What Does "Category 4" Look Like?

The messengers to the SBC Annual Meeting have thrice affirmed that churches should have access to a warning system. This warning system would exist to help churches who know about allegations of abuse warn other churches who might not know about those allegations. Churches would benefit from that warning system because otherwise, ignorant of what they might learn from the warning system, they could be considering hiring as an employee or drafting as a volunteer someone who was alleged to have committed abuse in another context.

In the proposal for that warning system, the term "credibly accused" was defined by four categories. The first three categories involve people who have been convicted in a criminal court, people who have lost a civil suit, and people who confessed (except for people who confessed to an attorney, a spouse, or in any other context in which they have legal privilege). The fourth category involved people for whom a third-party investigation of alleged abuse found the allegations to be credible.

Much of the conversation about "category 4" has suggested that it consists of he-said-she-said situations where no one has any evidence to know what happened. It's easy to have Twitter wars about what this category means when there's no warning system and people are just imagining hypotheticals. These sometimes-bad-faith objections seem to assume incompetence or intransigence on the part of the people involved in managing a warning system like this. And yet, even if we assume hypothetically that there are people spiteful enough or agenda-driven enough to manage a warning system recklessly, where will they find customers? Who is going to consult a bad, error-ridden warning system? Anyone who wants such a warning system to succeed is going to be motivated to earn the trust of churches by approaching every category—1, 2, 3, or 4—carefully and responsibly.

The objections are built upon hypothetical assumptions that those in charge of the warning system will not act carefully and responsibly.

But we don't have to settle for hypotheticals. Let's look at a concrete example and see how well it compares to some of the scaremongering online. Consider a congregation that was deemed not to be in friendly cooperation with the SBC back in February of this year (2024). Here's part of an article from the Nashville, Tennessee newspaper, The Tennesseean:

Among the latest additions, West Hendersonville Baptist in North Carolina employed a pastor who is “biblically disqualified” according to SBC standards on abuse response.

That pastor, Jerry Mullinax, faced discipline in 2003 when he taught at a middle school and reportedly sent “improper emails” to a female student, according to news reports. The North Carolina Board of Education revoked Mullinax’s teaching license in 2004.

Source: https://www.tennessean.com/story/news/religion/2024/02/20/top-southern-baptist-convention-panel-ousts-four-churches-over-woman-pastor-abuse-response/72586735007/

Here are some things we learn in this story.

• If Mullinax has been convicted of a crime in this case, the story makes no mention of it.
• If Mullinax has lost a civil judgment in this case, the story makes no mention of it.
• If Mullinax has confessed to a crime in this case, the story makes no mention of it.
• Therefore, this scenario does not fit under categories 1, 2, or 3 in the definition of "credibly accused."
• And yet, the SBC Executive Committee declared this church not to be in friendly cooperation (following, from the appearance of the records, similar action by the local association and the state convention).
• The local school district (a third party) and possibly the state board of education (another third party) investigated the claim (see the next paragraph). Pursuant to that investigation, they revoked his teaching license.
• Therefore, this scenario fits under category 4 in the definition of "credibly accused." A third-party investigation found the allegations to be credible enough to revoke that license.

The Tennessean had earlier reported on Mullinax's case when it first became public knowledge back in 2003 (see the story here, https://www.tennessean.com/story/news/2003/05/14/teacher-offers-resignation-after-parents-complaints/28133007007/). At the time of that story, Mullinax had resigned but his teaching license had not been revoked. The school district was still investigating the matter. At some point subsequently, if the newspaper article is correct, the state of North Carolina revoked Mullinax's teaching license.

When you encounter a scary hypothetical online, you'll read that category 4 is some contested allegation with no evidence one way or the other culminating in a rush to judgment. In real life, it shows up as situations where the state board of education and the local school district conducted an investigation and revoked someone's teaching certificate for the emails he was sending to middle-school girls.

I don't know what happened in North Carolina. I wasn't there. I do know that the Southern Baptist Convention does not have the authority to tell any church whether they can hire a pastor whose teaching license has been revoked by the state over allegations about "'improper emails' to a female student." That's the decision of the local church. I don't know what West Hendersonville Baptist Church's reasoning was for hiring and retaining Mullinax as their pastor.

But here's something I do know. I know that the revocation of someone's teaching certificate under such circumstances will not appear on anyone's criminal background check. I further know that it would be easy on a pastoral resume to hide one's having lost a teaching license for such allegations. I therefore know that any church considering such a candidate, if they are putting their trust in a standard criminal background check, runs a high risk of not knowing about this sort of episode in a candidate's past.

