Mainstream Baptist leaders credit ‘freedom’ for keeping them Baptist

Source : http://www.abpnews.com/www/1775.article

Mainstream Baptist leaders credit ‘freedom’ for keeping them Baptist
By Marv Knox
Published: February 26, 2007



IRVING, Texas (ABP) -- A refrain of freedom echoed through a Mainstream Baptist Network convocation in suburban Dallas Feb. 23-24. About 80 participants from across the South gathered for the sixth-annual event.


During the session, seven speakers addressed the theme “Why I am still a Baptist.” They mentioned a broad range of issues, but freedom -- and resolve -- provided a common denominator.


“Many folks today are scared of being a Baptist, and [they] run off in fear,” Joe Lewis, pastor of Second Baptist Church in Petersburg, Va., said. “I stopped counting the friends who left.”


In the early 1600s, spiritual pioneers John Smyth and Thomas Helwys “began the Baptist movement demanding freedom,” Lewis said. Citing church historian Walter Shurden, Lewis noted that “four fragile freedoms” -- Bible freedom, soul freedom, church freedom and religious freedom -- are Baptist hallmarks.


After Lewis spoke, Tyrone Pitts recalled that his appreciation for religious freedom and its corollary, the separation of church and state, grew as he worked with other faith groups like the National Council of Churches and the World Council of Churches.


“Others in the ecumenical movement do not have this quality,” Pitts said. He is the general secretary of the Progressive National Baptist Convention, one of four predominantly American-African Baptist bodies.


“We are unified around soul freedom and liberty,” he said. “It was no accident that Martin Luther King was a Baptist, just as it was no accident that other key civil-rights leaders were Baptist ministers.”


A focus on freedom is Baptists’ defining characteristic, agreed Bill Underwood, president of Mercer University in Macon, Ga.


“We are free to think for ourselves, free to read the Scriptures to determine what they say -- free,” Underwood insisted. Although people are accountable to God, no government and no individual has the right to tell them what to believe, he said.


Unfortunately, such a conviction “is becoming somewhat out of fashion,” not just among fundamentalists but also among moderate Baptists, Underwood said. He mentioned the "Baptist Manifesto," drafted in 1997 by a group of “Baptist communitarian” scholars.


The group, influenced by Methodist ethicist Stanley Hauerwas, has said it cannot commend the “unchecked privilege of interpretation” of the Bible. “Who will do the checking?” Underwood asked, noting Hauerwas has advocated “spiritual masters” to regulate correct interpretation.


“Who are the official ‘spiritual masters’?” he asked. “It is right to suggest we exist in community and have a responsibility to the community, but it is wrong to insist the community can declare orthodoxy. It is wrong to deny a place for the individual in community.”


No one has a monopoly on truth, Underwood continued. Besides, he said, sometimes the community is wrong, like the Roman Catholic Church’s past declaration that the sun rotates around the Earth and the Southern Baptist Convention’s endorsement of slavery.


“What truths held today will be proven false?” he asked. “What communitarian Baptists ignore is the need to acknowledge a place for that lonely, prophetic voice -- the voice of dissent.”


In his speech, Bruce Prescott, executive director of Mainstream Oklahoma Baptists, said the historic demand for that freedom is rooted in an understanding of God and creation. The Mainstream movement is composed of so-called moderate Baptists who strive to preserve what they see as traditional Baptist distinctives.


“God did not create androids and robots,” Prescott said. “You cannot coerce someone to love you. God desires everyone to love him, but if love is a free response of faith, then to reject him must also be a possibility. So, if God leaves us to be free in matters of faith and religion, then what right do men have to force them upon others?”


Although some religious conservatives claim otherwise, Jesus advocated the separation of church and state, Prescott insisted. Moreover, Baptist forefathers “would have scoffed at the notion that nationality has anything to do with being Christian. Nations cannot be Christian; only people can be Christian.”


Freedom also manifests itself in the unique nature of Baptist churches, said Suzii Paynter, executive director of the Baptist-affiliated Christian Life Commission in Austin, Texas.


