More Baptist battles

The Southern Baptist Convention, largest Baptist denomination in the U.S., has huffily taken its marbles and gone home rather than play nice with the Baptist World Alliance which it helped to found in 1905, according to this story from USATODAY. Also here, here, here, and here. (The SBC website, as of 8:00 p.m. this evening, apparently sees no reason to publicize this to its readers, preferring instead to push a legal proposal to seize centralized control of local Baptist institutions while evading financial responsibility for them.)

The vote to leave the worldwide Baptist organization reportedly is in response to a report which

"...complained that some in the alliance had questioned "the truthfulness of Holy Scripture," refused to affirm the necessity of conscious faith in Jesus Christ for salvation, promoted women preachers, criticized the SBC and its foreign mission board and adopted an "anti-American" tone.

The last straw came in 2003, when the alliance accepted as a member the Cooperative Baptist Fellowship, a rival group to the SBC formed by moderates who oppose denominational leaders' conservative policies.

Prior to Tuesday's vote, Paige Patterson, president of Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary in Fort Worth, said the SBC should not give money or endorsement to an organization that includes liberals. (AP via USATODAY)

So much for "God so loved the world." Paige Patterson's God, and the God of the SBC, apparently only loves conservative Americans. Is it any wonder that the rate of baptism in the SBC continues to shrink, when its leaders are this determined to lash it to the mast of a sinking political ship? And when they display more interest in worldly powermongering and politically "punishing" anyone who criticizes them than they do in preaching the Good News of forgiveness, or doing the good works that Jesus advocated? So determined, in other words, to rigidly ossify themselves into ultimate irrelevance?

I guess I forgot to read the part of the Bible where Jesus said that the purpose of his church was to be pro-American. Or pro-capitalist. Or that Caesar -- er, President Bush -- was the leader of the church. Is that somewhere in the Book of Republicans, maybe?

I may disagree with the Cooperative Baptist Fellowship about some things, but at least I'm reasonably sure that the moderate churches that make up their membership would at least be willing to talk with me if I showed up on their doorstep, shaggy hair, doubts and all. And that, not the increasingly Pharisaical Southern Baptist Convention, looks a whole lot more like the true ministry of the Son of Man. You remember, that shaggy-haired guy who ministered to thieves, lepers, criminals, and prostitutes? And chased the crooked moneychangers out of the Temple with a whip in his hand?