The Tennessean has published a series of essays that describe the significance of the current rift between SBC Conservatives and Fundamentalists.
The editor of the Tennessean views the rift as being between older Conservatives and younger Moderates. He can be forgiven for making that mistake. For decades the divisions in the SBC were between moderates and conservatives, but the moderates left and formed the Cooperative Baptist Fellowship. The moderates who remain in the SBC don't go to SBC Conventions any more. They've dropped out of denominational life and are focusing their attention on their isolated, except in Texas and Virginia, local churches.
The rift is between younger conservatives who lack the mean spiritedness that characterizes fundamentalist Christianity and older fundamentalists. The younger conservatives supported the fundamentalists while they ruthlessly terminated moderate denominational executives, professors, and missionaries but now, as they are being placed in positions of power and groomed for greater responsibilities, they are trying to strike a moderate pose. Either that, or they developed a conscience somewhere along the way and are now having second thoughts about the methods and tactics that brought the fundamentalists to power.
Robert Parham views the rift as a struggle between an "old-guard of fundamentalists" and an emerging "new-wave of fundamentalists." I'm not ready to concede that the "new-wave" has the mean-spiritedness of fundamentalism in them. They are certainly conservatives and not moderates, but some of them do seem to have an "irenic spirit."
Kevin Shrum views the rift as the second phase of a reformation. That he can view this phase as a movement toward "a post-modern future" is but another example of how ill-defined "post-modernism" has become. Post-modernity refers to a world in which authority is fragmented and knowledge is a commodity. The takeover of the Southern Baptist Convention is a movement toward unitary authority and dogmatic knowledge. It has more affinity with the Counter-Reformation of the Spanish Inquisition than with either the Radical Reformation or with English Separatism.
2 comments:
I see this as another power struggle. The "young conservatives" were happy to persecute the "liberal moderates." They haven't lost that antipathy. However, when they are denied positions of power and especially when their strongly held beliefs are deemed outside the continually narrowing boundaries drawn by those clinging to power, they suddenly become defenders of spiritual liberty (theirs, of course).
I would have more confidence in their integrety and concern for religious liberty if they had spoken out in 2003 when traditionaly baptist missionaries were expunged from modern baptist life.
Banditi fighting over the spoils.
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