Lifeway “Christian” Resources is an entity of the Southern Baptist Convention. For articles about how truly terrible Lifeway is and how it has turned the Southern Baptist Convention into the world’s largest retailer of false doctrine, click here. Usually, Lifeway’s really bad theology is peddled through it’s retail outlets – Catholic mysticism, New Age, Contemplative Spiritism, Gay propaganda, Word-Faith and NAR teachers, anti-Trinitarianism and Charismaticism.
However, recently Lifeway’s curriculum, which is designed to be sold to churches, has made some terrible doctrinal errors, as its VBS curriculum promoted Modalism last summer. However, its Sunday School curriculum is now beyond the pale bad.
This was sent to us by a prospective Southern Baptist who has finally thrown up their hands in despair, and wiped their hands clean of Lifeway Sunday School curriculum. Their exact comment was…
Our Sunday School class recently covered a lesson from a Lifeway Adult study guide…..It happened that on that particular Sunday….I brought two guests to the class – young Latino adults who are ESCAPING the traps of Roman Catholicism. When we all read the opener to the lesson…Our jaws dropped!!! Why is the SBC using a Roman Catholic priest’s “testimony” as a parallel to how the God-man came to live with us on Earth? Why would the author say the priest preached the “gospel”???? Wouldn’t it have been a FALSE gospel? The priest may have provided some temporal, earthly blessings to those who were suffering leprosy…..But what good was it all…if he helped steer those people right into Hell with Rome’s false gospel? I’m furious…and deeply confused on how this wouldn’t have been corrected prior to thousands of copies being shipped across America to baptist churches.
The person is a “prospective” Southern Baptist because they were slated to soon join the church through the membership process, but are reevaluating their decision in light of this. And they should if it’s not properly addressed by the pastor.
Lifeway’s curriculum says (from the picture above):
One Roman Catholic priest named Damien saw the beauty not only of the island, but also the forgotten people who lived there. Father Damien made Molokai home for sixteen years, choosing to live among the lepers, preach the Gospel, and serve them.”
No. Roman Catholics do not preach the Gospel. This is starkly in contrast to the doctrine espoused in the Southern Baptist Faith and Message (2000) which quite rightly is the Doctrine of Justification by Faith Alone. How on earth this passed theological review is unknown. Lifeway should retract it and apologize.
“Father Damien” was a Roman Catholic priest from Belgium serving the Congregation of the Sacred Hearts of Jesus and Mary. Evangelicals (Congregationalists and Presbyterians) on the island of Molokai vehemently opposed him, calling him a “coarse and dirty man” (source link). He was later canonized by the Vatican as a “saint.”
Southern Baptist pastors, STOP allowing Lifeway in your churches. Southern Baptist church members STOP giving your tithes and offerings until your pastor does HIS JOB and protects the doctrine once for all delivered to the Saints. That is HIS JOB. If your church has Lifeway curriculum, your pastor is NOT doing his job.
Does SOLA FIDE mean NOTHING to you people?
Maranatha.
[Editor’s Note: A reader alerted us to the fact that Trevin Wax (who works for Lifeway) venerated this priest in a re-post from John Ortberg at the Social Gospel Coalition]
