as well), and that they plan to join "a Baptist church" upon their arrival in Waco. If they have ever held membership in a Baptist church before (Starr's father was a Church of Christ preacher), no mention is being made of it.

Starr thus makes the second consecutive man to go through the forced pretense of joining a Baptist church in order to preside over my alma mater.

This fact is the context of my plea to Baylor University: Please, please, please, please, please! Stop this farce! If you will no longer require that your presiding officers actually BE Baptists, please stop coercing them into joining Baptist churches upon their arrival in Waco. Doing so:

1. is a slap in the face to the historic Baptist tradition of voluntarism. John Lilley's past church memberhsip and Ken Starr's soon-to-be church membership represent something of a coerced faith, do they not? Aren't we, as Baptists, opposed to such a thing?

2. devalues the concept of Baptist church membership (if, indeed, that can be done further). How can it not do so for an erstwhile Baptist university to adopt the ethos of le bon roi Henri?

Religious Liberty and the Disturbing Case of Taha Abdul-Basser

(HT: SBC Today)Dr. Emir Caner, the new President of Truett-McConnell College in Cleveland, Georgia, has posted an excellent article on his new blog (here's his RSS feed) touching upon the disturbing case of Taha Abdul-Basser, Islamic chaplain at Harvard University. An email from Abdul-Basser has leaked into the public domain in which he expresses a coziness with the idea of capital punishment for those who leave Islam for any other religious faith.

It is my considered opinion that the ongoing (regardless of what the White House may tell you) war on terror is indeed a religious war. It is not, however, a war between Christianity and Islam, as some like to style it. Rather, it is a war between those who believe in religious liberty and those who spurn it.

Abdul-Basser's situation raises an interesting question: Does religious liberty include the liberty not to believe in religious liberty?

A differentiation between religious toleration and religious liberty is in order at this point. Religious toleration is the situation in which the government does not punish a person for his religious convictions, but may endorse a particular religious conviction through subsidy or preferential legislation. Religious liberty is the situation in which the government neither persecutes nor endorses any of the competing religious points of view. Baptists have historically been champions not only of religious toleration but further of religious liberty.

So, does religious liberty include the liberty not to believe in religious liberty? In posing the question, I'm not so much asking whether Abdul-Basser ought to be thrown into the clink for his willingness to countenance an "off with their heads" response to Islamic infidelity. I think that religious toleration certainly should be extended even to those who support the idea that Islamic infidelity merits the death penalty. After all, Abdul-Basser is simply being faithful to the clear teachings of his scriptures and his religious tradition. For that he ought not to be punished.

And yet, I do not believe that opposition to religious liberty should enjoy the benefits of religious liberty. In other words, I do believe that the United States of America can establish, should establish, and has established an official position on the admittedly religious doctrine of whether there ought to be liberty of religious conscience. At this point, the Constitution of the United States of America says that Abdul-Basser and the Hadith and Mohammed are all wrong. And Abdul-Basser knows it, citing "the absence of Muslim governmental authority" as one of the practical factors (along with "the hegemonic modern human rights discourse") making it impractical for Moslems actually to execute infidels in the West quite yet.

The United States of America should not be alone in her position; Harvard University should take a stand for religious liberty as well, by censoring Abdul-Basser for his remarks.

Seems Like We've Been Here Before?

Thanks to PGBB commenter Scott Shaffer for first tipping me off, and for Dr. Albert Mohler for speaking so plainly against President Obama's government censorship of public prayers.

Apparently, President Obama has staffers engaged in the task of reviewing, critiquing, and revising(?) public prayers offered at official presidential events.

It all seems very inefficient to me. I mean, how many hours are these staffers having to put into prayer scrutiny at taxpayer expense? Wouldn't it work much better for the Obama White House just to compile a book of approved prayers? Then they could ask Congress to approve it as the national prayer-book. Prayers offered from the text with the President's imprimatur would be legal to offer in public.

It's so simple; it's amazing that nobody's thought of it before.

Obama, God, and the State of the Union

Some will cheer; some will weep; some will wonder why anyone keeps up.

With last night's speech it has become clear that the day of frequent reference to God in presidential speeches is over. Apart from the obligatory benediction at the end, there was no mention of the Lord in the (non-)State of the Union address.

This represents not only a departure from the era of President Bush, but also a departure from the pro-religious tone that we saw in candidate-Obama as early as his 2004 DNC speech in Boston.