I also know that I would not want to have to explain to the parents in my church why we didn't know that the Sunday School teacher we put in the fourth-grade class had previously had his teaching license revoked in another state on the basis of allegations of improper conduct toward middle-school girls.

The final thing I know is this: Whatever the church decides about putting someone like that into service, they deserve to make an informed decision—to have all of the pertinent information available to them when they make their decision. If (a) I were considering hiring someone in that circumstance, if (b) I didn't know about the revocation of their teaching license, if (c) you did know about it, and (d) you didn't tell me, I would not consider that to be the behavior of a friend. Indeed, if my church were plunged into scandal by way of that person's actions after being hired by us, your unwillingness to warn me would likely mark the end of our friendship. Friends—how much more so brothers and sisters!—warn one another about dangerous situations and dangerous people.

So, whenever you hear someone say that category 4 is unjust, unbiblical, and untenable legally, ask them if they are aware that the SBC already deems churches not to be in friendly cooperation on the basis of category-4 scenarios. Ask them if they want someone teaching their daughter's Sunday School class whose teaching certificate was revoked in response to allegations that he was sending inappropriate emails to female middle-school students. Ask them if they plan to make a motion in Dallas to reinstate West Hendersonville Baptist Church to correct what they must surely think is a grave injustice that has been wrought, if they think that category 4 is categorically unjust.

Any warning system, no matter what categories or rules it may follow, does not deny anyone employment. Local churches make decisions about whom to employ or whom to use as volunteers. Anyone has the opportunity to explain the falsity of any allegation to a church who is considering them. Any church that knows about allegations of sexual abuse has the right to ask to hear both sides of the story before making a decision. None of those things are at question here. 

Rather, the question is this: Do you prefer a world in which your church gets to know about situations like this one when you hire people or recruit them as volunteers, or do you prefer a world in which it is easy to hide such allegations from you when you are making hiring or recruiting decisions as a church? For me, that's an easy question to answer.

Epilogue

From those who are skeptical about this warning system, just once, here's what I would love to hear. 

"Hey, we also think that scenarios like this one (where someone's teaching license, state bar membership, medical license, etc., have been revoked) are situations that churches ought to be warned about when they have to hire new staff members or recruit new volunteers. We are open to hearing about other category-4 scenarios similar to this one that we can all agree give good reason to make churches aware of what has been alleged. But we are still worried about murky cases where no one knows what happened. Here are the constructive proposals we offer about how to have a functional warning system that helps churches to avoid putting minors into the care of the people you are worried about, Bart, while alleviating the concerns that we still have about the possibility of people's being damaged by false accusations."

I would LOVE to have that conversation. I would totally respect and give careful attention to the input from anyone who approached this question in that way.

A Parable for the Election

I present the following parable to promote understanding and grace. I composed it for that purpose and that purpose alone.

• I did not compose it to direct, shape, inform, or change anyone's planned vote in the upcoming election.
• I did not compose it to tell you how I will vote in the upcoming election, although I can tell you that I will not be voting for either of the pro-choice candidates.
• I did not compose it to stir up controversy, although I resign myself to the fact that controversy will inexorably come as day follows night.
• I did not even compose it to defend the rationales, ideas, and characterizations that will appear below as accurate or helpful (nor to malign them as inaccurate or unhelpful).

Rather, knowing that large numbers of self-styled Evangelicals will vote for Donald Trump in November, I anticipate the think-pieces that will be written in the aftermath (no matter the election's outcome) lambasting or lampooning those believers who will do so, accusing them of never having really cared about the lives of babies murdered by abortion, etc. Many of these jeremiads will display little willingness to try to understand why, even when he stabs Evangelicals in the back, Donald Trump remains the most appealing candidate for many of my friends who are Evangelicals.

And so, I offer you a parable of a married couple with three children.

They were married in 1942, just before he shipped off to war. Their first child—a son— was born while Dad was fighting at El Guettar in North Africa. America won, and Dad returned home. The firstborn son grew up, excelled in school, was the catcher for the high school baseball team, and fell in love with a high school sweetheart. His parents loved him and were proud of him. Following in his dad's footsteps, he enlisted in the Army straight out of high school. He went missing in action in Vietnam, and they never heard from him again.

