JACKSONVILLE, Fla. (ABP) – Between headlines of “Church backing pastor jailed on molestation charges” on Jan. 3 and “Scholar says Christmas as celebration of domesticity a modern invention” on Dec. 22, Associated Baptist Press published 586 news and feature stories in 2011. Some were more memorable than others. Here is our review of some of the year’s top newsmakers.

Rob Bell

—Rob Bell: The Michigan mega-church pastor’s book Love Wins sparked new debate about what the Bible really has to say about hell. Bell caught heck from fellow evangelicals including Southern Seminary President Albert Mohler, who convened a panel March 17 to warn students about the book’s “not just getting a doctrine wrong, but the loss of the gospel.” In June the Southern Baptist Convention responded with a resolution affirming “belief in the biblical teaching on eternal, conscious punishment of the unregenerate in Hell.”

— God (as in “acts of”): If 2010 is remembered as the year of the earthquake in Haiti, 2011 brought a whole smorgasbord of natural disasters.

John LaNoue (2nd from right) and Gary Smith (right) of Texas Baptist Men pray with rescue workers in Japan.

A March 11 earthquake and tsunami in Japan prompted one Baptist leader there to predict the country will remember 3/11 the same way Americans do 9/11. Baptists and others were also called upon to respond to suffering caused by spring tornadoes in the East, South and Joplin, Mo.; summer floods along the Mississippi River; wildfires in Texas; Hurricane Irene in August, drought in East Africa and even a rare east-coast earthquake that damaged buildings including two Baptist churches near the epicenter in Virginia.

— The Bible: 2011 marked the 400th anniversary of the King James Version, commonly known as the “book that changed the world,” but it also included introduction of some newer translations.

400th anniversary of the King James Bible.

The Southern Baptist Convention panned the latest New International Version in a rare resolution that came not from a committee but a messenger at a microphone on the floor. About the same time, five mainline denominations unveiled a new Common English Bible, a common-ground translation intended as a “denomination neutral” Bible for the 21st century.

— Trouble in Mayberry: Mount Airy, N.C., the place that inspired the fictional small town of Mayberry in the long-running “Andy Griffith Show,” made news July 26 when Surry Baptist Association voted to expel Flat Rock Baptist Church for calling a woman to be its pastor. Two other churches resigned their membership in protest. The pastor of First Baptist Church of Mt. Airy, a former association moderator, lamented that controversies that used to divide the Southern Baptist Convention were trickling down to local associations.

Not to be outdone, Daviess-McLean Baptist Association in Owensboro, Ky., kicked out two churches – one for allowing a gay-parent support group to use its building and another for being too Calvinistic, a doctrine admittedly “not heresy” but nonetheless “vastly different” from what a majority of the association’s churches believe.

Bryant Wright, president of the Southern Baptist Convention, center front, meets with members of a coalition of lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender groups including GetEQUAL and Truth Wins Out, who hand delivered a petition to Wright asking the Southern Baptist Convention for an apology for its beliefs regarding the lifestyle of LGBT people. (BP PHOTO/Kent Harville.)

—Sex and the Southern Baptist: Six gay-rights groups traveled to Phoenix in June to hand deliver a petition calling for the Southern Baptist Convention to apologize for its treatment of gays. That didn’t happen, but SBC President Bryant Wright agreed to meet with representatives in a conversation that was open to members of the press. They didn’t agree on much, but in past years, Soulforce protesters were arrested for trespassing if they set foot on grounds of a convention center where Southern Baptists were meeting.

Meanwhile, over at the Cooperative Baptist Fellowship, leaders began planning a [Baptist] Conversation on Sexuality and Covenant next April to clear the air about different ways that churches respond to challenges like gay marriage and heterosexual couples who live together but do not marry.

In North Carolina, Pullen Memorial Baptist Church in Raleigh voted Nov. 20 to cease performing civil marriage ceremonies until gay marriages in the state are legal.

Finally, a couple of prominent Southern Baptist congregations got mixed up in scandals involving sexual abuse by clergy.

After the arrest of a former minister of music in Mississippi Sept. 7 for sex charges involving young boys from incidents alleged to have occurred in the early 1980s, it became known that similar accusations had been made against the minister, John Langworthy, in 1989 while he was on staff of Prestonwood Baptist Church in Dallas. Church leaders, including future SBC President Jack Graham, fired Langworthy but did not notify the police.

Then after the Dec. 14 arrest of former youth minister Chad Foster, authorities wanted to interview seven girls Foster might have abused at Second Baptist Church in Houston, where he worked before moving to another church. That church’s pastor, Ed Young, is also a former SBC president.

