One Man's Trash...

Today I direct you to a recent article at SBC Outpost. They derive pleasure from attacking Dr. Patterson and SWBTS. I like to say good things about them. Rarely can we both take pleasure in the same material.

But today marks that rare occasion. Dr. Patterson, according to SBC Outpost, does not believe that anyone receiving a CP paycheck at SWBTS ought to be a member of homosexuality-affirming Broadway Baptist Church of Fort Worth. SBC Outpost wants you to know about this in the hopes that you will think less of Dr. Patterson and SWBTS for their uncompromising standards. People in the comment stream over there are scandalized to think that a Southern Baptist seminary wouldn't have professors serving as members in any old church that they want.

I direct you to this post because I'm proud of any stand SWBTS takes against this blatant abomination before God.

In Greensboro Dr. Mohler gave thanks that, because of the Conservative Resurgence, Southern Baptists weren't having to debate things like homosexuality. Now, apparently, a conversation has broken out regarding the kind of "narrowing of parameters" that would have Southern Baptist seminary professors not hold membership in homosexuality-affirming churches. But I predict it to be a short-lived conversation.

By the way, where in The Baptist Faith & Message does it say that seminary professors shouldn't be members of homosexuality-affirming churches?

Happy Birthday, SWBTS

This year the Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary celebrates the 100^th anniversary of its own founding in Waco, Texas. Born in the postmillennial fever that anticipated "The Christian Century" (yeah, right), Southwestern has endured more hardship than perhaps the witnesses to its founding could have imagined. But through it all, God has used the seminary to accomplish much for His Kingdom and to make deep marks upon the visage of the Southern Baptist Convention. The founding of SWBTS was, I believe, significant to the larger history of the Southern Baptist Convention in several ways.

1. The founding of SWBTS demonstrated that the Southern Baptist Convention was large and healthy enough to keep multiple seminaries afloat. A mere forty years earlier it was not at all a settled question as to whether Southern Baptists needed even one seminary. I believe that the founding of Southwestern Seminary is, in this way, a testament to the burgeoning success that Southern Seminary experienced during the New South period.
2. SWBTS's founding both gave evidence of and accelerated a major westward shift of the center of influence within the Southern Baptist Convention. During the nineteenth century, people from Atlanta, Richmond, Nashville, and Charleston dominated the Southern Baptist Convention. The twentieth century witnessed the rise of Memphis, Jackson, Dallas, and Waco to positions of significant influence. Certainly the bare facts of westward migration account for some of this shift, but the existence of SWBTS ameliorated the "brain drain" that resulted from putting all of the most promising preachers from Texas, Arkansas, Louisiana, Mississippi, and Oklahoma onto Louisville-bound trains. SWBTS arrived on the scene as the convention was passing a baton from Boyce, Broadus, Manley, Howell, Graves, and Dagg to Gambrell, Carroll², Truett, Buckner, and Burleson.
3. The founding of SWBTS hastened the waning of Calvinism in the Southern Baptist Convention. The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary is the fountainhead of Calvinism in the SBC and has been since its inception. SWBTS emerged not so much as an anti-Calvinistic seminary but as a seminary a bit more disinterested. Over time, some organized resistance to Calvinism grew among some of the SWBTS faculty. For an earlier research project I read through all of the papers of W. T. Conner. His growing dissatisfaction with Calvinism (which he regarded as Southern Baptist "orthodoxy") is a passionate focus within some of his personal correspondence. Of course, Calvinism was on the wane at Southern as well during the twentieth century (Dale Moody, anyone?), but the emergence of alternatives to Southern seminary within Southern Baptist life served to erode Calvinistic hegemony over the theological education of Southern Baptist pastors.
4. Although B. H. Carroll may have anticipated a save haven for Landmarkism at SWBTS, quite the opposite eventually developed. Of course, the basement of Fort Worth Hall is the birthplace of The Trail of Blood, but J. M. was quickly replaced with other voices. The influence of Baker and Barnes, Estep and McBeth, built a Church History department that, as much as any institution in the convention, waged war on Landmarkism.
5. SWBTS elevated more-pragmatic, less-ideological subjects as academic disciplines in their own rights. The role of the Evangelism department at SWBTS is emblematic in this regard. The concept has spread far beyond SWBTS. On the one hand, it has served to guard us against a cold, intellectual orthodoxy. I believe that the emphasis upon pragmatics at SWBTS is one reason why advancing Modernism and Neo-Orthodoxy did not enjoy quite as much success in Fort Worth as it did in other climes. On the other hand, perhaps the SWBTS mindset has played some role in the propagation of the bald pragmatism that has such a stranglehold on our denomination today. I offer this one not so much as a conclusion I have drawn, but as a hypothesis I'm stirring around in my brain.