Back in 1945, when Dad came home from Europe at the end of World War II, the family soon welcomed a second son. To be honest, he found it difficult to live in the shadows of his older brother. His grades weren't quite as good; his athleticism wasn't quite as exceptional. It all became worse when his older brother went missing, presumably dead, as a war hero. How could he possibly measure up to a shrine—a martyr. So, maturing in the early 1970s, he fell into alcohol, marijuana, womanizing, and a life of wanton abandon. He never finished college. He held some jobs, but never any plan so grandiose as to be called a career. He eventually came to a balance where he earned just enough and drank just little enough to survive.

But he loved his parents, this second son. The line between love and manipulation was difficult to discern sometimes, to be sure. But he showed up. He apologized after fights and failures. He needed them, and they loved to be needed. He was, in many ways, the repudiation of all of the values they had taught him, but he never explicitly repudiated those values all the way. He just never quite lived out those values. Nevertheless, they could not help but love him.

Just a year younger than him was the final child—a daughter. She was the apple of her Daddy's eye and the spitting image of her mother. Studious and hardworking, she excelled at school. She saw first-hand how her parents grieved over the misbehavior that their middle child so enthusiastically pursued, and she was, by firm resolve, nothing like him. She was chaste. She never drank to excess and never experimented with drugs. She was studious and hardworking, and her classes readily succumbed to her academic regimen.

This youngest daughter became the first in the family to earn a college degree, having earned a scholarship at the state university. She made the Dean's List. She dated a promising college peer who was as level-headed and responsible as she was. This was truly an exemplary child.

While in school in the late 1970s, this daughter took a required class in Sociology from a professor who was enamored with the Frankfort School's early Critical Theory. The moment was ripe to convince students to be suspicious of power structures—the Vietnam War had just ended and Watergate had been the biggest story in the newspaper during the formative years of these college students. And so, the couple's youngest child excelled at the University and became a thoroughgoing critic of American military power, white racism in the 1960s, and the general way (she came to believe) in which her parents' generation had ruined the world.

Here you have them: The three children of this couple. One is dead but forever alive in their memories, one is a perennially self-absorbed screw-up they could justifiably have disowned years ago, and the third is a successful, moral, hardworking success story who just happens to think that her parents and her deceased brother are basically Hitler.

From which child will they feel the greatest betrayal? The one who misbehaves, or the one who repudiates the things for which they have sacrificed the most? To which child will they give the most of their time, their hearts, their money, and their support?

The Republican Party has manipulated Evangelicals for years and has failed to deliver on their promises time after time. Many Republican leaders live a lifestyle that is antithetical to the lifestyle prescribed by Evangelical Christianity. And yet, even with all of that being true, they have never told Evangelicals that Evangelicals were the source of all of the problems in American life.

On the other hand, the Democratic Party has, in the minds of many Evangelicals, called Evangelicals deplorables, racists, ignoramuses, fascists, and hypocrites. Many Evangelicals get the feeling that Democrats view Evangelicals as The Enemy. They have repeatedly threatened, by way of things like the curiously (mis)named "Do No Harm Act," the very liberty of Evangelicals to preach and practice their faith whenever it comes into conflict with their radical sexual agenda.

Some Evangelicals will practice some "tough love" this November and will withhold their vote from a now-pro-choice National GOP. Very few Evangelicals will vote for Vice-President Harris (although they few may make a lot of noise), but some will vote third-party or not at all. Others, even if they feel like they ought to be tough-love conservatives, will not be able to find the strength within themselves to keep from pulling the lever for Republican candidates. After all, the Texas GOP's party platform is not pro-choice at all, so it is technically inaccurate to declare that the Republican Party en masse has abandoned the Pro-Life cause. So, some genuinely Pro-Life Evangelicals will stick with the Republican Party in the hope that the party will come around to Evangelical sensibilities eventually.

Even if you think the Evangelicals who still vote for President Trump are foolish, I hope you'll show them a little sympathy. These are matters of the heart, and life sometimes forces difficult choices upon us.

Three Things Messengers Know when Voting on Sex Abuse Reform

For the third straight year, the messenger body of the Southern Baptist Convention gave their overwhelming endorsement to the creation of a warning system¹ to warn churches about people who have been credibly accused of sexual abuse. In other words, they keep affirming the creation of the "Ministry Check" website. Why have they so consistently voted in this way?

