I’m a blogger so I won’t be so diplomatic about the issues in the article on Ethics Daily today.  They report on a Florida Baptist State newspaper’s slamming of their (EthicsDaily’s) coverage of Al Mohler’s speech at the Southern Baptist Convnetion this year. 

I especially want to comment on this:

“In a chapel address in 2001, not long after that year’s Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, Mohler said not only is it a mistake to say Muslims worship the same God as Jews and Christians, but that Christians and Jews don’t worship the same deity, either.“

I would go so far as to say that Mohler and I don’t worship the same God either.  I would say that as another way of saying “Your God is too small” to Mr. Al Mohler.  A better way of putting it is this:  I would probably find myself more in agreement on theological matters with a peace-seeking, personally humble, loving  Muslim than I would with the Southern Baptists of the Mohler-ilk.  He not only gives a bad name to Southern Baptists,  but to Christians and to people of all theologically-sensitive walks of life.  I can stomach cultural differences and sensitivities and styles of worship and observance much more easily than I can the instances where the primary values of love and care for humanity seem to be “trumped” by the zeal for orthodoxy and self-righteousness.  Mohler represents the worst incarantion in Pharasaic attitude. 

Just click on the above link for yourself and read EthicsDaily’s account and see if you don’t find yourself rolling your eyes at the arrogant blindness Mohler seems to spew everytime he opens his mouth to the press.  I often have this compelling feeling to defend the Southern Baptist name that now seems to be getting shoved back,  by ther present leadership,  into a bygone era that Mohler condemns as “apostate” every chance he gets.  I wish the SBC would just make the break a clean one like they’re already indicating they want to do by changing the name of “Baptist Book Stores” to “Lifeway Christian Stores” and the Baptist Sunday School Board to “Lifeway Christian resources”.  When I drove by SBTS (Southern Baptist Theological Seminary) in Louisville last Wednesday, I noticed that the entrance signs along the road said “Southern Seminary”,  again,  removing Baptist from the name.  So,  tell me,  who is it that needs to “leave the denomination”?  Who,  by all counts, gives every indication that they are ashamed of the name “Baptist”?  I would be , too,  if I look at the Baptist principles they claim as theirs  and then observe their practices.  Nothing Baptist about them.  They are simply jumping aboard the cultural pop-religion bandwagon,  and drawing the circle tight according to the creedal imperatives theirt present day leaders have declared to eclipse those of the proclamation of Jesus as Lord.  Think I feel strongly?