A Truly Great President

I believe that history will eventually smile on George W. Bush and regard him as a truly great president.

That's not to say that he has served perfectly (but who has?). Although the war in Iraq was necessary (and was not in any way preemptive, by the way), Bush and Colin Powell chose to make the most sensational case for the war before the United Nations and the United States. When "weapons of mass destruction" became the catchphrase of the conflict, Bush opened the door for the carping that has dogged him for a full term. He should simply have made the case that the first Gulf war had never completely ended; that Iraq had brazenly disregarded the terms of the cease-fire; that since the cease-fire Iraq had repeatedly committed acts of war against allied aircraft and other assets; and that it was high time for the United Nations to shock to world by actually doing what it had promised it would do unless Iraq met her obligations to the world. Bush and Powell did give some attention to these core elements of the need to subdue Iraq, but they wrongly allowed the much sexier notion of "Chemical Ali" to become the lynchpin of the public's endorsement for the war.

Bush's flirtation with the entitlement society—nay, his all-out torrid affair—has birthed an illegitimate scion of the party of Reagan in the form of Medicare prescription drug coverage. Bush and the now-defeated Republican Congress needed to enter a twelve-step program to wean themselves off of the tit-for-tat of selling government largesse for votes. They especially needed to do so since the votes that they want to court never seem to come through for them—have you heard any liberals patting Bush and the GOP on the back for Medicare Part D during this campaign? Bush further stumbled incoherently through the embryonic stem cell situation, and his Department of Justice apparently lacks, at times, the courage to stand up against items so morally clear as slavery and human trafficking.

By the way, with John Kerry, I also get a little nervous when I hear President Bush attempt to say "nuclear."

But none of these things, important as they are, are sufficient to dim the truly great things about President Bush. For that millisecond in 2003 when the nation was behind President Bush, our worldwide influence was so strong and our foreign policy so effective that even Mohammar…Muhamar…Khadafi…Ghaddafi…Lybia set aside her terrorist ways and came running to the Red, White, and Blue in contrition. Bush's idea was the right one—really it isn't Bush's idea at all, but goes back at least as far as Teddy Roosevelt's big stick.

Even while dragging along a nation largely populated with self-absorbed addicts to instant gratification, Bush has managed to persevere in achieving what is now a far cry from the dismal outcomes predicted by folks like Barack Hussein Obama. It is only at the prospect of Bush's imminent departure and likely replacement with a weak-kneed dove that the Putins of this world are once more emboldened to wreak open skulduggery upon the world.

Bush is smarter than talk show hosts will acknowledge, but intellect is not his strength. He is more compassionate than can possibly be acknowledged by the party that has shackled generations to a debilitating and humiliating public welfare program, but this is not his great strength, either. Bush's greatest attribute—and the one that will garner him praise from another generation someday—is that he's going to say and do what seems right, and in doing so he doesn't give a rip what the U.N. or the latest Zogby poll or anybody else has to say about it. It is an attribute that tends toward stubbornness, and I'm sure that the President has to guard against that foible, but when pointed in the right direction, stubbornness is a wonderful, wonderful thing.

Nowhere was this determination on Bush's part on any greater display than it was this week at a Protestant church in China. There the President of the United States of America had the temerity to lecture the Chinese thugs about Religious Liberty. "No state, man or woman should fear the influence of loving religion," saith the Prophet W. And to that I say a hearty "Amen." George W. Truett was willing to say much the same thing in a lengthier speech a century ago, and for doing so he has been lauded recently by Baptists. As for me, I'm thankful for Truett's oration…I really am. But you've got to acknowledge that it takes very little courage to speak boldly for religious liberty on the Capitol steps surrounded by Baptists in the 1900s. For a man to stand on the steps of a church in Communist China and deliver that message (and to do so over the objections of his advisors, I guarantee you) takes a kind of moral courage that most men lack. Especially since a great many of the Baptists who trumpet about Religious Liberty the loudest will be the last to give him any credit for it and the first to stab him in the back.

Now I ask you, can you name a recent president who had the moral courage and clarity to say such a thing? Can you imagine either of our current candidates doing it?

The last monetary contribution that I made to a Democrat candidate for anything was made to a congressman in another state. Several members of my family made a donation in exchange for a few minutes of the congressman's time to lobby for a bit of backbone toward the oppressors of Chinese Christians. Our pleas (and even our dollars) fell upon deaf ears. "Why, we can't offend the Chinese!" Yes, God forbid that the duplicitous, pompous, repressive, brutal, pastor-arresting, Tibet-stomping, Olympics-opening-ceremony falsifying, little girl substituting, second child aborting Chinese Communists get their feelings hurt! We were told that trying to help Chinese Christians would actually only hurt them, provoking the Chinese government to get really tough on the poor Chinese Christian church.