Over the past two years, I have sometimes heard people speculate (that is, people who oppose this measure) that the messengers keep voting for Ministry Check because of what they do not know. They don't know the legal risks, we are told. They don't know what "biblical justice" is, others say. And yet, those criticisms (along with all of the others) have been aired for more than three years. It is no longer (if it ever was) a credible argument to suggest that messengers are voting the way that they are voting because of ignorance.

Rather, messengers are voting to affirm Ministry Check over and over with massive majorities because of at least three things that they DO know:

1. They know that their names will not be listed.
2. They know that there will be a growing number of people rightfully listed.
3. They know that they are going to need to hire employees and recruit volunteers for their churches sooner or later.

There it is. They keep voting for Ministry Check because they know those three things.

1. The messengers know that their names will not be listed. How can they know that? Because they know that they haven't been guilty of sexual misconduct. Whichever Southern Baptists are pursuing teenagers from the youth group sexually, are filling their hard drives with child porn, or have had their teaching certification pulled by the state for inappropriate behavior with teenagers, those are Southern Baptists who are not voting for the warning system. The Southern Baptists who are voting for the warning system know that no one has ever even accused them of any of these things.

This point exists in contradiction to anyone who would suggest that the SBC is chock full to the brim of sex offenders in our pulpits. If that were so, why would these people be voting for their own annihilation? Vote after vote, the Southern Baptist Convention has demonstrated that our rank-and-file Southern Baptists find church sexual abuse to be abhorrent and that they themselves are not sexual abusers.

2. The messengers know that there will indeed be a lot of names rightfully listed. In the 14 days surrounding the SBC Annual Meeting, serious allegations of sexual misconduct and abuse emerged regarding two mega-church pastors and a Southern Baptist pastor in Florida. Again, that's just over the span of a few days.

It's not crying wolf to acknowledge the growing problem of abusive sexual behavior among church leaders. It's also not "wokeism." It is utterly conservative to expect pastors, deacons, and church volunteers to follow the Christian sexual ethic. It is utterly conservative to refuse to give leadership positions to abusers. The Ministry Check website is conservative, Bible-believing Christianity. We live in a decadent culture. It gets worse every year. Sexual abuse is not unique to churches (it's in schools, Hollywood, athletics, etc.), but it is waging war against the churches and infiltrating them, constantly seeking to breach what Roger Williams called "the hedge of separation" between the wilderness of the world and the garden of the church. The worse the culture gets, the more of this we are going to see.

We rightly ought to be guarding the wall. We rightly ought to be alarmed. We rightly ought to take a defensive posture on behalf of the flocks alloted to our charge.

The warning system only makes us better at doing that.

3. The messengers know that they are eventually going to need to hire an employee or recruit a volunteer. They don't want to hire or recruit someone else's sexual abuse problem. They don't want to hire the predator who got chased away from another church and then came to their town fleeing the consequences of abuse and looking for somewhere to start fresh.

Can you blame these pastors for not wanting to be kept in the dark about these people when they have to hire someone? Their own children attend their churches. Their friends' children attend their churches. Children they visited in the hospital when they were born. Children they baptized when they came to faith in Jesus. They want to hire good people to serve their flock. They don't want to hire some wolf in sheep's clothing.

The warning system will benefit every kind of church that ever hires anyone or recruits anyone to volunteer. It will benefit megachurches and small churches. It will benefit urban churches and rural churches. It will benefit IX Marks churches, CBN churches, NAAF churches, Pillar churches—it will benefit every kind of church that doesn't want to hire that guy who created a sexual abuse scandal at another church three states away but didn't wind up on a sex offender registry.

Earlier this year, candidates for the SBC presidency debated whether we have a sexual abuse "crisis." For those who eschewed the description, they commonly offered the caveat that any church sexual abuse is a crisis for that one church. Yes, it is a crisis if a sexual predator plunders the flock of one church. Sometimes, because people are sneaky and devilish and highly motivated by their depravity, it is a crisis that could not easily have been prevented in that first church. But it is an even greater crisis when a single sexual predator creates crises at two churches, three churches, or a dozen churches. For any church after that first one, somebody could have done something to prevent it.

The messenger body knows that. They want to do everything they can do to avoid being that first church in crisis, but at the very least they also want to receive adequate warning to avoid being that second, third, or fourth church to fall into the clutches of a serial church abuser.

The messengers know that people will keep secrets and will work against them. They want every advantage they can get in the battle against these predators. It's good for their churches. And so, that's how they vote—they vote for the thing that will protect their churches and will protect the people in their churches.