I could go on, but I'll bore you no longer. Seminary Hill has helped to shape the history of the SBC. Much in the past century is worth celebrating. I exercise my gift for understatement when I say that Southwestern Seminary has been a blessing to my life. I offer thanks to B. H. Carroll for his inspirational vision of seminary education. I offer thanks to Lee Scarborough for persevering through the worst of times. I offer thanks to our brethren in Louisville, whose financial bailout in the abyssal of the Great Depression preserved Southwestern to endure to this day. Most of all, I thank the teeming masses of Southern Baptists whose Cooperative Program dollars and other contributions have provided for me to attend SWBTS.

May the next century eclipse the first.

Zero to Forty in One Careless Moment

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention have released today the first comprehensive study of sexually transmitted diseases among adolescents (HT: The Dallas Morning News). News agencies are releasing the story with the headline "At least 1 in 4 teen girls has a sexually transmitted disease." Digging into the figures, we learn that the rate of infection among teen girls who admit to being sexually active is actually over 40 percent.

The infection rate for sexually transmitted diseases among abstinent teen girls: 0%.

The infection rate for sexually transmitted diseases among fornicating teen girls: 40%

It is too wild a ride to go from 0 to 40 in one careless moment. No matter how the world lampoons us for doing so, if we care at all about people we will continue to preach abstinence and advocate it as public healthy policy.

Grinning and Greening

My last post was a little skeletal, so I thought I would offer a few more thoughts about the recent ecostatement by some Southern Baptists.

Global warming. Man! Is there such a thing as a QUATERNARY doctrine? Because, for all the talk about creation care and the like, can anyone identify a single Southern Baptist who's saying, "Pollute the land! Crank out the chemicals! Let it all BURN!!!"? I think that Southern Baptists are in consensus that God has commissioned us to have dominion over the earth. I think that Southern Baptists are in consensus that littering or pollution or the lacing of public drinking water with hexavalent chromium is wrong. Nobody thinks that God's plan is Love Canal.

"Creation care" we're in agreement on; global warming we're not so sure about. And we're not so sure about Kyoto and its "pollute all you want" pass to places like China. If I buy a hybrid car, will the electricity I use to charge it pollute the atmosphere more or less than the gasoline I was using to fill my old car? If I buy ethanol, doesn't that cause more chemicals to be sprayed all across Iowa to grow the corn?

Is there any substantial disagreement among Southern Baptists on issues actually touching upon the THEOLOGY of "creation care"? Or is it basically a difference over which of conflicting political approaches to endorse in trying to care for creation?

And if it is the latter, how important is that, really?

In my last post, I speculated that the recent statement was all about public perception. I offered that speculation without offering evaluation. I'll fill in the blanks now. I'm not sure that this action will help public perception of Southern Baptists at all. I don't think there's anything wrong with paying an appropriate level of attention to public perception. As a pastor, I sometimes consider public perception of my actions. We're foolhardy if we completely disregard public perception. I don't think that our ideology or the truth should ever be at the mercy of our quest for positive public perception, but a desire to improve public perception of Southern Baptists by the world is not, in and of itself, a bad thing.

But perhaps, just maybe, it harms public perception in some ways for a bevy of Southern Baptist employees to go out of their way to slap at a resolution just adopted by the SBC in the immediately preceding annual meeting. Global warming is a topic on which people are certainly free to arrive at their own opinions. But before I would rise up to rebuke the SBC in The New York Times, I would want it to be a pretty important issue, especially if I were regularly cashing a CP paycheck. [NO, I don't want ANYBODY getting into any TROUBLE over this. I'm just saying that it has a negative effect on public perception] Somebody should have rebuked the SBC on the issue of slavery, but on CO₂ emissions?

I can't help but think that some of the people involved didn't anticipate that this statement would be construed as a rebuttal of our Southern Baptist messenger body. After all, Baptist Press is reporting that Frank Page endorses the past two SBC resolutions on the topic in addition to this statement. BP also reports that negotiations were ongoing with the ERLC involving some modifications of the document but not a final endorsement. Obviously at least some of the people generally in support of the idea were trying to achieve different wordings of the text.

And, of course, a great many of the signatories don't work for the SBC and can disagree any old time they want to, but let's do so agreeably, and preferably away from CNN.

While we're greening, let's keep grinning at one another.

First Church of the Weather

From the recent climate change statement by some Southern Baptist leaders (see here), the key line is:

Our cautious response to these issues in the face of mounting evidence may be seen by the world as uncaring, reckless and ill-informed.

This thing is an attempt to shape public perception of Southern Baptists more than anything else. Just my opinion.

The Rock and the Hard Place

It is the policy of First Baptist Church of Farmersville and all of her staff and volunteers to report to the police immediately any allegation of a sex-related crime. Stay in ministry to very many people for very long in this day and age, and you're going to wind up in a situation to apply such a policy.

Story Number One

Quite some time ago in my ministry a girl (let's call her Eve) came to me and reported that she had been the underage victim of a sexual assault. She said that a non-minor cousin had sexually assaulted her and that her parents were considering letting this cousin stay with the family for the summer. I reassured her that we would do everything that we could to keep her safe, and I immediately picked up the phone and called the police.