Well I've got news for that congressman and for anyone else listening. Being a Chinese Christian ain't no Sunday picnic right now, and from everything that I see, the Chinese Christians are willing to suffer a bit in the hope of a greater platform to share the gospel of Christ with their fellow Chinese and with the rest of the world.

The greater heroes in the Chinese struggle for soul freedom are people like Hua Huiqi (HT: Dallas Morning News editorial "China Lies about Religious Freedom"), a pastor of a Christian house church in China who was detained by police on the way to worship with President Bush. President Bush knows that he's going to get to board Air Force One and come back home after making that speech. Hua is in hiding today, somewhere in China, without hope of being escorted by Secret Service onto a 747 and out of the grasp of Communist brutes. But at least he knows today that the leader of the free world has dared this week actually to state that he is in favor of the world being free. One should hope that such sentiments would be a baseline qualification for presiding over our nation, rather than a criterion differentiating the great from the mediocre occupants of the office.

Farewell, President Bush. No matter which choice we make in November, I, for one, will miss you.

Seminaries and Professors? Churches and Ministers? A Case Precedent Worth Considering

Last January, in the initial days of the Klouda lawsuit, I pointed the attention of the blogosphere to the earlier precedent set by Equal Employment Opportunity Commission v Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary. As I noted last year, this case involves the same institution and essentially the exact same question as the current Klouda case.

The entire section quoted below is relevant to current circumstances. One sentence I find most interesting. It appears that even in the Dilday administration more than twenty years ago Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary expected that faculty "[model] the ministerial role for the students." Not all ministers are pastors—other schools exist beyond the School of Theology and other degrees exist beyond the MDiv, after all. But the raison d'être of the School of Theology is to train pastors. If faculty are expected to be model pastors for future pastors, does it not make sense that they be qualified to serve as pastors? And even if you disagree, mustn't you concede that such an argument is reasonable?

A. Is the Seminary a "Church"?

We come now to the crux of this case: the proper characterization of the Seminary. The EEOC describes the Seminary as a religiously affiliated institution. The Seminary claims it is wholly religious.

Since we have already distinguished Mississippi College on this issue, see Part II, supra, we turn to McClure. Our task in discerning the nature of the Seminary and the role of its employees is more difficult than that the court faced in McClure. There, all parties agreed that the Salvation Army was a religion and McClure was a minister, id. at 556. Clearly, the Seminary is an integral part of a church, essential to the paramount function of training ministers who will continue the faith. It is not intended to foster social or secular programs that may entertain the faithful or evangelize the unbelieving. Its purpose is to indoctrinate those who already believe, who have received a divine call, and who have expressed an intent to enter full-time ministry. The local congregation that regularly meets in a house of worship is not the only entity covered by our use of the word "church." That much is clear from McClure. In the Baptist denomination, the Convention is formed to serve all participating local congregations. The fact that those who choose to participate in the Convention do so voluntarily renders it no less deserving of the protection of McClure. Since the Seminary is principally supported and wholly controlled by the Convention for the avowed purpose of training ministers to serve the Baptist denomination, it too is entitled to the status of "church."

B. Who are the "Ministers"?

This is a more difficult question. The parties have identified three categories of Seminary employees: faculty, administrative staff, and support staff. The district court concluded that the first two groups should be considered ministers, while the latter group were not "ministers in the formal sense." To the extent that these findings indicate determinations of fact by the district court, they must be accepted unless clearly erroneous. Fed.R.Civ.P. 52. The status of these employees as ministers for purposes of McClure remains a legal conclusion subject to plenary review. The Seminary urges that all its employees serve a ministerial function. While religious organizations may designate persons as ministers for their religious purposes free from any governmental interference, bestowal of such a designation does not control their extra-religious legal status.

