This article from Associated Baptist Press illustrates why Baptists are having an increasingly difficult time sharing the gospel with a lost world. A gathering of the Baptist State Convention in North Carolina this week voted down a giving plan that would allow churches to designate a portion of their financial support to go to the Cooperative Baptist Fellowship.
I don't find this startling news. After all, "they's kin." What I mean is, I came from good ol' North Carolina (EXCURSIS ALERT! By the way, the UNC basketball regular season tips off on this Saturday - from the moment of this writing, that's just over 27 hours, but who's counting? And to my brother-in-law Andy, I am praying for you in your grief on November 19, the day after UNC plays UK. Andy's a Kentucky fan who will watch his boys wilt under Roy's hand again this year). Now back to Baptist stuff. I understand the mentality. Or at least I think I used to.
Having been raised a Baptist in NC, I was taught that local churches participated voluntarily with state organizations. I was also taught that part of being Baptist was expressing our differences and celebrating our diversity - not about lockstep uniformity. That uniformity now seems to be the highest value among conservative pastors there, not church freedom. The details in the ABP article support my position.
This is deeply troublesome to me, but I really shouldn't be surprised. Baptists have increasingly marginalized themselves over the last few decades as a few tyrants in shepherd's clothing have grappled for power and prestige. The carnage along the side of the path to power includes good men and women, pastors and professors who have served Baptists faithfully for years. That doesn't even count the lay people so disgusted by it all they have either gone to other expressions of Christianity, or left the Church altogether. And who could even reasonably estimate the number of folk Baptists will never reach because of our tainted image as hypocrites and Pharisees. We were so concerned with inerrancy and keeping women in "their place" that we forgot about telling the Good News, never mind acting justly and with mercy. I believe God does not walk with the machine called Southern Baptists, because Southern Baptists have not walked humbly with God.
My fears about the ultimate isolation of fundamentalist Baptists subculture, and their ultimate irrelevance in American culture, were realized when I read that fellow pastor Eric Page of Victory Baptist Church actually said, "It's time for us to pop out a can of spinach and put an end to tolerance." On the convention floor. In public. To other Christians. I'm sorry, but there is no contextualizing that my feeble mind can fabricate to make this an ok statement.
How can any self-respecting Christian say such a thing? To "put an end to tolerance" would be a setback to our society, and to the cause of Christ. Jesus' ways were about respect and grace. Jesus did not call Pastor Page to "follow me and eliminate tolerance." Jesus calls each of us to "follow him" - and there is no further amendment to that call, except to say that in following him we are to live out that Golden Rule.
Ending tolerance sounds antithetical to "loving neighbor as self." Pastor Page and NC Baptists, for the sake of us all, could you please retract that or explain it? Meanwhile, I'll be on my knees asking God's forgiveness of my intolerance of your intolerance.
