{"id":2647,"date":"2011-09-21T00:13:29","date_gmt":"2011-09-21T06:13:29","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/fromlaw2grace.com\/?p=2647"},"modified":"2011-10-21T10:44:17","modified_gmt":"2011-10-21T16:44:17","slug":"the-radical-redefintion-of-the-sbc-part-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/fromlaw2grace.com\/?p=2647","title":{"rendered":"The Radical Redefintion of the SBC: Part 2"},"content":{"rendered":"

That didn’t take long.\u00a0 What many of us predicted would be the next\u00a0phase in the\u00a0destruction<\/del>\u00a0radical redefinition of the Southern Baptist Convention <\/a>has now begun.\u00a0 With the unilateral\u00a0appointment of a Name Change Task Force by SBC President Bryant Wright, the stage has been set for what will turn out to be one of the most divisive battles that the SBC has ever seen.\u00a0 Not content with taking control of the\u00a0new North American Mission Board, the SBC elites are intent on dismantling the Southern Baptist Convention as we now know it.\u00a0 For those same elites, that is a good thing.\u00a0 For the majority of grassroots Southern Baptists, not so much.\u00a0 So much for the unity that was promised with the passage of the GCR.\u00a0 Funny how real hope and change don’t always match the politician’s rhetoric.<\/p>\n

For anyone following SBC politics in the last two years (or in the last thirty years for that matter), this move should surprise absolutely no one.\u00a0 Bart Barber has accurately described Wright’s actions as an appointment “by fiat.”<\/a>\u00a0 Even though the Executive Committee of the Southern Baptist Convention was apprised of this new Task Force, Bryant Wright has acknowledged that this is an unofficial committee:<\/p>\n

“Obviously, this is not an official committee empowered by a vote of messengers
\nto an SBC annual meeting,” Wright said. “It is a task force I am asking to
\nadvise me as president on whether this is a matter we should bring forward for
\nconvention action.”<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Whether or not the SBC Constitution or Bylaws confer authority upon a President to unilaterally appoint an ad hoc committee without the express approval of messengers in annual meeting is open for debate.\u00a0 However, there can be no doubt that President Wright has broken with past precedent and protocol.\u00a0 Kind of reminds me of another President who has broken just about every protocol in his two years in high office.\u00a0 You would think that something as momentous as changing the name of the Southern Baptist Convention — which has been voted on and rejected almost ten times, the most recent being in 2004 — would require some type of messenger-approved Task Force.\u00a0 If you think that in today’s political climate within the SBC, you would be wrong.<\/p>\n

I asked recently when an “ends justify the means”<\/em> mentality became the primary governing model <\/a>for some within SBC leadership.\u00a0 Some opined this happened\u00a0as early as the Conservative Resurgence while others pegged it within the last several years with the rise of second and third generation CR leaders, particularly following the death of long-time Baptist statesman Adrian Rogers.\u00a0 Whenever it may have started, the last two years — primarily with the GCR\u00a0Task Force, the sealing of records, and parliamentary\u00a0shenanigans at the Orlando meeting — have seen a spike in the use of\u00a0hardball secular-type\u00a0politics within the SBC.<\/p>\n

I am not so naive as to believe that politics — even from 1845 — have not been a part of the Convention.\u00a0 However, what we seem to be witnessing is the use of political tactics that have heretofore been reserved for the world of government.\u00a0 In fact, I would suggest\u00a0that some leaders within the SBC — either knowingly or “accidentally” — are\u00a0using many of the same principles that the sitting President of the United States of America has used and continues to use in his effort to\u00a0batter his political opponents.\u00a0 However, as an inconsistent Calvinist, I would say that I don’t believe in “accidents” or “coincidences.”<\/p>\n

This post is not intended to speak to the merits of a name change.\u00a0 I’ll explore that issue in subsequent posts.\u00a0 For the record, I strongly oppose changing the name of the Southern Baptist Convention.\u00a0 If you thought I had strong words for the so-called Great Commission Resurgence, you ain’t seen nothing yet!<\/p>\n

Some will say that this is much ado about nothing.\u00a0 Many will argue that what President Wright has done is perfectly acceptable (although if Jimmy Allen were to have made a similar unilateral\u00a0move circa 1978, all h*** would have broken loose.)\u00a0 A few will\u00a0opine the responses of some bloggers (including mine)\u00a0are nothing more than overreactions<\/a>\u00a0to a perfectly reasonable move by Bryant Wright.<\/p>\n

That may all be well and good, but when\u00a0cooperating conservative Southern Baptists see\u00a0the radical (i.e., the opposite of conservative) steps that the ruling elites\u00a0want to implement, steps which many\u00a0believe will lead to the dismantling of the Southern Baptist Convention, then we cannot be silent.\u00a0 Indeed,\u00a0before it is too late, we\u00a0have a moral obligation to “stand athwart history yelling STOP!”\u00a0<\/em><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

That didn’t take long.\u00a0 What many of us predicted would be the next\u00a0phase in the\u00a0destruction\u00a0radical redefinition of the Southern Baptist Convention has now begun.\u00a0 With the unilateral\u00a0appointment of a Name Change Task Force by SBC President Bryant Wright, the stage has been set for what will turn out to be one of the most divisive…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[24,34,35,37],"tags":[63,1243,183,1365,433,434,3383,1364,1363,3391,3392,868,3393],"class_list":["post-2647","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-great-commission-resurgence","category-politics","category-religion","category-southern-baptist-convention","tag-adrian-rogers","tag-bart-barber","tag-bryant-wright","tag-ends-justify-the-means","tag-gcr","tag-gcrtf","tag-great-commission-resurgence","tag-hardball-politics","tag-name-change","tag-politics","tag-religion","tag-sbc","tag-southern-baptist-convention"],"aioseo_notices":[],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p1LP7G-GH","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/fromlaw2grace.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2647","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/fromlaw2grace.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/fromlaw2grace.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/fromlaw2grace.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/fromlaw2grace.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=2647"}],"version-history":[{"count":12,"href":"https:\/\/fromlaw2grace.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2647\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2808,"href":"https:\/\/fromlaw2grace.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2647\/revisions\/2808"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/fromlaw2grace.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2647"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/fromlaw2grace.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2647"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/fromlaw2grace.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2647"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}