ED YOUNG URGES INDEPENDENT BAPTISTS TO JOIN SBC

SBC president Ed Young told the SBC Executive Committee in February that the SBC should invite independent churches of “like mind and theology” to join the SBC.

This comes after an October meeting of SBC leaders and independent Baptists, including Jerry Falwell. Falwell indicated he would always remain independent but said “I praise the Lord for the miracle — and there’s no other way to describe it — of what’s occurred in the Southern Baptist Convention.”

Falwell added: “Of all the people in America to bring in as president of Southeastern (Seminary), they brought in Dr. Paige Patterson. Paige is to the right of me. I mean he is way out there. I never thought I would live to see the day when Liberty Baptist Theological Seminary would be competing with Southeastern for the same students.”

Transformations like the one at Southeastern are happening at the SBC’s other seminaries, Falwell said. “It happening at Southern now. It’s happening at New Orleans. It’s happening everywhere. And what hasn’t happened will.”

This meeting included discussion of a merger with the Baptist Bible Fellowship, the largest of the independent groups which splintered from the SBC under the influence of fundamentalist Texas pastor J. Frank Norris beginning in the 1920s.

Traditional Baptists have long claimed that the so-called “conservative resurgence” is in reality no resurgence at all, but a radical departure from mainstream Baptist thought and an embracing of the radical fundamentalism of J. Frank Norris, rejected during the 1920s by Baptists.

James Hefley, fundamentalist writer of The Truth in Crisis six volume series, admits to this historical tie to Norris in his latest publication, a booklet titled Issues & Effects. Hefley writes on page 5: “The SBC controversy, or ‘battle for the Bible,’ actually began in 1920 at Baylor University when the mercurial J. Frank Norris reported in his church paper that a sociology professor was using a book in his class that implied man evolved from apes.”

It should be noted that the facts were presented to George W. Truett and that he and other Baylor trustees found not “a vestige of truth in the charge...that there is evolution in Baylor."

Young’s invitation and Falwell’s statements raise several tough questions for Texas Baptists to pray about.

One question is if independent Baptist churches join the SBC, thus solidifying the fundamentalists power base in the national convention, will those same churches want to join our state convention? Since each convention is autonomous, do we let them join the BGCT and create a larger fundamentalists movement within Texas?

A second question is if Southwestern Seminary in Fort Worth follows the track record of Southeastern and Southern with a strong fundamentalist president and faculty (and sadly there is no reason to think it won’t except for wishful thinking), then where will our traditional Texas Baptist churches find non fundamentalist trained pastors? With more than 5,000 churches and missions (and we hope many more to be started as a part of Mission Texas), certainly Truett Seminary (scheduled to open this fall at Baylor) cannot train enough for all those churches.

These are tough questions for all of us to commit to prayer.

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