A couple of days later, Eve came to me and said that Child Protective Services had launched an investigation of the circumstances in her home. She begged me to withdraw my phone call, saying that she had made the whole thing up. I told her that I could not stop the investigation and would not do so if I could. She could be recanting under duress, after all. The only safe thing to do was to let CPS complete their investigation. CPS determined that the cousin hadn't even been around when the incident had been alleged to have taken place. Eve had, as she admitted to me, made the entire story up.

Story Number Two

Barely a year ago today a wise and observant member of our church staff overheard a conversation between teenagers talking about a car that just didn't sound right. He followed up and dug deeper, and the teenager in question alleged that a single male member of our congregation had sexually assaulted him. The police were notified that night in the middle of the night. Within a few weeks we had uncovered a serial sexual predator. He's now awaiting trial and sentencing, and I give the credit to that faithful pastor here at our church.

Story Number Three

A few years back I was trying to help a married couple piece things back together. The wife began to email me with questions about the counseling. I answered the first one. On the second one, I asked her to wait until our next meeting, suggesting to her that her husband needed to be present to benefit from the conversation. Within a few weeks, she was emailing me love poetry on a nearly daily basis. She claimed to be hearing secret messages from me encoded in not only my sermons but also the things that other people were saying from the platform. I terminated the counseling relationship at the first conclusive sign that things were going wrong, and I eventually encouraged the husband to seek psychological help for his wife. The wife's behavior was compulsive, and we eventually had to ask this family to go to church somewhere else.

Fortunately, I had never been alone with this woman, I had shown my wife every piece of correspondence both ways, and the entire church (among those who learned about the situation) trusted me completely in this situation.

Lessons Learned

1. There is such a thing as a false accusation, and the ramifications of forwarding a false accusation can be devastating for everyone involved.
2. There is such a thing as a genuine accusation, and the ramifications of failing to forward a genuine accusation can be devastating for everyone involved.
3. There is no definitive criterion by which anyone can tell the difference between a false accusation and a genuine accusation upon hearing one.
4. Get it right 9,999 times while getting it wrong once, and some people will allege that you're sitting in your office all day rooting for the perverts to victimize innocent children.
5. Where there is an allegation of criminal activity, the only safe course of action is to report the allegation to the authorities reflexively and without further thought.
6. It is really hard not to cherish the idea of sex offenders roasting in Hell for putting us all through these trials, but even some things that are hard to do are worth doing nonetheless.
7. Where there is no allegation of a crime, you're going to have to seek God's wisdom and use your own judgment. May God have mercy on your soul if you're wrong, because nobody else will.
8. Let us all approach these issues reminding ourselves:
   • My daughter may be a victim someday. If she reached out to somebody, what would I want them to do about it?
   • My son may be falsely accused someday. If he were, what standard would I want people to apply in determining his guilt or innocence before proceeding to destroy his life?

Endorsements: Bill Wagner for President

No, not of the Southern Baptist Convention, although I know that is the post which he is seeking. I think Bill Wagner would make an excellent president of the newly formed Antioch Network of Churches.

1. Wagner is the President of a Pedobaptist theological seminary. The ANC needs somebody at the helm who realizes that THERE IS NO SECONDARY DOCTRINE. By golly, if it ain't primary, it's tertiary.
2. The statement of faith in force at the institution that Wagner leads is a pretty good match for the statement of faith in force over at the Antioch Network of Churches. No doctrinal strangleholds here. I find it hard to imagine a single Christian who couldn't affirm the statement of faith. Can you imagine how much easier Christian unity would be if God hadn't bothered to write SO MUCH scripture? Really, this postcard theology is all we need.
3. Wade Burleson likes him. He'd be a shoe-in over at the ANC.

But, there are a few obstacles that Wagner would have to overcome.

1. According to this interview, Wagner is still confused over the meaning of the Garner motion. To get the full blessing of the ANC folks, he's going to have to swear on a stack of tNIV Bibles that no human being drawing breath could ever be confused as to the meaning of the Garner motion. He'll need to repent of being confused, explain that he really has known all along the plain, simple meaning of the motion, and pass between the hewn carcasses of oxen and rams covenanting to uphold the One Catholic Apostolic meaning of the Garner motion.
2. Wagner's campaign website lists a faculty berth at Golden Gate Baptist Theological Seminary among his "Current Positions," as does his campaign blog (word has it that Wagner also has a campaign manager—do we need to enact McCain-Feingold for campaigns for SBC high office?). Burleson et al will be forced to decry the horrible corruption imminently on the horizon should an agency employee be elected as SBC President (that's a deeply held conviction among our dissenting brethren, you know).

Still, all things considered, campaigning to preside over the Antioch Network of Churches rather than the Southern Baptist Convention would remove the last obstacle, and I'm sure that Wagner would be open to instruction on the first. It is settled in my mind: Wagner for President (ANC).