SBC leaders Al Mohler and Richard Land both admonished Southern Baptists about their legal and moral obligation to report suspected child abuse in wake of the Penn State sex abuse scandal.

A member of Mohler’s board of trustees, meanwhile, faced questions about his handling of an internal investigation of allegations against Langworthy at Morrison Heights Baptist Church in Clinton, Miss., which elders refused to discuss with police citing clergy-penitent privilege.

—The end of the world as we know it: Radio Bible teacher Harold Camping’s doomsday prediction of May 21 did not materialize. Neither did a revised Rapture forecast of Oct. 21. ABP didn’t carry a story about the 2011 breakup of REM, known for the 1987 hit “It’s the End of the World as We Know It.” But we were there in June when the Southern Baptist Convention, usually known for values closer to the Tea Party than the Democratic Party, passed a resolution calling for “a just and compassionate path to legal status” for undocumented immigrants. Critics of the statement called it “Southern Baptist amnesty.”

–Bob Allen is managing editor of Associated Baptist Press.

FALLS CHURCH, Va. (ABP) – Leaders of the Baptist World Alliance traveled to Nashville, Tenn., Dec. 19 to meet with leaders of the Southern Baptist Convention, a founding member of the BWA that withdrew in 2004 over theological differences.

Initiated by BWA General Secretary Neville Callam, the joint meeting was part of a commitment made in 2004 for continued dialogue between the two groups.

Joining Callam in the BWA delegation were John Upton, current BWA president and executive director of the Baptist General Association of Virginia; George Bullard, general secretary of the North American Baptist Fellowship; and Sam Chaise, general secretary of Canadian Baptist Ministries.

Representing Southern Baptists were SBC President Bryant Wright; Frank Page, president of the SBC Executive Committee; Albert Mohler, president of Southern Baptist Theological Seminary; and Paige Patterson, president of Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary.

Patterson was one of nine members of a BWA Study Committee that in 2004 recommended withdrawal from an organization that “no longer efficiently communicates to the unsaved a crystal clear gospel message that our Lord Jesus Christ is solely sufficient for salvation.”

A BWA press release described the Dec. 19 meeting as cordial, frank and respectful. Participants agreed the discussion was needed not just because of the pledge in 2004 but also “because of the vocation of Christians to live at peace with everyone.”

Bullard said the commitment was made in 2004 for annual meetings between the groups but it was not indicated when they would begin. In an effort to follow up, the BWA Executive Committee authorized Callam to write to the SBC to request a meeting. He received a favorable response, and the first meeting was scheduled for Dec. 19 in the offices of the SBC in Nashville.

Bullard said the meeting was primarily intended to begin a dialogue without strategic or organizational goals and was planned as fellowship and relationship.

“The two teams needed to get to know one another,” Bullard said. “My impression is that we accomplished that goal. It was a very congenial meeting. People were able to talk openly. We did not generate conclusions other than that relating to one another is a positive thing, we need to meet again next year, and we need to offer fraternal invitations to be observers in various meetings of each group.”

Bullard acknowledged that there would be speculation about whether at some point in the future the two organizations might reunite, but that was not the reason for the meeting.

Ironically, Dec. 19 marked the eighth anniversary of a preliminary report of the SBC/BWA Study Committee that found the BWA guilty of having an anti-American tone, encouraging women as pastors and refusing to discuss abortion.

“It is no longer wise stewardship to lend monetary support to an entity whose participants openly oppose many of our most cherished beliefs," read the report, whose members included Morris Chapman (chairman), Jimmy Draper, Tom Elliff, Paul Pressler, Jerry Rankin and Patterson.

Presenting recommendations at the 2004 SBC annual meeting, Patterson claimed that since American Baptist Churches USA, a BWA member, does not expel churches that endorse homosexuality that by continuing to give name and money to the BWA Southern Baptists would tacitly approve of gay marriage. Roy Medley, head of ABC/USA, called Patterson’s statement “completely outrageous.”

After voting to withdraw from the BWA, the SBC – at the time the BWA’s largest financial supporter – reallocated those funds to establish a Global Evangelical Relations office led since 2007 by former SBC President Bobby Welch. In May Welch joined the staff of the Tennessee Baptist Convention while continuing to assist the SBC Executive Committee “in a reduced role.” 

BIRMINGHAM, Ala. (ABP) – Leaders of two large Christian traditions held preliminary conversations Dec. 13-15 to lay groundwork for ecumenical dialogue between Baptists and Pentecostals around the world.