The district court found that the Seminary makes employment decisions regarding faculty members largely on religious criteria. This finding is supported by the record. As previously discussed, the level of personal religious commitment of faculty members is considered more important than their devotion to the Baptist church or their academic abilities, though all of these qualities are desirable. According to Dr. Dilday, President of the Seminary, there is no course taught at the Seminary that has a strictly secular purpose; Dr. Naylor, the Seminary's President Emeritus, testified similarly. Though the record indicates that ministers are ordained by local churches and not by the Seminary, most of the faculty have been ordained. The Seminary expects the faculty to teach by example as well as by other means. The faculty models the ministerial role for the students. Based on the district court's findings of fact, we conclude that the faculty at the Seminary fit the definition of "ministers" for the purpose of applying McClure.

Religious Liberty and the Definition of "Church"

Is the Southern Baptist Convention a "church"? How about a state convention body? A local association? A mission board? A seminary?

Ecclesiologically, Southern Baptists tend to regard the cooperative efforts of multiple local congregations as something other than a church. In Nashville in 2005, Bobby Welch was careful to note that the SBC was not performing the baptisms that were taking place beside the stage—that we were merely witnessing the baptisms that Nashville area churches were performing in our presence. Churches, not people, constitute the membership of the convention, which is a fellowship of churches rather than a church itself. Strictly speaking, we consider our cooperative entities to be more para-church than church.

Nevertheless, our Baptist commitment to religious liberty has caused us to hold that the government has no business employing our theology against us to grant favorable treatment to one denomination over another because of the various ways that various denominations draw the boundaries of church. Such action constitutes at least a partial de facto establishment of special privilege to one denomination of faith over another.

Consider, for example, the recent case that pitted the tax assessor of Tarrant County, Texas, against the Southern Baptists of Texas Convention (SBTC). The SBTC constructed its headquarters in Tarrant County and applied for religious exemption from property tax. The tax assessor initially denied the application, arguing that the SBTC, according to its own theology, is not a church and is not employed primarily for "religious worship." Other denominational headquarters within Tarrant County (the Methodists, for example) had been granted exemption for facilities that served nearly precisely the same functions as the SBTC headquarters, solely on the grounds that the polities of these denominations defined the boundaries of the church differently.

The SBTC appealed the ruling and the courts overturned the decision of the tax assessor. The eventual decision was the right one: The government has no authority to apply the same laws differently to various denominations because of their differing theological views. Theology is beyond the government's authority.

So, is a Southern Baptist seminary a church? As far as the brusque arm of federal intrusiveness is concerned, you bet it is. I'm not even saying that the federal government has no right to answer the question differently than I have; I'm saying that the federal government has no right to consider the question at all on a denomination-by-denomination basis.

As I've been saying for more than a year, the proponents of the Klouda case are, in their short-sightedness, hard at work to sell our Baptist and American birthright of religious liberty for a bowl of vindictive porridge. As the SBTC case demonstrates, the issues at play here are far-reaching and significant. Let's keep Pandora's grubby hands off of this particular box.

Fighting for Will

Our cultural landscape in the United States of America is sometimes bewildering. Are we in good shape or is America going to Hell in a handbasket? The question is so vast and the data so variegated as to make daunting the task of giving a simple answer.

Nowhere is our culture's complexity more pronounced in my mind than as it regards the health of religious liberty in the United States of America. On the one hand, our multicultural society fares much better than its predecessors in handling some forms of religious liberty. A Mormon is receiving serious consideration as a candidate for the highest elected office in the land! A Muslim congressman was sworn in on the Qur'an. Significant conflict still ripples out from the government's invasion and occupation of the realm of education, but otherwise we've made great strides in providing equal access to our nation's liberties for people of all faiths.

On the other hand, an alarming intolerance for biblical Christianity rears its ugly head every in our government every so often…just enough to raise some serious concerns.

Jim and Linda Dawkins came to First Baptist Church of Farmersville not too long ago. Gregarious and passionate about their faith, these two quickly engaged themselves into the fabric of our congregation. Jim is Linda's second husband—her first husband, Gene Vallow, ended their marriage after he renounced his former profession of faith in Jesus Christ, departing orthodox Christianity. He had been very faithful and active in church throughout his courtship and engagement with Linda. His repudiation of our Lord was a complete shock for her.

Having previously been a very active Christian, Linda's ex knew all of the intricate doctrines of the Christian faith, and he determined to try to use them against her in the battle for the custody of their son, Will. He alleged that a Christian upbringing would turn Will against him because it would teach that Gene is destined for Hell. A Dallas-area court agreed, awarding sole custody to Gene simply because Linda believes the Bible and wants the freedom to teach it to her son.