Conclusion

There's just no mystery in this. The SBC Executive Committee now holds in its hands the third consecutive affirmation of this plan, referred to them by the messengers. There will be discussion about this. The perennial opponents of any kind of warning system will most definitely make their case. The members of the EC and everyone else will hear from those opponents all the reasons not to provide this warning system to churches.

I'm not looking to get in the way of anyone who wants to make their case against a warning system. We have a deliberative system. Let each one make his case as best he can (and let them make it publicly and on the record). And Southern Baptists should listen carefully (and critically) to what those people say.

But I do want to get in the way of this: When people dismiss the repeated votes of the messenger body by calling into question their knowledge or wisdom, I hope we'll all throw a little side-eye their way and point back to these three undeniable truths that have motivated the messenger body. The messengers' voice and the messengers' case should be articulated with appropriate clarity, enthusiasm, attesting data, and force. The reasons that motivate the messengers from the churches may not make a lot of sense to people whose daily work is outside the local-church context, but to a pastor, these three things are important realities. Although there is a further case to be made with additional reasons to implement a warning system, these three reasons are sound and compelling all by themselves. Let us show the respect due the messenger body—overwhelmingly populated by leaders in their own churches—and take their reasons and their needs seriously, too.

After all, don't the entities of the SBC exist "to assist the churches"?

¹This is often called "the database." I call it a "warning system" because I am open to any methodology that adequately warns churches about dangerous people.

Against Political Violence

A message I just sent to the people of FBC Farmersville:

In the past few minutes, we have learned that someone has apparently shot Former President Trump. He was bleeding from the ear, but appeared not to be seriously injured at all. He, his campaign, and the United States Secret Service all say that he is fine. The shooter is dead, as are at least two attendees at the rally.

Let us pray for our nation.

Let us make it clear that this kind of behavior is unacceptable. Unlike people in many other places around the world, we get to speak by way of our votes. We live in a nation where our votes are not coerced, we are not threatened or intimidated in our voting, our votes are fairly counted every time, and our country transfers power every time in accord with the expressed wishes of the people.

Unlike in Iran, Russia, South Sudan, or many other places we could mention, there is never any need for us to resort to violence in order to be heard or to create political change. This is a double blessing for Christians, since our system of government allows us to be active in shaping the character of our country without violating what God's word clearly commands us in Romans 13:1-7 and I Peter 2:13-17. The person who resorts to violence is therefore not only at war with a political opponent but is also at war with the majority of our countrymen and at war with the word of God.

In his second inaugural address, Abraham Lincoln was trying to bring the country together after the Civil War. Imagine how divided the nation was at that time. Imagine how powerful your own feelings would have been at that time. Perhaps you had sent your own son to fight in the war or your own husband. Perhaps he had been killed or injured. Perhaps your house had been burned or you had lost all you owned. How would you feel about your enemy at war?

Abraham Lincoln said this at the time: "With malice toward none; with charity for all; with firmness in the right, as God gives us to see the right, let us strive on to finish the work we are in." Charity, not malice.

And so, as believers, let us all pray for President Trump, no matter how you plan to vote in November. Let us all speak with one voice saying that this kind of behavior is WRONG. Let us not contribute to making things worse, but let us be the ones summoning what Lincoln called "the better angels of our nature" in all of those around us. Let us do all of those things around our family tables, in our Sunday School classrooms, and in our presence online.

And as we watch the deterioration of our country, let us remember that our home still stands waiting for us in Heaven, secure in peace and truth.

Statement regarding Iranian Attacks on Israel

Sunday, April 14, 2024

RE: Iranian Attacks on Israel

I had been taking some time to unplug. I don’t just mean stepping back from social media—I mean taking a big step away from all kinds of media, putting away the phone, and clearing out space to listen in stillness. When asked Saturday night if I wanted to make any sort of a statement about the events in the Middle East, I had to ask, “What events in the Middle East?”

I want not to think about war. I want not to know about a 66-year-old retired schoolteacher who was murdered in Kfar Aza on October 7. But unplugging the phone and ignoring the world doesn’t make the violence of our world any less real. War may be real and unavoidable, but Jesus gives a greater peace.

At our most recent meeting, the Southern Baptist Convention stopped to pray for the peace of Jerusalem. October 7 had not yet happened. Iran was at the time pursuing their aggression against Israel in more subtle ways than they did on this weekend’s sabbath. Southern Baptists stopped to pray for Israel just because Israel is in constant need of prayers for peace.

