One of the guilty pleasures I discovered during my turn in the South was following the Southern Baptist Convention, that huge grumpy quasi-denomination that once bestrode the region like a colossus. It's fallen on hardish times of late, what with baptisms down and membership aging. To gin up institutional revival, SBC president Johnny Hunt last month released a Great Commission Resurgence Declaration (GCRD), which comprised:1) A Commitment to Christ's Lordship; 2) A Commitment to Gospel-Centeredness; 3) A Commitment to the Great Commandments; 4) A Commitment to Biblical Inerrancy and Sufficiency; 5) A Commitment to a Healthy Confessional Center; 6) A Commitment to Biblically Healthy Churches; 7) A Commitment to Sound Biblical Preaching; 8) A Commitment to a Methodological Diversity that is Biblically Informed; 9) A Commitment to a More Effective Convention Structure; and 10) A Commitment to Distinctively Christian Families.Looks like pretty unobjectionable stuff for Southern Baptists, doesn't it? Not so fast. The poison pill is number 9, which turns out to entail permitting individual churches to serve the greater SBC weal by giving directly to institutions they choose to support--not, as traditionally, via the Cooperative Program where state conventions and the Executive Committee get their cut. As a result, the Declaration drew the bitter opposition of the guys who run the state conventions and the head of the Executive Committee.
Being an SBC thing, however, the debate managed to get enmeshed in an ongoing theological war over the influence of resurgent Calvinism in the SBC. In his speech to the Convention meeting in Louisville yesterday, Executive Committee president Morris Chapman tied the GCRD to the Calvinists--who, he suggested, were to blame for the denomination's declining fortunes. The GCRD passed anyway, the with result that a report on changes to be made will be presented to the Convention next year in Orlando. Oklahoma pastor/blogger Wade Burleson held his nose and voted for it because he's a big-tent guy.
Speaking of big tents, the Convention did manage to disfellowship Broadway Baptist Church in Fort Worth, which made so bold as to publish pictures of same-sex couples in its membership directory. On the other hand, it has thus far avoided severing its ties with First Baptist Church, Decatur (Ga.), which had the temerity to call a woman pastor a few years ago--not that it's easy to find Julie Pennington-Russell on the church's website. Ah, Decatur Baptist, down the street from my old home, on whose hallowed softball team I used to play! (Glad the SBC never got wind of that.)
So the hallowed Southern Baptist Convention wants once again to emphasize "A Commitment to Biblical Inerrancy and Sufficiency." While fully supporting their right to this belief (isn't the US Constitution wonderful!), I find it necessary to reject it with every fiber of my rational, feeling human self. Such a belief is utter nonsense and one of the worst scourges of human society (in that it debases thought and the rational, peaceful settlement of disputes). Biblical inerrancy is as ugly, finally, as Aryan supremacy. Even our hallowed constitution is not inerrant; nor is any document.
Isn't "A Commitment to Biblical Inerrancy and Sufficiency" a little out of date?
Biblical inerrancy is bull shit.
These jokers clearly never read the book of Job, which systematically refutes the dominant idea about God's dealings with human beings that is found in much of the other Jewish scriptures.
They have clearly never studied the gospels. Matthew and Luke take a lot from Mark, but they drastically alter significant parts of Mark's gospel. The along came John later to radically alter what is found in all three of the synoptic gospels.
They clearly have not noticed how Paul bastardized the Jewish scriptures by attributing to them views they do not present or hold.
They clearly have not recognized how the pseudo-Pauline authors of 1 & 2 Timothy, Titus, Hebrews, Ephesians, etc. have reversed key elements of what the authentic Paul wrote in his other letters.
Only a really stupid, or uninformed, person could hold to and insist upon such an internally inconsistent theological view as inerrancy.
In addition to these, there are numerous external criticisms of this inerrancy nonsense on stilts.