Delegations from the Baptist World Alliance and Pentecostal World Fellowship set guidelines for anticipated multi-year meetings to pursue closer ties between two groups that together represent about one fifth of the world’s Christians.

"The purpose of the dialogue is to examine what it may mean for Baptists and Pentecostals to walk together in step with the Holy Spirit," representatives of the two groups said in a statement issued at Samford University's Beeson Divinity School in Birmingham, Ala. "Our intention is for the dialogue to be holistic in its evaluation of faith and practice."

Future talks tentatively scheduled annually from 2012 through 2014, with findings and recommendations to follow, would explore areas where Baptists and Pentecostals already agree, what the two groups offer to each other and “How do we walk together in the Holy Spirit?”

A new Pew Research Center report on global Christianity estimated there are 279 million Pentecostals around the world. They comprise 4 percent of the world’s population and 12.8 percent of all Christians.

Pentecostals are members of Protestant denominations or independent churches that hold the teaching that all Christians should seek a post-conversion religious experience called the baptism of the Holy Spirit. They believe that people who experience the baptism of the Holy Spirit may receive one or more spiritual gifts, including the abilities to prophesy or utter messages from God, practice physical healing or speak in tongues.

Another 305 million Christians worldwide are defined as “charismatic.” They belong to non-Pentecostal denominations but engage in spiritual practices associated with Pentecostalism, such as speaking or praying in tongues. That includes some Baptists, but in general the denomination teaches that miracles described in the New Testament ceased with the apostles and there is no need for a “second blessing” beyond salvation.

The Pentecostal World Fellowship is a cooperative body of Pentecostal churches and groups worldwide with 56 member organizations. It sponsors a triennial meeting first held in 1947 and in 1961 was named the Pentecostal World Conference.

The Baptist World Alliance has 221 member organizations with 176,000 churches and a combined membership of 41.6 million. That doesn’t include the largest Baptist group, the Southern Baptist Convention, which left the BWA in 2004 over theological differences with some of the more liberal Baptist member bodies in Europe and the United States. A catalyst for the break was the BWA’s acceptance into membership of the Cooperative Baptist Fellowship, a group of disenfranchised former Southern Baptists formed in 1991.

The Pentecostal dialogue team includes both a conservative Southern Baptist who remains active in the Baptist World Alliance, Beeson Divinity School Dean Timothy George, and Curtis Freeman, who directs the Baptist House of Studies at Duke Divinity School, one of 15 theology schools that partner with the Atlanta-based CBF.

The dialogue falls under work of the Baptist World Alliance’s Commission on Doctrine and Christian Unity. It exists to promote greater understanding with other Christian communions about Baptist beliefs such as believer’s baptism and religious liberty, while seeking areas of possible cooperation in areas like missions and evangelism.

BWA General Secretary Neville Callam, who led the BWA delegation, said he "was pleased that the time had arrived in which Baptists and Pentecostals could meet to consider how they might work together in the spirit of Jesus' prayer for the unity of the church."

Callam’s predecessor, Denton Lotz, first proposed dialogue with Pentecostals in 2001. The BWA executive committee authorized Callam in March to identify a small team "to explore the commencement of BWA/Pentecostal bilateral dialogue.” In July Callam presented team members, who in addition to Callam, George and Freeman include Fausto Vasconcelos, BWA director of the mission, evangelism and theological reflection, and Bill Brackney, a professor at Acadia Divinity College in Nova Scotia.

A separate BWA dialogue team held exploratory talks Oct. 30-Nov. 2 with the Ecumenical Patriarchate of Constantinople, "first among equals" in the Eastern Orthodox communion and regarded as the representative and spiritual leader of the world's 300 million Orthodox Christians.

MONROE, La.—Danielle Flintroy described her life as "a complete mess" before arriving at Christian Women's Job Corps.

"I had lost my job, my home and my car," Flintroy said. "But more importantly, I almost lost my faith in God. It was the scariest thing I've ever experienced. I had an 11-year-old son to provide for, and my life was falling apart."

After being presented with the Sybil Bentley Dove Award, Danielle Flintroy speaks to the crowd gathered at the Louisiana Baptist Convention annual meeting at First Baptist Church in Covington.

Flintroy came to Christian Women's Job Corps of Monroe, La., because she wanted to make a step in the right direction, she said. Her favorite part of the program was the support and encouragement from her instructor and classmates.

"All the ladies bonded and became like a family," she said. "A loving family was exactly what I needed, because I felt my own family had turned their backs on me when I need them the most.