Linda has a website and a blog. I hope that you'll visit Fighting for Will (and the Fighting for Will blog here) and offer her your encouragement. Her religious liberty has been violated at the hands of the state, and not over some trivial matter, but by abducting her son from her. I'm praying that God will raise up some modern day Williams or Leland to right this injustice.

A New Thought (for Me) about Political Involvement

A friend and I were exploring the finer details of what level of political involvement is or is not appropriate or wise for churches and pastors. The conversation inexorably wound up in discussions of when a pastor is operating in "official capacity" and when he is not. Before long, it all started to sound pretty sacerdotal to me. So, why do we place so much emphasis upon what pastors do with regard to church-state issues? As Baptists who believe in the priesthood of all believers, isn't it strange that some sectors of Baptist life seem to be far more concerned with pastors tiptoeing through a careful labyrinth of church-state rules than with all Baptist believers properly relating faith and citizenship?

Baptists and Dissent

The idea of dissent as a virtue—whether a Baptist virtue or otherwise—is among the most nonsensical theories promulgated among mankind. Dissent is neither a virtue nor a vice, so far as its intrinsic properties go. Dissenting to pay your taxes is generally a vice. Dissenting to participate in a plot to assassinate the President is generally a virtue. The act of dissenting, in and of itself, is neither noble nor vile—'tis all in the subject matter of one's dissent. Dissent is a part of the Baptist story, but dissent is not a distinctive of Baptist identity (or if it is, it has often been a part of the darker side of our identity). Where dissent is laudatory in Baptist life, it is because Baptists were willing to take unflinching stands on matters that other people saw differently or deemed tertiary. Although dissent is not a Baptist distinctive, religious liberty is. Baptists are a people committed to religious liberty for all people. What is religious liberty? It is important to know, for false versions of this principle are seemingly omnipresent. Religious liberty is the conviction that the temporal sword ought not to be employed in strictly spiritual matters. So, unless it has to do with policemen, armed troops, vigilante mobs, judicial rulings, or legislative dictates, it has absolutely nothing whatsoever to do with the Baptist principle of religious liberty. Indeed, it was the conviction of our Baptist forebears that churches and associations had the obligation to govern their own affairs according to their doctrinal convictions. It was precisely because they wanted to be more strict WITHIN their own churches that they wanted the government to be less strict—nay, uninvolved altogether—in governing their churches from without. Those who made scruples over baptism and regenerate church membership, believing in a more restrictive purity in church membership, were the Baptist objects of state-sponsored persecution. Religious liberty enabled Baptists to form congregations composed only of those who did not dissent from their pursuit of obedience to Christ's commands. Certainly there is not the slightest scintilla of biblical witness for dissent as virtue. There are, however, volumes of evidence for the idea that the temporal sword ought not to be wielded in spiritual matters. There are two realms, typified by Roger Williams's idea of the "Two Tables of the Law." The Baptist position is not that spiritual matters ought not to be governed, but simply that the state has not the authority to govern them. Rather, that authority belongs solely to the church. The effect of course, is that every individual has liberty—if one differs with the governing decisions of one's church, one can leave it and join with (or even form) another church more to one's liking, and the church cannot invoke the powers of the state to stop it. Our commitment to religious liberty means that we believe it is the obligation of the government not to punish dissent over matters strictly dealing with one's relationship with God. Yet the biblical model is a church strictly and powerfully governed. I almost mentioned this in my earlier post about the death penalty—the early church not only wasn't opposed to the death penalty, but they also executed it themselves. But please note, they did it by exercise of the spiritual sword—the power of God—and not by the power of the government. The church that slays people for discrepancies in their contribution statements bears absolutely no resemblance to these modern-day coffee klatches so careful to tiptoe around matters that God has declared but people have relegated to tertiary status, but it also resembles not at all the church so spiritually weak that it must call upon soldiers or policemen to do its fighting for it. I'm thankful for the Baptist commitment to religious liberty. It reminds the government not to presume to take up authority that belongs to God alone. It reminds the church not to trust in chariots or horses. Let's not mutilate it into yet another postmodern exaltation of "diversity" over substance. We belong neither to pre-modern society, modern society, nor post-modern society. We are citizens of Heaven, and once we arrive there, dissent will be entirely a thing of our past. Thank you, Lord.

The Roundtable Resolution Analyzed

I offer here an analysis of the "Resolution on Partnership and Free Religious Expression" (see text here) approved at the recent Skeleton Creek-Arlingtonian Roundtable at Cornerstone Baptist Church.

Is this really a question of religious liberty? No.