So, to those who suffer from Iranian violence and oppression through their proxy warriors in Hamas and Hezbollah, please understand this. Southern Baptists are praying for you. Southern Baptists are on your side. Southern Baptists support the defeat of these terrorists and the establishment of a just and lasting peace in Israel. If you are worried that we who live far away from the conflict have stopped paying attention and have forgotten about you, I can assure you that we have not.

The sacred writings we share in common with the Jewish people give us the words of a Jewish leader who lived through war and came out singing on the other side. I close with some of the words he wrote in Psalm 27.

The Lord is my light and my salvation; whom shall I fear?
The Lord is the stronghold of my life; of whom shall I be afraid?

When evildoers assail me to eat up my flesh,
My adversaries and foes, it is they who stumble and fall.

Though an army encamp against me, my heart shall not fear;
Though war rise against me, yet I will be confident.

One thing I have asked of the Lord, that I will seek after:
That I may dwell in the house of the Lord all the days of my life,
To gaze upon the beauty of the Lord and to inquire in his temple.

For he will hide me in his shelter on the day of trouble;
He will conceal me under the cover of his tent; he will lift me high upon a rock.

And now my head shall be lifted up above my enemies all around me,
And I will offer in his tabernacle sacrifices with shouts of joy;
I will sing and make melody to the Lord.

A Mistake I Made in New Orleans

I am writing to inform you of a mistake I made while presiding over the Annual Meeting of the Southern Baptist Convention in New Orleans last year.

In the Tuesday morning session, at the first opportunity to introduce new motions, Keith Myer moved "that the Organization Manual of the Southern Baptist Convention be amended to add the ministry assignment for the Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission to assist churches and other Southern Baptist entities by promoting awareness of and resourcing the prevention of and response to abuse." In the Tuesday afternoon session, Spence Shelton from the Committee on Order of Business recommended to refer the motion. The Convention passed the motion to refer.

But something went awry. I made a mistake.

Spence moved that the motion "be referred to the Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission and the Executive Committee for consideration and report back to the 2024 Southern Baptist Convention." But when I stated the motion at its disposition, I declared that the motion was referred to the ERLC. I failed to hear that it was also being referred to the Executive Committee. I failed to state that the motion was being referred to the Executive Committee. I misheard, misunderstood, and misstated the motion.

Weeks later, when Phillip Robertson asked me about how the Executive Committee should prepare for the motion, I informed him that Keith's motion was referred to the ERLC, not to the Executive Committee. Just to make sure, I went online to Acts 2, scanned forward to the motion, and listened to what I had said. Yes. ERLC. No need for the Executive Committee to do anything.

Weeks later still, Recording Secretary Nathan Finn released the 2023 SBC Annual. Keith had reached out to Phillip to ask about addressing the appropriate EC subcommittee about his motion. Because the Annual had been printed, I told Phillip that he could show Keith in the SBC Annual that the motion had not been referred to the EC.

Then I looked at the Annual, myself.

Nathan had gone back to the recording and had listened to Spence's statement of the motion. He printed what Spence had said, which was what the Committee on Order of Business had voted to recommend.

The presiding officer's restatement of the motion IS the motion according to Parliamentary Procedure. But the SBC Annual is the official record of the Annual Meeting. These two sources say two conflicting things.

So, I have apologized to Keith, and I now apologize to all Southern Baptists for the mistake that I made. The mistake does not kill the motion at all. It was successfully referred to the ERLC. It will be reported back to the Convention's messengers in 2024 in Indianapolis. The Executive Committee, acting on my advice, has not including the motion in its agenda for next week, but the EC still meets again in June.

This is the part of the job I wanted to do so well. I'm very embarrassed to have made a mistake like this. I'm sorry.

Letter to the Baptist Union of Great Britain

 

Rev. Tim Presswood

President, Baptist Union of Great Britain

Dear Rev. Presswood:

Congratulations upon your election as 2023-2024 President of the Baptist Union of Great Britain. To have the honor of leadership within one’s own family of local churches is, in my experience, greatly satisfactory. To have the responsibility of leadership within that family of local churches during seasons of controversy and change can also be burdensome. In my first year of service, I have been borne up by the faithful prayers of my fellow saints. I wish as much for you in your forthcoming year.

