Texas Baptist Forum: Homosexuality & the church

Texas Baptist Forum

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Homosexuality & church

“Extreme disappointment” describes my reaction to your July 13 editorial .

You implied the presence of homosexuals within Broadway Baptist Church was the cause for the Southern Baptist Convention’s action.

I would expect similar action to be taken against a congregation that condoned advocacy of gossiping, back-biting and tattling if the practitioners of such were unrepentant.

Complacency toward sin is intolerable. I would call upon the staff of Broadway to preach against the advocacy of any and all sin and not shy away from any particular sin, just because it might hurt the feelings of a group.

You mentioned the harm done by mean deacons and ministers. Such meanness is not a thing of the past. Just as we should not excuse those indefensible mean practices, neither should the leadership of any church defend or tolerate flagrant sin of any nature.

The church’s error was not their failure to root out homosexuality. Their error was in failure to take a scriptural position when the extent of homosexuality tolerance within their congregation surfaced. Loving the sinner in no way allows us to do anything but hate the sin. God does.

Let them declare to us all that they hate homosexuality; and don’t water down that statement.

Congregations are filled with women who have had abortions, practitioners of abortions, tattlers, back-bitters, gossips, and mean deacons and ministers. Their presence and our God-mandated willingness to forgive them does not require our acceptance of militant in-your-face flaunting of sin.


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Paul Wrightsman

Copperas Cove

 

Open membership?

My friend Fisher Humphreys seems to think that among Baptists there has been a four-century history of the practice of open membership (July 13 ). Open membership is the practice of Baptist churches in which they receive into full membership, without believer’s baptism by immersion, those who have had baptism only as infants, those whose baptism was by pouring or sprinkling, or those who, claiming to be Christians, never have been baptized.

I wrote that John Bunyan made a case in 1672 for open communion and open membership “as a quasi-Baptist or Congrega-tionalist.” The Bedford church was a mixed Baptist (believer’s baptism)-Congregational (infant baptism) church and is even today. Whether Bunyan should be regarded as a Baptist has been debated for three centuries. Particular Baptists did not replicate the Bedford pattern. Some followed Bunyan’s practice of open communion; others followed William Kiffin’s strict communion.

Robert Hall Jr., a major advocate of open communion, writing in 1815, did not mention or advocate open membership. The latter practice began to be adopted by some English Baptist churches, both General and Particular, in the 19th century. Hence, Baptist open membership can be properly identified as a “modern (19th and 20th centuries) development.”

James Leo Garrett Jr.

Fort Worth

 

Speak up. Send letters to P.O. Box 660267, Dallas 75266-0267 or [email protected]. Max is 250 words.

 


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