"Being in CWJC was like being welcomed into open, loving arms. It was peace in the middle of a raging storm. It was acceptance and guidance when I felt I didn't deserve it."

Woman's Missionary Union launched Christian Women's Job Corps more than 14 years ago to help women change their lives for the better by empowering them with biblical nourishment, a mentor for encouragement and accountability, and training opportunities to help them attain education, gainful employment and self-sufficiency.

Flintroy identifed Tonya Hancock, site coordinator for Monroe, as the most influential person for her in Christian Women's Job Corps.

"I already knew that with Christ all things are possible, but she made me believe it again," Flintroy said. "She made me know that God loves me in spite of myself and that he wants the best for me."

Her mentor, Tracey Bennett, said Flintroy has a kind and compassionate heart that draws her to help those in need or those less fortunate.

"Danielle seeks Jesus Christ in all she does," Bennett observed. "Her relationship with him spills over into all her other relationships. She knows and has experienced a tough and cruel world, but she uses the strength of the Lord to live her life."

In Christian Women's Job Corps, Flintroy learned first aid, CPR and computer skills. She prepared for a GED and learned interview etiquette and life management skills. But she said the most important thing she learned was Jeremiah 29:11—"'For I know the plans I have for you,' declares the LORD, 'plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you hope and a future.'"

"Because of CWJC, I have a much stronger faith and am ready to be a blessing for others in need," Flintroy said. "I give God all the glory for my blessings and triumphs. I can accept any challenges or obstacles with a smile in my heart because it's all in God's plan."

Flintroy is this year's recipient of the Sybil Bentley Dove Award, which is given annually to a current or former CWJC participant who advances herself through life skills, academic development, and faith in God. David George, president of the WMU Foundation, presented her with the award and a grant that accompanies it at the Louisiana Baptist Convention annual meeting at First Baptist Church in Covington.

Currently a resident and volunteer at the Louisiana Baptist Children's Home, Flintroy said her next steps are to find the job God wants her to have, secure housing for her and her son and get certified as a pharmacy technician.

"I am now able to use what I went through to let others know that no matter what you do or where you may end up, God will bring you out of the darkest hole and give you a purpose," she said. "You only have to seek him, and he will reveal his plan for you."

LOUISVILLE, Ky. (ABP) – A Southern Baptist seminary president says Christians who deny the Virgin Birth aren’t really Christians at all.

In a blog commentary reposted annually since it first appeared in 2006, Southern Baptist Theological Seminary President Albert Mohler said Dec. 14 that a person can come to Christ without full knowledge of all that Christians believe, but once aware of the Bible’s teaching cannot reject the Virgin Birth.

The Annunciation by Philippe de Champaigne (1602-1674)

Mohler said the Virgin Birth, mentioned in two of the four Gospels and not at all in the letters of Paul, was one of the first miracles to be discounted by liberal scholars like Catholic theologian Hans Kung and retired Episcopal bishop John Shelby Spong. More recently, he said, some evangelicals have argued that belief in the Virgin Birth isn’t necessary.

New York Times columnist William Kristoff wrote in 2003 that increasing faith in the Virgin Birth “reflects the way American Christianity is becoming less intellectual and more mystical over time.” 

Mohler said toning down the Virgin Birth in order to make Christianity more palatable to non-believers has theological consequences.

“If Jesus was not born of a virgin, who was His father?” he asked “There is no answer that will leave the gospel intact. The Virgin Birth explains how Christ could be both God and man, how He was without sin, and that the entire work of salvation is God’s gracious act. If Jesus was not born of a virgin, He had a human father. If Jesus was not born of a virgin, the Bible teaches a lie.”

Mohler said rejection of the Virgin Birth by Christians is evidence of “doctrinal and spiritual laxity.” He said those who deny or affirm Bible doctrines “only by force of whim” have “surrendered the authority of Scripture… undermined Christ’s nature and nullified the incarnation.”

“This much we know,” Mohler concluded. “All those who find salvation will be saved by the atoning work of Jesus the Christ — the virgin-born Savior. Anything less than this is just not Christianity, whatever it may call itself. A true Christian will not deny the Virgin Birth.”

–Bob Allen is managing editor of Associated Baptist Press.

NASHVILLE, Tenn. (ABP) – A task force appointed to study a possible name change for the Southern Baptist Convention has completed its work and will bring recommendations to the SBC Executive Committee Feb. 20.

The study is available as a pdf file here.

