SBC's Cultural Retreat
By Robert Parham
Excerpt from article by Baptist Center for Ethics' executive director.

Protecting a conservative culture was at the heart of the annual meeting of the Southern Baptist Convention, not an uncommon move when a religious body perceives itself endangered.

With religion editors focusing on the exclusion of women as pastors and preachers arguing about the Bible, one aspect of the meeting received less than adequate commentary.

The real effect of the meeting was to raise the castle wall. From speeches to statements, from motions to resolutions, Southern Baptist fundamentalists retreated into an isolated fortress, pulled up the drawbridge and left many Southern Baptists on the outside of the wall.

The convention began with the president's address on the theme of being ambassadors for Christ, a text about the ministry of reconciliation. Instead of engaging other peoples in the pursuit of reconciliation, Paige Patterson pitched the issue in terms of supporting the home school movement, an educational effort that disengages from the public school system. He backed Liberty University.

He also endorsed the Chicago declaration, a recently adopted statement by conservative evangelicals that confused criticism of their evangelistic method of targeting other peoples of faith with the denial of their religious liberty.

Patterson's minimalist theme of reconciliation was short-lived, however. The president of the SBC Executive Committee, Morris Chapman, launched a mean-spirited attack on an ironic and thoughtful motion to form a committee to work toward "reconciliation and restoration" among the various factions in the denomination.

Chapman argued against reconciliation on the grounds that the SBC had experienced seven consecutive years of all-time high giving to the Cooperative Program and to mission offerings. He claimed the SBC was reaching the big cities of America, only a few days after the SBC backed away from its commitment to send 100,000 missionaries to Chicago and said that only 1,200 would go on missions there.

Having had less than a month to consider the revisions to a time-honored statement of faith and only an hour to "debate" it, Southern Baptists adopted a document that further tightened the security around the castle.

"You don't have a right to believe whatever you want to believe, and still call yourself a Southern Baptist," said the head of the SBC ethics agency, interpreting what the approved statement means.

The president of the North American Mission Board promised the planting of new churches, churches in which the pastors would be men who believed in the new Baptist Faith and Message statement.

The fundamentalist cultural retreat was also reflected in resolutions.

For the first time, the SBC passed a resolution supporting capital punishment, as if the state needed the blessing of the Southern Baptist fundamentalists to pursue the death penalty.

Jerry Falwell warned, "We are about to lose America." He said Baptist churches were needed to help defeat Al Gore in the November presidential elections.

On the closing night, the chief of the SBC ethics agency, Richard Land, predicted that Southern Baptists were at the beginning of a new golden age.

Such rhetorical optimism sounds hollow given the endless warnings of doom from within the SBC. Fundamentalists have wailed about the denial of religious liberties, the gathering cultural storm clouds and the loss of America. Certainly, those outside the castle wall see no golden era. For many, it may be a reign of terror.