I write as something of an anglophile as it pertains to our common heritage as Baptists. Although I wrote my dissertation in Church History about an episode in Southern Baptist life and have given greater attention to writing about Baptist life on this side of the Atlantic since my graduation, one cannot competently read, write, or teach about Baptist life in America without paying full attention to the Baptists of England, Scotland, and Wales. Dr. Karen Bullock led us in a year-long study of British Baptists. I fell in love with Smyth and Helwys for their courage, with Dan Taylor for his zeal in planting churches, with Andrew Fuller and William Carey for their missionary industry, and for Spurgeon’s pulpit skills. I chose to preside over our meeting with a gavel made from Bunyan’s bed. I could go on to speak of Keach, Grantham, Crosby, Kiffin, Ryland, Gill, and a whole host of others all the way down to George R Beasley-Murray. If we are not siblings, we are cousins at least. My heart yearns for the health and effectiveness of the Baptist Union of Great Britain.

These sentiments provoked me to lead my church into a partnership with Abbey Road Baptist Church in Westminster several years ago. Facing challenges related to their meeting house, the church welcomed our support in terms of finances, encouragement, and volunteer labor in a few ministry endeavors. My interests, you see, are not limited to the past history of British Baptists. I am cheering for your work in the present as well.

The relationship between Baptists in America and those in the British Commonwealth has featured both commonality and controversy. It is easy to write with gratitude for our seasons of fruitful and agreeable partnership, but I wish to do the harder thing today—I write to thank the Baptist Union of Great Britain for an episode in which British Baptists found in their hearts enough love for us to disagree with us and to do so publicly.

In the 1830s, Thomas Waters served as the secretary of the historic Midland Association. Rev. Waters had participated enthusiastically in the efforts to create a general union of Particular Baptists in 1813. As you know, his work in this regard was an important precursor to the formation of the Baptist Union of Great Britain. 

During the 1830s, Waters and many other British Baptists were endeavoring to rid the British colonies of the scourge of slavery. The United States of America was no longer a British colony as a matter of international law and politics, but on the basis of shared heritage, Waters led the Association to publish a resolution aimed at the Baptist churches in America.

In the text of that resolution, the Midland Association firmly called upon Baptist Churches in America to labor for the overthrow of slavery in their land. The association made their plea upon several grounds. They noted their past joy over the progress of the gospel in the United States of America. They lamented the necessary attenuation of that joy upon their contemplation that “many of the ministers, deacons, and private members of Baptist churches, participate equally with others in [the] hateful abomination [of slaveholding].” They expressed their conviction that slaveholding was contrary to the teachings of the Christian scriptures. They worried that their profound differences on the question of slavery threatened the possibility of any future cooperation between British Baptists and American Baptists. This line of thinking culminated in these words:

…[we] solemnly warn, and earnestly entreat, our American brethren faithfully to exert themselves to put from them the accursed thing.

The Midland association was not alone in these efforts. Indeed, so widespread was the adoption of resolutions such as this that a contemporary Congregationalist envied Baptist labors, saying, “the movements which have taken place in England are almost entirely confined to the Baptist body.” Resolutions from Kent and Sussex and Birmingham exemplified this genre. London Baptists recognized that American Baptists were being carried along in our support of slavery by “commercial and political bearings of the question” and requested that we instead regard slaveholding “as a palpable violation of the law of God.”

American Baptists, especially in the South, did not receive these words kindly. Even American Baptists like Francis Wayland, who did not personally approve of slavery but who was trying to keep the peace at a fraught moment, wished that the British Baptists would desist from exacerbating tensions that threatened to rupture the fellowship of American Baptists. British Baptists were nevertheless undeterred in their condemnation of slaveholding among Baptists in America.

Thank you, British brothers, for the faithful wounds of a friend that these historic resolutions represent. At a moment when you might easily have yielded to the impulse to “mind your own business,” instead you spoke. You loved us too much to leave us to ourselves. You loved God’s word too much to leave it undeclared among brothers and sisters in Christ. You loved the name of Christ too much to ignore what we were doing in His name and without His consent. You had too great a hope for our future to remain silent while we damaged that future.

Inspired by what you did, I cautiously bring up the upcoming deliberations of the Baptist Union of Great Britain on the subject of removing your restrictions that disqualify gay and lesbian members of your churches from serving as ministers within the Baptist Union of Great Britain. I do so in my personal capacity and without any formal authorization from the Southern Baptist Convention, although I believe that the preponderance of our churches would agree with what I wish to say. Knowing that our own house as Southern Baptists is not perfectly in order, that whatever I write may be received as intrusive and unwelcomed, that the very thought that an American has found for himself any standing whatsoever to speak to an internal decision contemplated by an autonomous body of churches—knowing all of these things, I am inspired by your example in years past to write, nonetheless.

