July 24, 2000
Texas Baptists Committed sees 'door of opportunity'
___By Mark Wingfield
___& Dan Martin
___CORPUS CHRISTI--Theological concerns over changes to the Southern Baptist Convention's Baptist Faith & Message have created a "door of opportunity" for Texas Baptists to redefine their relationship to the SBC, about 300 participants in the annual convocation of Texas Baptists Committed were told.
___The convocation program explored topics related to the Baptist Faith & Message, both as it was adopted in 1963 and as amended by SBC messengers in June. Those changes--particularly removing a statement that Jesus Christ is the criterion by which Scripture is to be interpreted and inserting a ban on women serving as pastors--have been criticized among moderate Baptists nationwide and among Texas Baptists especially.
___"In recent months, a door of opportunity has been opened. We must seize the day," said Ed Hogan, pastor of Jersey Village Baptist Church in Houston and newly elected treasurer of Texas Baptists Committed. "Never in the last 21 years have we had such an opportunity to define and redefine who we are."
___Though not all speakers called for outright rejection of the SBC's amended doctrinal statement or a redirection of Texas Baptist funding for SBC agencies, both points were made at various times in the meeting. Both in major addresses and in hallway conversations, talk of redirecting Texas funds away from certain SBC agencies and toward Texas causes was a recurring theme.
___"Huge things must happen in Corpus Christi this year," Hogan said in unscripted remarks delivered before an offering was collected. "We simply cannot wait any longer."
___The Baptist General Convention of Texas will hold its annual session in Corpus Christi Oct. 30-31, just blocks away from where the Texas Baptists Committed event was held. At the October meeting, proposals to change the way Texas Baptists relate to and fund the SBC are expected to come forward--if not from the committee process then from the floor of the convention.
___Both Hogan, immediate past second vice president of the BGCT, and David Currie, executive director of Texas Baptists Committed, urged those at the convocation to return to Corpus Christi in October and bring a full contingent of messengers from their churches to vote for budget changes.
___Ironically, some of the most cautious words of the meeting were spoken by the chairman of the BGCT Administrative Committee, the committee that will bring a budget recommendation to the convention.
___There are more questions than answers about what will happen to the BGCT budget, said Mateo Rendon, pastor of Primera Iglesia Bautista in Corpus Christi.
___In a message on the Christology of the Baptist Faith & Message, Rendon largely steered away from comment on differences between the SBC and BGCT, instead focusing on the primacy of Jesus in the believer's life.
___Regardless of what happens in October, "Jesus will be the same," he said.
___The ultimate issue is obedience to Jesus, Rendon said. "If the wind and the waves obey him, Republicans and Democrats ought to obey him. Moderates and fundamentalists ought to obey him. Everyone ought to obey him."
___He used a Spanish idiom to illustrate the influence that walking with Jesus has on a believer's life: "Tell me who you walk with, and I'll tell you who you are."
___The Bible "has the message but is not the messenger," Rendon said. Similarly, he said at another point, "Let's meet not the message but the messenger."
___Bob Newell, pastor of Memorial Drive Baptist Church in Houston, examined the preamble to the Baptist Faith & Message, noting that "preamble" means to "walk before." The preamble to the Baptist Faith & Message is "as significant as a drum major to a band," he said.
___The 1963 Baptist Faith & Message was drafted to avert concerns that Baptists "were about to drift" in their theology, Newell said. But the preamble to the 1963 document was included to allay a related fear that the confession of faith might wrongly be used as a creed, he added.
___The 1963 statement sought to identify points of unity among Baptists, Newell said, while the 2000 statement creates points of division. The 1963 statement intentionally did not spell out every detail of doctrine nor did it try to fix every problem, he said, while the 2000 version is much more specific and tries to fix every area of concern.
___One of the areas where attempted "fixes" were made is the article on the church, which now includes a declaration that "the office of pastor is limited to men." The new document also deleted a reference to church members being "equally responsible" to God.
___These revisions constitute "a dangerous denial of the very nature of the church as we find it in the New Testament," said Hulitt Gloer, professor of homiletics at Baylor University's Truett Seminary.
___Referencing 1 Peter 2:9, which says followers of Jesus Christ are "a royal priesthood," Gloer proclaimed that as priests, "we have equal access to the presence of God and equal opportunity to serve God."
___Baptists "celebrate equal access to the presence of God," he declared. "This is our New Testament birthright ... our Baptist heritage."
___Two other speakers suggested not only that Texas Baptists should reject the recent revisions to the Baptist Faith & Message but should write an entirely new confession of faith.
___At the conclusion of a presentation in which he outlined various theological problems with the revised Baptist Faith & Message, longtime theology professor Bill Hendricks suggested it might be time for a new faith statement.
___"Remembering with appreciation those things that are past, is it time to look to the future in this new millennium by drafting a new confession which is appreciative of the past and its landmarks, which confession will state our doctrinal convictions in contemporary language and give clear indication as to what difference these doctrines make in the practice of our daily living?" Hendricks asked.
___Bill Tillman, professor of Christian ethics at Hardin-Simmons University's Logsdon School of Theology, went a step further, suggesting an entirely new confession of faith might better address moral and ethical issues entirely missing from the Baptist Faith & Message.
___Tillman said he had hoped the SBC revisions would "fill in the gaps" of ethical issues left out of the Baptist Faith & Message in earlier versions. But not only did the newly revised document fail to do that, he said, it created additional problems.
___"Increasingly, the Southern Baptist Convention will promote a system of theological reflection and ethical practice that is more one of bondage than of freedom," he said. "The very nature of the gospel of Jesus Christ will increasingly come into jeopardy, paradoxically at the hands of those who call themselves Baptists."
___Tillman said Texas Baptists should be concerned about the message of the Baptist Faith & Message because?"this is more than a story of how the Baptist Faith & Message saga will end, but what we stand for and act upon ethically."
___The theological system advocated by the SBC "borders on being a modern Gnosticism," he declared. "We are told we will know the truth, but the truth is held only by a select few, the gatekeepers of truth."
___This results in a "gospel of fear and not freedom, which credo is 'God has a terrible plan for your life, and there's nothing you can do about it,'" he said.
___Brad Creed, professor of Christian history at Truett Seminary, spoke about the importance of religious freedom as a Baptist hallmark. He traced the influence of Baptists in shaping the American concept of religious liberty from colonial days to the present, including Baptist influence in gaining passage of the First Amendment to the Constitution.
___This belief in religious liberty for Baptists and for all other people is grounded in Scripture, Creed said. "The Baptist commitment to religious liberty is a Christ-centered commitment."
___Because God does not coerce humans, Baptists historically have understood it is not their place or the government's place to coerce anyone toward faith, he explained. "Our way in the world is not coercion or intimidation but persuasion."
___Baptists today who "depend on the long arm of the law and advocate a Christian nation and want to write prayers for children to parrot in school" have forgotten the freedoms their forebears fought to obtain, he said.
___"We don't have to be the only voice, or even the loudest voice, ... because we have confidence in the power of Jesus Christ," he said.
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