We've had a Memphis Declaration. We've had more blogs than I can count. We've had Tom Hatley called every name in the book. And that's not counting the things he's probably been called in tongues! ;-) We've had a Joshua Convergence. We've now had a Roundtable. There's a Conference on the Holy Spirit planned for the Spring. And boy howdy...have people smiled for the cameras and seen all of this in the press!

Yet somehow, in ways that defy imagination, a group of voting pastors in Arlington seems to think that freedom of religious expression is in danger in the SBC.

Let us reiterate what we ought already to have learned during the Conservative Resurgence. Freedom of Religious Conscience and Religious Expression is in no danger from SBC conservatives. Every human being has the right to hold whatever religious beliefs they wish. Believe in the inerrancy of scripture or believe that the Bible is one step above Calvin & Hobbes. Believe that Jesus is "The Christ; the Son of the Living God" or believe that Jesus was just a good teacher. Believe that Allah is God, that Krishna is God, or that there is no God. If necessary, I personally will pick up a weapon and risk my life to defend your right to believe these things, to preach these things at the top of your lungs, and to worship accordingly in public or in private however you wish. That is what religious liberty means.

During the Conservative Resurgence, we learned that some people seem to think that religious liberty means that everyone has a God-given right to a denominational paycheck to subsidize their personal religious beliefs and expression, even when those beliefs and expressions are at odds with the beliefs and expressions of the people doing the paying. I thought that we had settled that question. I thought that we all now understood that religious liberty also means the freedom of religious assemblies to define themselves according to their collective conscience and following the structure of their polity. Their liberty includes the liberty to express themselves by saying, if they should choose to do so, "We don't believe in gibberish, and we choose not to pay to spread it." Of course, it also means the liberty to come to the opposite conclusion. Defense of religious liberty is not a valid argument for either side of this discussion.

Is religious liberty really liberty from the churches or from the SBC? Yes, and no.

Yes, because we believe in voluntarism and have enshrined it in the law of the land. People have the right to choose with which church to affiliate and worship. Churches and groups of churches have no "temporal sword" by which they may compel anyone in matters of conscience or religious expression.

No, because once someone has voluntarily entered a covenant relationship with a church, that person's private and public spiritual life is certainly the business of the church. The old standard church covenant that hung on the wall where I grew up did not only bind people regarding their public actions; it enjoined people to private and family devotion. Surely we all preach to address the private lives of our members, and I sense that I ought to be more involved in the private devotional lives of members as an episkopos than I am.

I trod again down the path of Roger Williams's "Two Tables of the Law." Matters of religious conscience are not the proper jurisdiction of the government, but they are indeed the proper jurisdiction of the church. Free religious expression as an historic Baptist distinctive means freedom from government regulation of my religious expression and thereby freedom for me to choose which, if any, religious tradition will have spiritual authority over my religious expression. Thus, religious liberty does not mean that my personal religious expression is outside the scope of my church's interest.

And certainly any individual church, when choosing whether to affiliate with another individual church, has the right to take into consideration toward that choice any information that it deems to be pertinent, including how the church in view and its individual members express themselves religiously. This is a central concept in each church's freedom of religious association. And the SBC is nothing more than a group of churches freely affiliated with one another. Thus, the SBC has the absolute right to determine the bounds of its own cooperation. In doing so, not only is it not actually infringing upon anyone else's religious liberty, but also it cannot possibly do so. Therefore, it is nonsense to suggest that the SBC needs to police itself in order to safeguard the free religious expression of anyone.

Can the historic Baptist distinctive of religious liberty be defined as "the protection of the freedom of individual conscience from doctrines and commandments of men which are contrary to God’s Word or not contained therein, as well as the freedom to form and propagate beliefs within the sphere of religion"? No.

Our doctrine of religious liberty can be defined as the protection of the freedom of the individual conscience in matters of religion. Period. Whether the "doctrines and commandments" be "of men" or of God. Whether they be "contrary to God's Word or not contained therein" or whether they be an explicit teaching of God's Word contained entirely throughout. I believe in religious liberty even for athiests and infidels. That is the historic Baptist distinctive.

