Featured Is the SBC really Baptist?

Jon, has your church officially adopted the BF&M too?
Is this something that is common in the denomination? Is it encouraged?

 

Huh? What is the difference between 'accepting' the BF&M and and adopting it as a statement of faith?

 

Tom, did your church have its own statement of faith before there was a BF&M, then replaced it with the BF&M?

It sounds like Jon's church still has its own statement of faith as well as the BF&M being 'accepted'/'affirmed'?

Have I got this straight?

 

There is denominational, and there is denominationalism. I'm wary of the latter.

 

I don't think we had a written statement of faith. I never saw one, at any rate. We finally got around to approving a church constitution and by-laws in the early 1980s. The BF&M was included as reflecting our doctrinal stance in general. We purposely did not deal with eschatology because there was no consensus at the time.

 

Often many churches create their own statement of faith and affirm the BFM, though note they are not bound by this common confession. Thus the BFM acts as a unifying confessional document discussing the parameters of cooperation but not dictating what individual member bodies must believe.

But again, none of the uniquely disqualifies the Southern Baptist Covention from being Baptist.

 

A bit nettlesome of a point, don't you think?

 

Sounds to me like your church does not affirm soul liberty, a key baptist principle. E.Y. Mullins probably couldn't be a member of your church, were he alive today.

 

How do you define term "Soul Liberty?"

My understanding is that local Baptist churches,even those belonging to groups such as SBC/NAB etc still adhere to their own local
churches statement of beliefs?

 

I challenge that soul liberty is a historical baptist distinctive.

 

Challenge away. It goes right along with the priesthood of the believer.

Walter Shurden outlines the Baptist "Four Fragile Freedoms": http://www.ministerscouncil.com/OnLineManual/documents/OutlineShurdensbook.pdf

 

When I first became a Southern Baptist, soul competency was THE key Baptist teaching.

Briefly, it is the idea each person is able to come to faith in Christ for salvation without a human mediator, and is able under the guidance of the Holy Spirit to read and understand the Scripture.

You don't go to church to be told what to believe. You find a church that teaches what you see in the Bible.

Or so we believed.

These days the SBC leadership seems to want us to come to church so they can tell us what to believe.

It is totally not an issue of whether or not we agree with what they teach.

It is totally an issue of whether or not we must have a human mediator to stand between us and God.

Shurden's book is excellent. So is "The Axioms of Religion" by E. Y. Mullins if you want to understand what has changed.

 

the leadership in SBC also trying to steer back towards more "reformed" salvation thinking, Eh?

 

Exactly; I agree with everything you said because it is historical and factual.

And that's why I said that E. Y. Mullins, a towering figure in 20th Century Southern Baptist life, could not be a Southern Baptist today. And Herschel Hobbs probably couldn't, either!

Today's SBC has become increasingly authoritarian, creedal, exclusivist, an in denial of historic Baptist distinctives.

 

No. First of all most Calvinists in the SBC are not reformed in the purest sense. At most a minority of the leadership would claim to be 5-point Calvinists and I haven't read of any effort by them to make that a test of fellowship in the convention. There is a minority on the other side who are concerned (unnecessarily) that an increase in Calvinism within the SBC will result in missions being neglected. But no, there is no plot or grand scheme among SBC leadership to turn the convention into Particular Baptists.

 

I was talking with a friend recently who knows a lot of SBC folk. He said he was saddened when a relatively highly placed young man in a state association that he had just met for the first time said, "Nothing of any importance happened in the SBC before 1989."