Fundamentalist Southern Baptists have been working tirelessly at domesticating God for more than a quarter century.
The first stage of the domestication process came in the year 2000, when the SBC adopted the 2000 Baptist Faith and Message and officially elevated the Bible above Jesus. They did that because first and foremost, Southern Baptists believe in the Bible and the Bible they believe in is perfect and inerrant -- like God himself. Without the Bible, they say, "we wouldn't know anything about Jesus" and if you could prove that there was a single error in the Bible, "we couldn't know anything for certain about salvation." First and foremost, Southern Baptists puts their faith in the perfection and inerrancy of a book. Without that, they think faith is in vain -- even if a person has faith in Jesus.
So, when Southern Baptists quote Jesus saying, "No man comes to the Father but by me." they think he really meant, "No man comes to the Father but by the Bible and me." In their eyes, if Jesus doesn't receive the blessing and imprimateur of a perfect and inerrant Bible, he's not worthy of worship by a Southern Baptist. That's why Fundamentalist Southern Baptists have been waging war against people like me, who say that the Bible is authoritative -- but not inerrant, for more than a quarter century. In their eyes, we don't give the Bible the esteem and reverence that is its due.
The second stage of the domestication process is being carried out by Holman Bible Publishers, a subsidiary of the publishing arm of the Southern Baptist Convention. At Holman, the SBC has begun bolstering the authority of the Bible by inscribing it with the seal of the U.S. Army, the Air Force, the Navy, or the Marines. Bob Allen, at Ethics Daily, posted a story yesterday that seems to me to reveal that Southern Baptists now think the blessing and imprimateur of a military seal could add weight to the message of the book that they worship.
Either that, or, by emblazening military seals on the Christian religion's holiest book, they are blasphemously demonstrating to the entire world that they view the Almighty God as though he were the domesticated deity of a single nation and/or military tribe.
10 comments:
Nicely put, Bruce. Very nice tie-in with the way Jesus as hermeneutical key (central to the articles on Scripture in 1925 and 1963) was omitted in the 2000 BF&M.
If not an outright worship of the nation's armed might directly, this is, indeed, an attempt to tame Jesus.
Dr. Prescott,
It's been much too long since last we chatted. And, know I agree with our Brother Michael: "Nicely put."
I hope, however, I have not waged war against you, though I am, I suppose, at least in your view, a "Fundamentalist Southern Baptist."
The paradox in your nicely put post, Dr. Prescott, is that while you lament "That's why Fundamentalist Southern Baptists have been waging war against people like me...In their eyes, we don't give the Bible the esteem and reverence that is its due," you quickly draw out your six-gun and shoot me right between the eyes.
You write: "when Southern Baptists [like you] quote Jesus saying, "No man comes to the Father but by me." [You} think he really meant, "No man comes to the Father but by the Bible and me."
As for my view, though I do embrace what is popularly dubbed inerrancy of Scripture-- ever how inconsistent some Believers like yourself appear to evaluate it--I have, to my known conscience, never entertained for one brief moment that Jesus meant come to the "Bible and me." Nor will I.
Contrary to conventional wisdom, all of us Fundamentalists are not squeezed from the same tete.
Grace ever to you, my Brother Dr. Prescott.
With that, I am...
Peter
Bruce,
Just when I think you can't go anymore out there in left field you go further! You really need to get a life!
Tracy Brown wrote me an e-mail to say:
These two instances really did happen to me:
1) In a Sunday school class at a fundamentalist SBC church (Central Baptist Church in Oak Ridge, Tennessee), a member of my Sunday school class read John 1 to our class (the part about the word was with God and the word was God). This person then held up the Bible and said something along the lines of: "This is the Word. This book is God." The person in question had two college degrees---in a subject where you would expect more discernment than this. That was one of my first cues that it was time to flee that church.
2) My second encounter was with a fundamentalist woman (also well educated) on the "Alabama Live!!!" internet religious forum about seven years ago. She was a very abrasive, self-righteous, and incredibly combative woman. Someone brought up the subject with her that "Jesus is the name that is above every name." In response, she then launched into a scalding litany about how that is not true at all. According to her, there is one name that is even higher than Jesus himself, and that is the name "Bible." I just sat there totally dumfounded.
Tracy
Dear Dr. Prescott,
You sly guy, you. You darn well know every Fundamentalist, including me (though I am not a self-professing one, just dubbed one by my Mainstream Brothers like you) could see your two illustrations and raise you two more which substantiate their view.
Anecdotal evidence serves up a tasty dish for emotional persuasion, but we both know its low evidential nutrition, do we not?
Faith today. With that, I am...
Peter
Dear Peter,
If you are really looking for documentary evidence, you might check out the information at these links:
SBC President Deifies Bible
Mainstream Correspondence with Paige Patterson
On Bible Idolatry
Bruce, you know that I agree more with your view concerning the source of our authority and that "inerrancy" is a misleading way to speak of true biblical authority.
But this seems to be a tangent. I thought the real purpose of this post was to point to the further distortion made by these "military Bibles." I don't see how inerrantists could affirm them. I don't see why they wouldn't react as much with horror at this idolatry as the rest of us. Why aren't conservative SBs letting Lifeway know that this marketing ploy is outrageous and won't be tolerated?
Why? Because, as you point out, the SBC has now de-throned Jesus as the interpretive key to Scripture. In the 2000 version of the BF& M, Jesus has to conform to Scripture (squeezed into a box constructed from a non-Christocentric reading of Old and New Testaments), rather than being the hermeneutical lense through which we read Scripture. That turns 400 years of Baptist thought on its head.
It leads to a Crusader's god. It's blasphemous.
Peter Lumpkins, intentionally or not, seems to have taken the discussion on a tangent. Or so it seems to me.
Dear Michael,
Good morning. Me get the thing off subject? That's really funny, my Brother Michael.
Let's see, Dr. Prescott's chronological use of "off-subject" words himself:
"inerrant"
"prove...a single error"
"inerrancy"
"inerrant"
"inerrant"
Off subject? I think, my Michael, you need to read phase one again.
Grace. With that, I am...
Peter
It is scary when a denomination publishes its own version of the Bible. Marketing its own version is even scarier.
John Henson
I don't know if this would qualify as 2a or 2b, but it seems to me that the second thing the SBC did to domesticate God was to produce a Bible that, in the words of Al Mohler, "we can control."
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