I added a “Baptist” section here a couple of weeks ago. Here I rant about some of the things that are going on in the Southern Baptist Convention that turn my stomach. I also try to highlight some of the god things hapening, like the groups that fight back to maintain both their Southern Baptist identity and their theological integrity. Groups like Baptist Alliance, Cooperative Baptist Fellowship, and supporting institutions like Wake Forest Divinity School, Mercer’s McAfee School of Theology, and other groups attempting to provide balanced, healthy, ethics-centered resources such as The Baptist Center for Ethics, who produce ethicsdaily.com
Southern Baptist Deja Vu
By Mark Monson
They’re doing it again. The Southern Baptist Convention (SBC) is leaving the
greater Baptist community in order to follow a more politically conservative path.
The SBC voted on June 15 to leave the Baptist World Alliance because the BWA has
become “anti-American” and too “liberal”.
http://www.pacpub.com/site/news.cfm?newsid=11965617&BRD=1091&PAG=740&dept_id=226967&rfi=6
The original split that created the SBC occurred back in the 1840’s when the
American Baptists came out with a few mild rebukes against slavery. Pious slave
owners in the South immediately retaliated against this “attack” by pointing out all
the clear biblical approvals of slavery. The southern Baptists then voted to start
their separate group and the SBC was born. During the lead up to the Civil War,
SBC preachers could be counted on to assure slave owners that they were totally in
the right and that abolitionists were the liberal devils threatening the divine
right of a man to keep his “property”. Many SBC preachers went so far as to
invite northern abolitionist clergymen to come down south so they could be properly
lynched.
The SBC today clearly supports the Republican Party and the present administration.
Baptist churches are centers of political organization and SBC leaders lend their
sanction to military campaigns of dubious moral legitimacy.
Some things never change. On the brink of the Civil War, the SBC kept up the moral
support for the slavery regime and a military solution to the slavery issue.
A SBC resolution to the Confederate Congress in support of secession, 1861:
WM. CAREY CRANE,
Senior Secretary of the Southern Baptist Convention.
Report of committee on the state of the country.
We hold this truth to be self-evident–that governments are established for the
security, prosperity, and happiness of the people. When, therefore, any government
is perverted from its proper design, becomes oppressive, and abuses its power, the
people have a right to change it.
As to the States once combined upon this continent, it is now manifest that they can
no longer live together in one confederacy. The Union constituted by our forefathers
was one of coequal, sovereign States. The fanatical spirit of the North has long
been seeking to deprive us of rights and franchises guaranteed by the Constitution,
and after years of persistent aggression they have at last accomplished their
purpose.
In vindication of their sacred rights and honor, in self-defense, and for the
protection of all which is dear to man, the Southern States have practically
asserted the right of seceding from a union so degenerated from that established by
the Constitution, and they have formed for themselves a Government based upon the
principles of the original compact, adopting a charter which secures to each State
its sovereign rights and principles.
This new Government, in thus dissolving former political connections, seeks to
cultivate relations of amity and good will with its late confederates and with all
the world; and they have thrice sent commissioners to Washington with overtures for
peace and for a fair, amicable adjustment of all difficulties.
The Government at Washington has insultingly repelled these reasonable proposals and
now insists upon devastating our land with fire and sword; upon letting loose hordes
of armed soldiery to pillage and desolate the entire South, for the purpose of
forcing the seceded States back into unnatural union or of subjugating them and
holding them as conquered provinces.
While the two sections of the land are thus arrayed against each other, it might
naturally have been hoped that at least the churches of the North would interpose
and protest against this appeal to the sword, this invoking of civil war, this
deluging the whole land in fratricidal blood; but with astonishment and grief we
find churches and pastors at the North breathing out slaughter and clamoring for
sanguinary hostilities with a fierceness which we would have supposed impossible
among the disciples of the Prince of Peace.
In view of such premises this convention can not keep silence. Recognizing the
necessity that the whole moral influence of the people, in whatever capacity or
organization, should be enlisted in aid of the rulers who by their suffrages have
been called to defend the endangered interests of person and property, of honor and
of liberty, it is bound to utter its voice distinctly, decidedly, emphatically. And
your committee recommend, therefore, the subjoined resolutions:
(1) Resolved, That impartial history can not charge upon the South the dissolution
of the Union. She was foremost in advocating and cementing that Union. To that Union
she clung through long years of calumny, injury, and insult. She has never ceased to
raise her warning appeals against the fanaticism which has obstinately and
incessantly warred against that Union.