“We are excited to make these recommendations believing that we have come to decisions that will please the Father and greatly strengthen our ability to reach more people with the Gospel of our Lord Jesus Christ,” task force chair Jimmy Draper, former head of LifeWay Christian Resources, said in a statement released through Baptist Press. “From the beginning we have desired only to discern God's will in this matter.”

SBC President Bryant Wright appointed the advisory group without Executive Committee action last fall. Wright, pastor of Johnson Ferry Baptist Church in Marietta, Ga., said he believed the current name is too regional and that a new identity might make the convention more effective in church planting.

Southern Baptists have rejected proposals to rename the convention eight times since 1965. The last was in 2004, when messengers to the convention voted 55 percent to 45 percent against then-President Jack Graham’s suggestion to appoint a committee to study a new name to better reflect the convention’s geographical scope.

Conventional wisdom holds that the “Southern” designation – a holdover from North-South separation prior to the Civil War – is a hindrance to appealing to converts beyond the Bible Belt. A new study by LifeWay Research, however, found that Southern Baptists have a more negative image in areas where they are better known.

Polling by the research arm of the SBC publisher LifeWay Christian Resources found that a majority of Americans – 53 percent – have a favorable impression of Southern Baptists. Forty percent, however, said they have a negative impression, ranking Southern Baptists behind Methodists and Catholics in popularity but ahead of Mormons and Muslims.

Americans in the South (40 percent) and West (44 percent) were found more likely to have an unfavorable opinion than those in the Northeast (34 percent) and Midwest (36 percent).

Americans age 18-29 were least likely to have a somewhat favorable opinion (26 percent) and the most likely to have a very unfavorable opinion (25 percent).

LifeWay Research President Ed Stetzer said many would likely see the research as “a bit of a Roscharch Test – people will see in it what they want to see.” He opened the comments section on his blog to discussion of what the findings might mean.

Ideas ranged from the anti-gay Westboro Baptist Church giving Baptists a bad name to “our stubborn resistance to change/increasing methodological irrelevance.”

“If I were a betting man, I'd say part of it is the impression that Baptists are fighting and ‘against’ things,” Stetzer offered. “Then, I would add that some of it is that Southern Baptists believe things that the world does not like…. You can fix the first part but not the second.”

Draper didn’t offer many hints to what the task force, which has no formal authority and will report to the Executive Committee by invitation of the president, might recommend, but he told Baptist Press that no one on the 19-member task force believed the word “Baptist” should be removed from the convention’s name.

—Bob Allen is managing editor of Associated Baptist Press.

NASHVILLE, Tenn. (ABP) – A task force appointed to study a possible name change for the Southern Baptist Convention has completed its work and will bring recommendations to the SBC Executive Committee Feb. 20.

“We are excited to make these recommendations believing that we have come to decisions that will please the Father and greatly strengthen our ability to reach more people with the Gospel of our Lord Jesus Christ,” task force chair Jimmy Draper, former head of LifeWay Christian Resources, said in a statement released through Baptist Press. “From the beginning we have desired only to discern God's will in this matter.”

SBC President Bryant Wright appointed the advisory group without Executive Committee action last fall. Wright, pastor of Johnson Ferry Baptist Church in Marietta, Ga., said he believed the current name is too regional and that a new identity might make the convention more effective in church planting.

Southern Baptists have rejected proposals to rename the convention eight times since 1965. The last was in 2004, when messengers to the convention voted 55 percent to 45 percent against then-President Jack Graham’s suggestion to appoint a committee to study a new name to better reflect the convention’s geographical scope.

Conventional wisdom holds that the “Southern” designation — a holdover from North-South separation prior to the Civil War — is a hindrance to appealing to converts beyond the Bible Belt. A new study by LifeWay Research, however, found that Southern Baptists have a more negative image in areas where they are better known.

Polling by the research arm of the SBC publisher LifeWay Christian Resources found that a majority of Americans — 53 percent — have a favorable impression of Southern Baptists. Forty percent, however, said they have a negative impression, ranking Southern Baptists behind Methodists and Catholics in popularity but ahead of Mormons and Muslims.

Americans in the South (40 percent) and West (44 percent) were found more likely to have an unfavorable opinion than those in the Northeast (34 percent) and Midwest (36 percent).

Americans age 18-29 were least likely to have a somewhat favorable opinion (26 percent) and the most likely to have a very unfavorable opinion (25 percent).

LifeWay Research President Ed Stetzer said many would likely see the research as “a bit of a Roscharch Test — people will see in it what they want to see.” He opened the comments section on his blog to discussion of what the findings might mean.

