Campolo: Opposition to women preachers evidence of demonic influence – (BP)

“The intemperance and unkindness of his tone pale in comparison to the gravity of his characterization as “evil” and “sinful” those who take what they believe to be a biblical position on the issue of female pastors. I presume that to his mind, the majority of Christians of all ages, who have held to the teaching of the Scripture on this topic, is evil as well. Southern Baptists have plainly stated what we believe New Testament teaching on the issue to be. For that, we have no apologies to offer Mr. Campolo.”

I know they don;t have apologies. They’re absolutely convinced that they are right. They probably were as well when they split from the Baptist Church over slavery. There’s a “progressive” and “Biblical” denomination for ya’.

R. Albert Mohler Jr., president of Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, said to Baptist Press that Campolo’s comments show how far out of step he is with Southern Baptists.

“Unfortunately, Dr. Campolo is a sociologist rather than a theologian. His venom toward the Southern Baptist Convention and his advocacy of liberal positions on social and moral issues puts him in no position to judge the SBC or its institutions,” said Mohler.

“Venom”, Mohler calls it. More like rebuke of a denomination that has completely abandoned its witness to peace (it USED to have Social Ministry Commissions, participate in the Baptist Peace Alliance, and have people in its ranks who were witness to a healthy and wholistic Biblical message. No more) and by jumping into bed with the Bush administration, harking back to the days whenb “men were men” and resisting the gifts of women in ministry, and highlighting doctrinaire prudes like Mohler as examples of “Biblical purity”, whose clueless out of touch with life theology is an affront to the relveance of Christianity in the eyes of the world. Mohler is to theology as Bush is to politics — illiterate on the heart of the law, and a keen manipulator of “choice phrases”. Campolo also actually DOES ministry as well as preach about it.

“Sociologist rather than a theologian” whose “advocacy of liberal positions on social and moral issues puts him in no position to judge the SBC or its institutions,” said Mohler is typical of Mohler’s complete cluelessness about the socail dimensions of the gospel. I thank God that I completed my studies at Southern before MOhler’s crew took over and removed theological education from that Seminary and replaced it with right wing talking points. Clarence Jordan and Gordon Cosby went on from Southern Seminary to begin society-shaking social based ministries that are but a distant echo of the past at Southern now. I sit at the feet of theologians like Campolo who did much to awken me to many of the Biblical themes that dominate that same Bible that Mohler claims to study and apparently find no signs of such “liberal” things. I guess he reads that “American Bible” that has been pre-prepared by cutting out all of the more “non-status-quo-promoting” passages. The theology of the Mohler-ilk is indeed barren and lacking.

I just noticed as I left that site of the Southern Baptist News agencies, that they have a banner that says “Election 2004: A Christian’s Civic Duty”. Yeah, they know the bile they’ve been pumping from the pulpits and who they support; well THIS Christian sees it as his duty as well: to get this instrument of EVIL out of the White House so he can go and NOT show up for his next responsibility, whatever that might be. It’s not the liberal media that they should be afraid of; it’s their own experience of being so “blinded by the right” that they have been dupoed into abandoning the gospel with which they have been entrusted, and sold it for a mess of “prosperity theology” and joined their spirituality to an unholyu alliance with the administration of darkness. I’m not just being polemic here. Bush’s crew is leading us into darkness; into evil unlike anything the US has seen since dropping the bomb, and if they’re not stopped, they go one up on that one as well.