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2000
BF&M Annuls Work of 1963 Committee 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 |