The next two paragraphs of the resolution suggest that the heart of this Baptist distinctive is a generous spirit toward other Christian denominations regarding the doctrines that are distinctive to Baptists:

WHEREAS, Southern Baptists have labored to protect the freedoms of religion in every context, both internationally and within the United States, even when those religious beliefs were contrary to the generally accepted confessions of faith adopted by Baptists;

WHEREAS, there has been a general willingness among Southern Baptist churches to respect the religious opinions and practices of non-Baptist churches, with the recognition that mutual respect and religious tolerance does not imply endorsement or affirmation of those religious opinions and practices; (emphasis mine)

These two paragraphs are absolutely true, but the qualifiers and limitations are odd. In other words, it is interesting what they do not say. Southern Baptist vigilance over religious liberty has nothing to do with ecumenicity. It is not that we've just agreed to overlook the distinctives expressed in "the generally accepted confessions of faith adopted by Baptists." Rather, we respect the religious liberty of those religious beliefs that are contrary even to Christianity. We respect the religious liberty of Moslems and Buddhists.

Religious liberty is not about respecting "the religious opinions and practices of non-Baptist churches." In fact, for a significant amount of Southern Baptist history, a pretty large contingent of Southern Baptist life would not have agreed that there was any such thing as "non-Baptist churches," much less have expressed respect for opinions and practices of such. Nevertheless, they and other Southern Baptists have respected the principle that non-Baptist churches and non-churches alike have liberty to believe and practice as they do.

And this distinction really strikes to the heart of the matter. When we realize that our distinctive belief about religious liberty extends not just to the guy who includes ecstatic utterances in his prayer life but also to the guy who prays to Satan, then we realize that religious liberty is not about whatever course we might choose to follow internally in the SBC. The guy who prays to Satan is not welcome in the SBC at all. Not welcome to lead. Not welcome to work for us. Not welcome to be a member. But that fact is not one iota in contradiction to our sincere and historic commitment to universal religious liberty.

Is the absence of a statement in the Baptist Faith & Message about the "hot topics" of our day the result of a preference "to recognize confessional and experiential latitude among member churches as an intentional effort to maintain a commitment to religious liberty and ensure peace and harmony among member churches"? No and maybe.

No, because, as demonstrated above, it is incorrect to state that the Baptist doctrine of religious liberty has to do with the internal relationship between churches in religious affiliations.

Maybe, because maintaining "peace and harmony among member churches" has been a difficult task since the get-go, and we have indeed seen a lot of compromises toward that goal in our past. The resolution seems to state this with a certainty, as though whoever authored it has a letter from someone saying, "We didn't put styles of worship or tongues in there because we're making an intentional effort to ensure peace and harmony among member churches." If they have such a document, I would love the chance to read it, just because...well...I love to read that kind of thing. Otherwise, we just have a case of people putting words into the mouths of dead people who aren't around to defend themselves. Don't they know that you have to have a History degree to earn the right to do that! ;-)

Now the last two "Whereas"es are really good.

WHEREAS, the Southern Baptist Convention recognizes a greater strength in cooperative missionary ventures by the participation of churches with every liturgical preference, whether contemporary, blended or traditional; and

WHEREAS, the Southern Baptist Convention recognizes that the task of world evangelization and church planting is a much more important component of our obedience to the Great Commission of Jesus Christ than is a prolonged discussion among Baptists about acceptable and unacceptable worship practices, whether those practices take form in public or private expressions

There, folks. That is the heart of the discussion. These two paragraphs express it with concision and precision. Delete everything above this and you have a good resolution. I still don't agree with it entirely, but it makes a logical argument. They're saying that we're stronger with this kind of diversity in the SBC, and that these matters really aren't that important compared to what we're united to do.

With regard to music styles, I couldn't agree more. With regard to the whole field of "liturgical preference" I don't think that I could say so. What if we have a church that likes to burn incense to the "saints" and pray to Mary on occasion? What if a church in my association starts snake-handling? What if, as some early Baptists apparently did, a Southern Baptist church started baptizing people in the nude? I'm not sure that such diversity would make us any stronger at all. I'm not sure that those questions wouldn't rise to such a level that they needed to be addressed. So this segment could benefit from a little more specificity.

If it were more specific, I'm sure that the infamous "private prayer language" would make the list of specifics. Given the aggressive and divisive nature of charismatic practice over the past century, I think it is the right of the messengers to decide for themselves whether they think that paying for the promotion of charismatic practice is a kind of diversity that would strengthen the SBC. I would be voting no on that.

Regarding the "Resolved"s, I think I've said enough to give you a clue as to what I think about the first one. I won't beat that horse any more.

I agree completely with the second "Resolved" as worded.