Ideas ranged from the anti-gay Westboro Baptist Church giving Baptists a bad name to “our stubborn resistance to change/increasing methodological irrelevance.”

“If I were a betting man, I'd say part of it is the impression that Baptists are fighting and ‘against’ things,” Stetzer offered. “Then, I would add that some of it is that Southern Baptists believe things that the world does not like…. You can fix the first part but not the second.”

Draper didn’t offer many hints to what the task force, which has no formal authority and will report to the Executive Committee by invitation of the president, might recommend, but he told Baptist Press that no one on the 19-member task force believed the word “Baptist” should be removed from the convention’s name.

-30-

Bob Allen is managing editor of Associated Baptist Press.

MINNEAPOLIS (ABP) – A group of evangelical scholars has released a statement labeling an increasingly popular teaching about gender roles a revival of an ancient heresy concerning the nature of God.

Released Nov. 7, “An Evangelical Statement on the Trinity” says a generation of conservative Christian scholars is promoting “subordinationism,” the notion that God the Father is in charge of the Trinity, while Jesus Christ and the Holy Spirit have subordinate roles.

Scholars at the Council for Biblical Manhood and Womanhood often apply Christ’s “eternal submission” to family relationships. Just as the Son is coequal with yet subordinate to the Father, they say, woman is created equal to man but has a subordinate role in the home and church.

While that may not seem important to the average layperson, a collection of scholars on both sides of the gender debate deemed it important enough to issue a corrective.
 
“The doctrine of the Trinity is the foundational doctrine of the Christian faith,” Kevin Giles, author of Jesus and the Father: Modern Evangelicals Reinvent the Doctrine of the Trinity, said in a news release. “No other doctrine is more important. It is 'our' distinctive doctrine of God. If we get this doctrine wrong, we are bound to get other doctrines built on it wrong.”

Drafted by William David Spencer, an adjunct theology professor at Gordon-Conwell Theological Seminary with input from a team of experts, including one-time Baylor professor Millard Erickson and Mimi Haddad of Christians for Biblical Equality, the statement voiced concern “that an ancient mistake was creeping back into conservative Christianity.”

Noting the Bible describes Jesus as “begotten” of the Father, a 4th century cleric named Arius posited there must have been a time when the Son of God did not exist. Jesus, therefore, was not “one” with the Father, but rather subordinate and less than fully divine.

The controversy became so intense that in 325 the Emperor Constantine assembled bishops in present-day Turkey for the First Council of Nicea. It was the first of seven ecumenical councils that over time developed the historic creeds of the Catholic Church. The Nicene Creed described Jesus Christ as “Very God of Very God, begotten, not made, being of one substance with the Father, by whom all things were made.”

The new evangelical statement on the Trinity says if the three persons in the Godhead are not equal in rank, then the Trinity really functions as three gods, ranked first, second and third. “This is more similar to tri-theism than to a Trinity,” the scholars said.

They said the idea that the Godhead is layered in greater and lesser parts has led thinkers over the centuries to conclude that humans are fragmented in the same way, justifying second-class status related to gender or race.

“The Bible never suggests that any one Person of the Trinity has eternal superiority or authority over the others, or that one is in eternal subordination to another,” the scholars said. “The Son’s submission and obedience to the Father were voluntary and related specifically to the time during which he humbled himself, took on human nature, and dwelled among us as a servant.”

The scholars said Christians disagree about God’s intention for gender relationships in the church and home, but the topic “should be included under the doctrine of humanity and not of the Trinity, since God is neither male nor female.”

“No direct and specific analogical correspondence exists between one male and one female in relationship or in church service or all females and all males in relationship or in church service and the perfect love relationships within the monotheistic Godhead of the Trinity,” the statement maintained. “Further, the attempt to ignore the Holy Spirit and forge some sort of corresponding relationship to human gender out of the incarnational, metaphorical designations of ‘father’ and ‘son’ is at best logic fault and at worst heterodox.”

Scholars who maintain that distinctions in masculine and feminine roles are ordained by God as part of the created order and not a result of the Fall say they aren’t the ones tinkering with the Trinity. They say the ones guilty of innovation are feminist theologians, who argue for egalitarian relationships between men and women based on mutual submission among the persons of the Trinity.

—Bob Allen is managing editor of Associated Baptist Press.

Previous related story:

Trinity debate trickles down to gender roles

SAN ANTONIO (ABP) — Ardelle Clemons—a founding board member of Associated Baptist Press, student minister and veteran pastor's wife—died Nov. 26 after a long illness. She was 93.

