“Earnest Attention is Requested for this Paper…We are going downhill at breakneck speed.” – Spurgeon, The Downgrade Controversy I
Who would have thought that a Democratic congressional staffer, if given control of the Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission, would try to liberalize the SBC?
Just kidding. Everyone should have seen that coming. The man is a Democrat.
Track with me for a minute and get the big picture. I’m running off to do pastor things for the rest of the day, but I felt it important to put down my thoughts considering the ERLC conference going on currently that really is a watershed moment in the SBC.
THE BIG PICTURE
Five years ago, Southern Baptists uniformly believed that the desire to be sodomized or to sodomize others was a sin, whether or not it was acted upon. Homosexual desire, like adulterous desire, was presumed by almost everyone in the nation’s largest Protestant denomination to be a sin in and of itself.
However, in 2019, many Southern Baptists and most SBC leaders do not believe Same-Sex Attraction (SSA) is a sin unless acted upon. They are trotting out homosexual-oriented gays and lesbians like Sam Allberry and Jackie Hill Perry to teach us about human sexuality, even though God has not changed their natures through regeneration. In fact, it is presumed by many that the Holy Spirit will not change the hearts of homosexuals and make them straight through sanctification.
Two years ago, Southern Baptists were uniformly convinced that we should judge one another by the content of our character and not the color of our skin. We rejected identity politics that presume things about people by their melanin count. Southern Baptists had already repudiated its slavery-stained past umpteen-hundred times and already elected its first black denominational president.
However, in 2019, Southern Baptists adopted a resolution promoting Critical Race Theory. Their seminaries have started Affirmative Action programs. Their seminaries are teaching the works of Black Liberation theologian, James Cone. Their seminaries are doing Malcolm X “read-ins.” Their seminaries are teaching Critical Race Theory, as demonstrated in their class notes.
One year ago, it was the presumed position of the SBC that women should not preach, especially not to men, and especially not during the Lord’s Day gathering. It was taken for granted – as a resolved issue – that Southern Baptists were confessionally complementarian, believing that these were roles assigned to men, with different roles assigned to women.
Today, in 2019, a woman just preached to hundreds upon hundreds of Southern Baptist pastors. She rebuked complementarianism as the source of abuse and openly denied that complementarianism is tied to Scriptural inerrancy. In fact, she argued that egalitarians could affirm inerrancy, something that doesn’t actually happen in real life. Nonetheless, the crowd of Southern Baptists applauded wildly.
Combined with the news that the Village Church’s Jen Wilkins just openly endorsed female pastors on stage at Southeastern Seminary Chapel, something written about at Reformation Charlotte, it’s safe to say that the SBC is now an egalitarian denomination.
That’s right, the SBC is now functionally – from the top down – a fully egalitarian denomination. Watch this change in SBC thinking change as quickly in the next 24 months as it changed on sexuality and gender.
A SUMMARY OF HOW THIS WAS DONE
2014: ERLC hosted the infamous “Breaking Bread Conference” with “gay Christian leaders.”
At this conference, written about by the Wall Street Journal which described the SBC’s “softening tone” and “evolving positions” on homosexuality, Russell Moore legitimized Same-Sex Attraction as a non-sin if unacted upon fundamentally changing the way SBC views human sexuality and sin nature.
Mohler repudiated reparative therapy, and it ushered in the belief that sexual orientation could not be changed by God. That one conference changed everything. It’s now okay to be gay in the SBC, so long as you keep it in your pants.
2018: ERLC hosted the “MLK50” conference.
Russell Moore legitimized Critical Race Theory ideas of White Privilege, White Guilt, and repudiated “color blindness.” The audience was shamed for being white. Promoting Identity Politics and Cultural Marxism, the conference essentially changed the way the SBC views racial reconciliation and abandoned Gospel-based forgiveness for reparation-based forgiveness.
2019: ERLC hosts the “Caring Well Conference.
This event is nothing but a conference designed to promote Intersectionality and feminism under the thin guise of supporting abuse victims. It is nothing less than the #MeToo Movement in a clerical collar.
Russell Moore trotted onto stage Beth Moore, who denounced complementarianism as the cause of abuse and defended egalitarianism as faithful to the inerrancy of Scripture, fundamentally solidifying a feminist-way-forward for women in church leadership. The crowd applauded.
How Quickly Things Change
Sexuality. Race. Gender.
All three of these things have vastly changed in the perspective of Southern Baptists in just the last five years.
Figure it out. The ERLC is the Trojan Horse of the SBC, and Russell Moore is Odysseus.
Take a step back and look at the big picture. Look at what has happened. Look at who is doing it. He is a Democrat, and he is not on our team.
