Stephen Arterburn and Jack Felton wrote a book called Toxic Faith: Experiencing Healing from Painful Spiritual Abuse which should be in the library of every Baptist church. It helps those who have been abused by a form of religion that wounds the soul rather than healing it.
Over the past twenty-five years, Southern Baptists have experienced a lot of abuse at the hands of their pastors. Now that the abusers have purged the denomination of healthy leadership, they are preparing to wed her to the even more rigid and abusive Independent Fundamental Baptists.
For Fundamentalist takeover leaders, this is a prudent decision. After a decade of abuse at the hands of Independent Fundamental Baptists, Southern Baptists will completely forget the moderate servant leaders and wounded healers that were banished from the denomination and will fondly remember the takeover leaders as benevolent dictators.
3 comments:
I know little of the SBC and most of what I know (of their internal politics and struggles) I know from reading your blog. When I first came to the faith, however, I was part of an independent fundamental Baptist church (the "Sword of the Lord" kind). Little love, lots of [unbiblical] rules, and a ton of hypocrisy, there. I have very little experience with Baptist churches outside of this little country church, but it is almost enough to make me never want to be part of one again. Strangely, I find myself in general agreement with the theology (not polity) of many Baptist churches/denominations (insofar as they agree with the Second London Baptist Confession, with which I agree almost completely).
jtr,
I too grew up in an Independent Fundamental Baptist church ("Sword of the Lord" kind.) It was not devoid of love, but the extra-biblical rules and hypocrisy was ample.
Dictatorial, controlling pastors are not good at encouraging healthy discipleship.
If people talk about their encounters with tyranical preachers, why then are they so popular. Those that get out of these churches have the energy and independent spirit to want to think for themselves. I am always amazed when meeting highly educated and mostly reasonable people that follow these tyrants as if they have a hook through their nose. It is spiritual lazyness. When it comes to God they don't want to put the effort into really learning and understanding him. They wish to be spoon fed whatever garbage their preacher dishes out and treat it as if God himself said it. All praise to those that decided to know what they believe and why, instead of taking the easy way out and just passively accepting their beliefs without thought.
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