“A group of individuals will have its own character,” she said. “We live in a franchise-oriented culture, where people validate their identity by being like others. Church is not a franchise.”


Instead, molecules make better models for Baptist churches, she said. A molecule is a cluster of cells that attract each other, and they differ in type by the way they form clusters. Similarly, each church is free to cluster with churches and denominations as it sees fit.


“Every molecule is different, despite intense efforts to franchise,” she said. And just as “there should be room for every molecule to be different,” churches should be free.

 

Are you sure about what God thinks rather than what the politicians tell you?

Perhaps you should find out who the real liberals were when the trustees lied to the public about why they fired Dr. Dilday at SWBTS. Tehw local Ft. Worth newspaper reported it. My mailman whom I had begun to share nmy faith in Christ with shut down when he knew about the religious trustees and how they treated Dr. Dilday. He knew Dr. Dilday personally. I also knew Dr. Dilday personally and had many conversations with him in private. Never once did I ever heard him make a negative remark about anyone.

I would call those kind of religious leaders what Henry Blackaby said to many he was speaking to a few years ago. His remark was that many were conservative in doctrine but lived like atheists.

The religious Jews claimed to have the right doctrine and somehow believed that God had favor on them but Jesus called them whitewashed tombs. James talks about them as well in his book as being deluded.

My Bible says who the real liberals are in James 1:22, "But prove yourselves doers of the word, and not merely hearers who delude themselves."

 

That is the test of a real Christian not just a professor.

Some professors are bound for hell.

Mt. 7:21-23, "Not everyone who says to Me, `Lord, Lord,' will enter the kingdom of heaven, but he who does the will of My Father who is in heaven [will enter]. "Many will say to Me on that day, `Lord, Lord, did we not prophesy in Your name, and in Your name cast out demons, and in Your name perform many miracles?' "And then I will declare to them, `I never knew you; depart from Me, you who practice lawlessness.'

 

The Bible teaches in that passage that there are those who claim to be Christians but are not. They appear as a genuine believer but are not what they claim. They are false prophets.

It seems that there are those who claim someone is liberal and is bound for hell and that the conservatives are going to heaven. Nothing could be further from the truth. There are those who claim to be believers in each group but are not. The religious Jews were guilty of that kind of religion.

Jesus was accused of being irreligious by both camps. I would doubt that most anyone who fits exclsuively into one camp is nothing more than a follower of a group rather than knows God. Jesus never fit into any camp and was criticized by both. How can someone follow a grouip and know God at the same time.

If anyone looks at groups that have fallen prey to a man it is often those who claim to be believers who are being misled and trust their leader. Everyone has a leader they follow. Some follow a man while others follow Christ.


We must be careful that we examine the Bible to see if what someone says is true.

For years in a Bible study I would take an idea and run with it often using Bible verses to support my idea and then stop. Almost every time nobody said anything. I would let a few minutes go by and then give them the truth showeing them how important it is ti take scripture in context.

A few years ago several pastors in Arizona spoke out about the unbiblical and unethical practices of the BFA but few listened. I was one of those and the deacons in the church I was pastoring came against me claiming I was anit-Baptist. When they did not listen then we lost all of the church's money except $3,000 which was in the local bank. Some lost nearly a million dollars because they trusted a financial institution with the SBC name on it.

If being Baptist means you always follow the crowd then I want no part of that kind of religion.

 

I don't think any of them are Baptists.

Earlier someone posted about thanking God for the diversity among Baptists. In 1 Cor one finds that spiritual gifts are gifts of grace from God to the church. If you do not have a diversity then you have conformity. By having conformity you are scheduled for death. One does not have to go very far in church history to find those who were conformists and the time they died.

 

I would not expect that you would. The Jews would not have made such a claim either. They thought they were safe because they were secure in being a Jew. However Jesus called them whitewashed tombs. James 1:22 talks about those who are deluded. The tongue is not the proof. The proof is the fruit.