I will make my case upon the same lines as those that abolitionist Baptists in England chose two centuries ago.

First, I have already offered evidence of my love and admiration for the history of Baptist work in the British Isles. We are children of the same spiritual parents! I desire with all of my heart to love you and to celebrate your health and success as churches.

Second, I call to your attention one salient difference between the movement calling for the abolition of slavery and the movement to normalize same-sex romantic relationships. Support for slaveholding among American Baptists in the 1700s and 1800s was a temporary anomaly; support for the Christian sexual ethic is an ancient and ever-present force in Christian history.

The advance of Christianity was the driving force behind the ultimate rejection of Greco-Roman slavery in the Pre-Constantinian era. Even early Baptist work in the American colonial period produced mixed-race churches that were not pro-slavery. The freeing of slaves has been a Christian tradition from the Patristic era down through today.

In contrast, there simply is no tradition of Christian support for normalizing and approving same-sex romantic relationships that pre-dates the birth of the oldest people alive today. The tradition of faith and practice for which I advocate today is the position of the apostles and their generation, of Polycarp and Perpetua and of their generation, of Augustine and Anselm and Aquinas, of Luther and Calvin and Zwingli and Smyth and Helwys—of every Christian denomination in every corner of the world until what, in the grand scheme of things, is but a few ticks of the clock of Christian history.

Third, I observe that the biblical case against these modern sexual innovations is solid. Jesus Himself, asked about the nature of marriage and divorce, affirmed in Matthew 19:1-12 that (a) people are created as a dioecious species of male and female, (b) marriage arises out of and is built upon this difference in sex, (c) divorce is contrary to God’s created order except in the most extreme of circumstances, and (d) these things are true even if some people consider them so burdensome that they are unwilling to “accept this statement” and are uncertain that they can ever find fulfillment within the sexual ethic that Christ declared. The Christian sexual ethic is Christian (that is, articulated by Christ Himself), is clear, and is important. When the apostles and the Jerusalem church were choosing only a handful of top imperatives to impose upon Gentile believers, abstinence from sexual impurity ranked alongside abstinence from idolatry.

Fourth, I echo the concerns of abolitionist British Baptists from yesteryear when I note the deleterious effects that your actions may have upon the prospect of future cooperation among global Baptists. Subsequent to my election as President of the Southern Baptist Convention last summer, I have consistently heard from Southern Baptists asking me to explore a renewed relationship between the Southern Baptist Convention and the Baptist World Alliance. Such a prospect faces, in my estimation, at least two hurdles that it would have to clear. A post-institutionalist sentiment among some of our Southern Baptist people struggles to see the value in partnerships like the BWA, although I cannot join them in that way of thinking. The second hurdle is the reminiscence of major doctrinal differences that led to the SBC’s departure from the BWA in the first place. The BUGB is free to make its own choices about homosexuality and ministry (or even membership) in her churches, but choices like this one, if the BUGB should make this change, will sound a death-knell for any hope of renewed partnership between our families of churches.

This danger would likely be of little consequence if Southern Baptists were alone in our sentiments. We both know, however, that this is not the case. The strongest opposition to the change within your ranks, from what I hear, arises out of those quarters of the Baptist Union that are the least British and the least white. What damage will be done by this action, not only to your relationship with Southern Baptists in America but also to your relationship with Baptists in Africa, Asia, South America, and the Middle East? When these global churches can no longer partner with you in good conscience, will they and we be forced to create a separate partnership of our own? I hope not.

Fifth, I wish to encourage and stand with those among your number who hold these concerns. They deserve to know that they do not stand alone.

And so, with all of these things in mind, I appeal to you and to the churches that you lead. Just as was true in the 1830s with regard to slavery, I know that there are political bearings to the question that you face. We feel the same pressures here. There are economic factors that threaten you. A vast societal movement in the Euro-American milieu insists upon your submission to the spirit of the age. There is, however, the clear and consistent testimony of the Christian scriptures and of Christian history from which you may draw strength in your convictions. I request that you not modify the Ministerial Recognition Rules in Appendix 3.

Yours in Christ,

Bart Barber