(2) Resolved, That we most cordially approve of the formation of the Government of
the “Confederate States of America,” and admire and applaud the noble course of that
Government up to the present time.
(3) Resolved, That we will assiduously invoke the Divine direction and favor in
behalf of those who bear rule among us, that they may still exercise the same wise,
prompt, elevated statesmanship which has hitherto characterized their measures; that
their enterprises may be attended with success, and that they may attain a great
reward, not only in seeing these Confederate States prosper under their
administration but in contributing to the progress of the transcendent kingdom of
our Lord Jesus Christ.
(4) Resolved, That we most cordially tender to the President of the “Confederate
States,” to his Cabinet, and to the members of the Congress now convened at
Montgomery the assurances of our sympathy and entire confidence. With them are our
hearts and hearty cooperation.
(5) Resolved, That the lawless reign of terror at the North, the violence committed
upon unoffending citizens, above all the threats uttered to wage upon the South a
warfare of savage barbarity, to devastate our homes and hearths with hosts of
ruffians and felons burning with lust and rapine, ought to excite the horror of all
civilized people. God forbid that we should so far forget the spirit of Jesus as to
suffer malice and vindictiveness to insinuate themselves into our hearts, but every
principle of religion, of patriotism, of humanity calls upon us to pledge our
fortunes and lives in the good work of repelling an invasion designed to destroy
whatever is dear in our heroic traditions, whatever is sweet in our domestic hopes
and enjoyments, whatever is essential to our institutions and our very manhood,
whatever is worth living or dying for.
(6) Resolved, That we do now engage in prayer for our friends, brothers, fathers,
sons, and citizen soldiers who have left their homes to go forth for the defense of
their families and firesides and all which is dearest to the human heart, and we
recommend to the churches represented in this body that they constantly invoke a
holy and merciful God to guard them from the temptations to which they are exposed,
cover their heads in the day of battle, and give victory to their arms.
(7) Resolved, That we will pray for our enemies in the spirit of that Divine Master,
who, when he was reviled, reviled not again, trusting that their pitiless purposes
may be frustrated; that God will grant to them a more politic, a more considerate,
and a more Christian mind; that the fratricidal strife which they have decided upon,
notwithstanding all our commissions and pleas for peace, may be arrested by that
Supreme Power who maketh the wrath of man to praise him, and that thus, through a
divine blessing, the prosperity of these sovereign and once allied States may be
restored under the two Governments to which they now and henceforth respectively
belong.
(8) Resolved, And we do hereby recommend to the churches of the Baptist denomination
in the Southern States to observe the 1st day of June as a day of humiliation,
fasting, and prayer to Almighty God that he may avert any calamities due to our sins
as a people and may look with mercy and favor upon us.
(9) Resolved, That whatever calamities may come upon us, our firm trust and hope are
in God, through the atonement of his Son, and we earnestly beseech the churches
represented in this body, a constituency of six or seven hundred thousand
Christians, that they be fervent and importunate in prayer, not only for the
country, but for the enterprises of the Gospel which have been committed to our
care. In the war of the Revolution and in the war of 1812 the Baptists bated no jot
of heart or hope for the Redeemer’s cause. Their zeal and liberality abounded in
their deepest afflictions. We beseech the churches to cherish the spirit and imitate
the example of this noble army of saints and heroes; to be followers of them who
through faith and patience inherit the promises; to be steadfast, unmovable, always
abounding in the work of the Lord, forasmuch as they know that their labor is not in
vain in the Lord.
(10) Resolved, That these resolutions be communicated to the Congress of the
“Confederate States” at Montgomery, with the signatures of the president and
secretaries of the convention.
RICHARD FULLER, Maryland,
JAMES B. TAYLOR, Virginia,
E. T. WINKLER, South Carolina,
L. W. ALLEN, Kentucky,
WM. CAREY CRANE, Louisiana,
G. H. MARTIN, Mississippi,
BASIL MANLY, Alabama,
J. L. PRITCHARD, North Carolina,
P. H. MELL, Georgia,
R. B. C. HOWELL, Tennessee,
JAMES E. BROOME, Florida,
Committee.
A true copy, as adopted May 13, 1861, at the city of Savannah, Ga.
RICHARD FULLER, President.