A graduate of the University of Oklahoma and Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary, she worked as a Baptist student minister at Rice University, Baylor Medical School and Texas Tech University.

Ardelle and Hardy Clemons

For 57 years she was married to Hardy Clemons, a past moderator of the Cooperative Baptist Fellowship. Clemons was former pastor of First Baptist Church in Georgetown, Second Baptist Church in Lubbock and First Baptist Church in Greenville, S.C. He also served several years as executive pastor at Trinity Baptist Church in San Antonio.

In 1990 she joined the first board of directors of Associated Baptist Press, an autonomous news service formed in response to censorship concerns stemming from the firing of two top editors of the Southern Baptist Convention’s denominational news service, Baptist Press. She was the longest-serving member of ABP’s board when she rotated off in 2004. ABP directors established an endowment fund in honor of her and her husband in 2008. 

She is survived by her husband and their daughter, Kay Watt of San Antonio; two grandchildren and one great-grandchild. Her memorial service is scheduled at 11 a.m. Monday, Dec. 5, at Trinity Baptist Church in San Antonio.

In lieu of flowers, the family invites friends to make a contribution in her memory to the Ardelle Clemons Endowment Fund at the Associated Baptist Press, P. O. Box 23769, Jacksonville, Fla., 32241.

Virginia Baptists elect first black president. For the first time in its 188-year history, the predominantly white Baptist General Association of Virginia has an African-American president. Mark Croston was elected to the top spot during the BGAV's annual meeting in Richmond, Va. Croston, pastor of East End Baptist Church in Suffolk, Va., had been serving as first vice president. Messengers at the meeting also agreed to restore ties with Averett University, which were ended in 2005 in a dispute over homosexuality, and adopted a 2012 budget of $12.4 million, a 7 percent reduction from 2011.

American Baptist leader named NCC president-elect. Roy Medley, general secretary of American Baptist Churches USA, was elected president-elect of the National Council of Churches at a meeting of the NCC governing board in Chicago. Medley will lead the ecumenical group representing 45 million people in more than 100,000 local congregations starting Jan. 1, 2014, following a two-year term by Kathryn Mary Lohre, who was installed as president. Medley was executive minister of the American Baptist Churches of New Jersey, and he is a former pastor of First Baptist Church in Trenton, N.J. He is a member of First Baptist Church in Freehold, N.J.

Baptists, Orthodox consider formal dialogue. Teams from the Baptist World Alliance and the ecumenical patriarchate of Constantinople—widely regarded as the spiritual leader of 300 million Orthodox Christians—held exploratory talks recently that could lead to formal dialogue between Baptist and Orthodox Christians internationally. BWA General Secretary Neville Callam led the Baptist delegation, joined by Steven Harmon, adjunct professor of Christian theology at Gardner-Webb University School of Divinity in Boiling Springs, N.C., and Paul Fiddes, professor of systematic theology at Oxford University in the United Kingdom. A decision on whether formal dialogue will take place is expected by March 2012.

ATLANTA (ABP) – Planners of the Nov. 17-19 New Baptist Covenant gatherings were disappointed with attendance but pleased with the diversity and quality of presentations, one of the organizers said Nov. 21.

“We had hoped for a larger attendance,” said David Key, director of the Baptist studies program of Candler School of Theology at Emory. “At the same time we feel like our content with the program was very strong.”

Day of Service participants Daniel Vestal and Colleen Burroughs help spruce up mission church.

Key said planners were disappointed that more people didn’t hear them in person, but thanks to Internet technology video of all the plenary sessions is available on demand at the New Baptist Covenant website. He said more than 1,000 people viewed the site over the weekend, and he encouraged others to do so as well. 

Crowds at Second-Ponce de Leon Baptist Church in Atlanta, host site for sessions broadcast by satellite to eight other venues across the United States, ran about 250. Key said local pastors promised to bring church members but didn’t show up.

About 200 people attended sessions at St. John Missionary Baptist Church in Oklahoma City, an African-American congregation in the city’s northeastern sector. While numbers did not match organizer’s hopes, diversity did. Participants primarily included African-Americans and Anglos, but Hispanics and Native Americans also joined in.

Les Hollon, pastor of Trinity Baptist Church in San Antonio, noted disappointment with the attendance for the events at his church, but he applauded the effort as "a bold experiment."

Organizers in Washington, D.C., commented on low turnout. “The people are not here but it is not our fault,” said Morris Shearin, pastor of Israel Baptist Church in the District of Columbia’s northeast sector. “We have done what we were asked to do.”

