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2000 BF&M Annuls Work of 1963 Committee
By Bruce Prescott
Director, Mainstream Oklahoma Baptists

The 1963 BF&M committee chaired by Herschel Hobbs, then pastor of the FBC of OK City, made two significant changes to the 1925 BF&M. First they added a few paragraphs to the preamble to insure that the BF&M would not be used as a binding creed.

Those paragraphs were deleted by the 2000 committee and the convention voted down an amendment to restore them. This alteration is monumental. Herschel Hobbs wrote that the additions to preamble were "as much a part of the overall statement adopted in 1963 as are the various elements of faith found in the body of it. If this be denied or ignored, then the statement becomes a creed." The Baptist Faith and Message, p.12)

The other change that Hobbs' committee made was to add a clause that said the Bible "is the record" of God's revelation and a sentence saying, "The criterion by which the Bible is to be interpreted is Jesus Christ." Both were deleted in the 2000 BF&M and the convention voted down an amendment to restore them.

SBC apologist Jerry Sutton explained the alterations saying, "The 1963 committee was in many ways naive and they permitted neo-orthodox language to be inserted unbeknownst to most of them."

July 2000