Of course, the whole controversy right now is skirted over in the phrase "spiritual practices consistent with the teachings of Holy Scripture." If Southern Baptists really believe that what passes for "speaking in tongues" these days is "consistent with the teachings of Holy Scripture" then there should be absolutely no restrictions upon the practice either in private prayer or in public proclamation. Indeed, not only should there be no restrictions upon it, but we should be actively promoting whatever is "consistent with the teachings of Holy Scripture." But that's the big question.

If the resolution were straightforward, it would just come out and say "private prayer language is consistent with the teachings of Holy Scripture." Or it could say, "if a denominational employee thinks that his or her practice is consistent with the teachings of Holy Scripture, that's good enough for us." But instead it presents to the SBC the false dichotomy: Agree with us or disagree with the Bible, your choice.

With regard to the third "Resolved" I simply note that the individual conscience is free to believe and worship as it wishes with or without the guidance of the Holy Spirit or the Word of God, to worship or not, whomever, however (within a few extreme limits...no human sacrifice).

With regard to the final "Resolved" I entirely agree. Of course, "full partnership" means that you get to send messengers to the meeting. There is no promise, explicit or implied, that anyone you suggest will be suitable for any position of denominational employment, nor that anyone from your church will ever hold any position of leadership in the convention. Indeed, a vast number of churches have never had anyone fit into either category, yet have been in "full partnership" all along.

In conclusion, allow me to say in all sincerity that someone will be able to tear apart anything that any individual writes. I do not doubt the sincerity or intelligence of whoever wrote this resolution. I do think that they need to think more carefully about what religious liberty means. I also think that they are wrong about some things. Necessarily, that implies that they think that I'm wrong about some things. So be it.

The reason that we have Resolutions Committees is to fix resolutions or do away with them if they are beyond fixing. I guess we'll all see soon enough what happens to this one.

By the way, the author (whoever it is) and the supporters of this resolution are free to comment here. Unlike some places that decry censorship while practicing it, I allow free discussion here at Praisegod Barebones.

Marriage, the Ten Commandments, and Roger Williams

Mormon polygamist Warren Jeffs claims that the proceedings against him for forcing a fourteen-year-old girl into marriage with her first cousin amount to a violation of his freedom to practice his chosen religion (see here).

I believe in religious liberty for everyone, including Warren Jeffs, atheists, Satanist, Branch Davidians, and whomever else you might stipulate. But I think that Jeffs's religious liberty defense is bogus. The underlying principle by which I make that distinction is an important one: It is called "The Two Tables of the Law" and I'll give credit for the principle to Roger Williams.

The Two Tables of the Law

Here's the principle: Government has no right to govern the vertical relationship between people and God, but it does have the right to govern the horizontal relationship among people. The two categories are not perfectly discrete (for example, see here), but the overlap does not prevent these two categories from being very helpful in determining the rightful disposition of cases like that of Warren Jeffs.

Williams used the idea of the Ten Commandments to teach this distinctive principle. The first four commandments treat the vertical relationship. The last six treat the horizontal relationship. So, according to Williams and to me the first four commandments illustrate the kind of thing that the government ought to leave alone, while the last six illustrate the kind of thing that government may regulate as it sees fit.

This test has nothing to do with the source of ideas. Rather, it deals with the subject matter of laws and the scope of governmental authority. On the one hand, it is inappropriate for government to regulate someone's prayer, praise, beliefs, or confessions no matter what the reason. Even if the source of the concern is, for example, national security, the government may not properly condemn or commend a particular approach to man's relationship with God. On the other hand, as it pertains to interhuman conduct, I believe that a law can draw upon any source of wisdom it likes—legal precedent, religious doctrine, public opinion...whatever thinking is relevant and persuasive—so long as effect of the law does not extend governmental regulation beyond the bounds of its authority.

The Principle Applied

The argument against gay marriage is a religious argument. The argument against polygamy is a religious argument. The argument against bestiality is a religious argument. The argument against pedophilia has religious components. If "a wall of separation between church and state" means (as many seem to believe) that religious ideas may not appropriately influence law, then gay marriage ought to be legal, Warren Jeffs ought to go free, and we owe a grave national apology to David Koresh. On the other hand, if Williams's principle is a valid one, then the government has every right to regulate marriage as a part of the second table, whether those regulations conflict with Mr. Jeffs's sincerely held religious beliefs or not. Furthermore, if this principle is a valid one, then the government has every right to outlaw gay marriage and to regulate a broad array of issues that are not strictly matters of conscience.