Volunteers spread mulch on a playground at Edgewood Church in Atlanta.

In Philadelphia the satellite feed was shown in the 3,000-seat sanctuary of Sharon Baptist Church. Attendance was sparse until the final sessions of the NBC event, which was combined with the annual meeting of the Pennsylvania Eastern Keystone Baptist Association.

Steven Avinger, pastor of Philadelphia’s Greater Saint Matthew Baptist Church, said initiatives like the New Baptist Covenant II help lower racial barriers, but there is “still a lot of work to do.”

To that end, the meeting consisted of two days of worship services followed by community service at all nine locations on Saturday. Key said between 160 and 200 volunteers stuck around for hands-on mission work in Atlanta. “We were very pleased with that.”

Volunteers including Cooperative Baptist Fellowship Coordinator Daniel Vestal and moderator Colleen Burroughs, pitched in at Edgewood Church, an urban church start in east Atlanta. Projects included landscaping, painting and light carpentry to a building donated a year ago by the local Baptist association.

Pastor Nathan Dean, right, tells the story of Edgewood Church to CBF Executive Coordinator Daniel Vestal.

Pastor Nathan Dean said the building was “in pretty rough shape,” but the price was right for the congregation that had up till then been worshipping in a middle school. He said he was encouraged that a building that was built by white Baptists in the 1950s and then turned over to the association when members left the neighborhood due to white flight is now home to a congregation that is 80 percent black and 20 percent Caucasian.

Dean said the church intentionally reaches out both to the homeless, prostitutes and drug addicts and the “post-modern, post-Christian” affluent people moving back through gentrification. “A lot of people think you have to do one or the other, but you can’t do both,” Dean said. Even though they may lack a church background, he said, upwardly mobile young professionals have compassion for folks who are down and out.

Randy Shepley, coordinator for the Atlanta Day of Service and pastor of First Baptist Church in Tucker, Ga., described Edgewood Church as “an oasis of hope” for the community.

SAN ANTONIO—Too often, churches have trailed society at large in terms of embracing racial and ethnic diversity, a multiethnic panel told a regional New Baptist Covenant II gathering in San Antonio.

“I believe what we see on this stage is what our future must look like,” said Victor Rodriguez, pastor of South San Filadelfia Baptist Church in San Antonio, glancing at the other three panelists—another Hispanic, an African-American and an Anglo.

Rodriguez, immediate past president of the Baptist General Convention of Texas, told a group at Trinity Baptist Church in San Antonio that Christians in various ethnic groups “must begin to think of church in different ways.”

Children who grow up attending multiethnic schools and laity who work alongside coworkers from varied cultures often understand racial and ethnic diversity better than the church does, said Jesse Rincones, pastor of Alliance Church, a multiethnic congregation in Lubbock.

“How does the church play catch-up?” he asked.

In part, churches can enter into true partnerships across racial and ethnic lines, he noted. But collaborative partnerships among churches need to be full partnerships of equals, he emphasized.

“In the New Testament, we don’t see junior partners or senior partners. We see partners,” Rincones said.

Love is the hardest thing God commanded, because it forces people to step outside their comfort zones and embrace people who are different, said Michael Brown, pastor of True Vision Church in San Antonio.

“Love does not mean we are blind to race and color or that we deny our cultural differences. Love is not about erasing those things. It is about coming together with our differences and learning from each other,” Brown said.

Unfortunately, what society has learned from Baptists has not always been positive. Too many Baptists have modeled for the world how Christian who disagree with each other fuss and fight, said Les Hollon, pastor of Trinity Baptist Church in San Antonio.

“But we have the opportunity to model what it means to have unity of heart in the midst of racial diversity,” he said. “It will mean we need to see the world as Christ sees the world.”

Churches also can model what it means to be forces for reconciliation and centers for recovery, Hollon added, as well as examples of integrity in a culture that craves them.

In order for churches to model restoration and reconciliation in a culture that fails to understand the power of redemption, Christians must move beyond predetermined notions regarding politics and ideology, Rincones said.

Christian learn how to move beyond barriers when they look ex-offenders, undocumented immigrants and other outcasts as individuals rather than categories, he added.

“We only dream of setting captives free when we know a captive or a captive’s child. We only desire to bind up the broken-hearted when we know someone who is broken-hearted,” he said.

Churches can expand opportunities for understanding by engaging in ministries that push them to cross barriers and experience different cultures, Hollon said.

“We can give people experiences of seeing that which they fear,” he said.