Posted on 06/14/2018 8:49:49 PM PDT by Maudeen
Well in a way; it is not surprising. Wasn’t Jimmah Carter one of them at one time?
The Baptist leaders already tried to IGNORE the collapsing world around them, and instead spend all their time in the Bible, and now we’re at the point where boys are competing against girls in what was girls athletics, winning in those competitions, and then showering with those same girls - while their boys are now being ACTIVELY RECRUITED by gays, who are brought into the schools under the guise of teaching ‘tolerance’ and ‘anti-bullying’.
I’d say the Baptists should KICK OUT any leader who says that they should stay neutral on these issues and never stick their heads out of the Bible...because the OTHER SIDE certainly has no plans to leave their kids alone.
Speaking of politics and religion. Ever notice each has it’s own map. Politics has the Constitution and religion the Bible. Both IMHO given to us by God. Yet each little group bastardizes both and freaks when they are called out about it. With the Constitution we render unto Ceaser with the Bible we render unto God. We should probably try to keep that straight.
Can’t argue that fact.
“There’s no denying the decline of America’s largest Protestant denomination any longer. The SBC lost almost 78,000 members in the past year...Southern Baptists have now lost a million members since their peak of 16.3 million in 2003.
The denomination is down to its “lowest baptisms since 1946; lowest membership since 1990; lowest worship attendance since 1996,”...
“It’s clear that evangelism and discipleship are waning,” Thom Rainer, president and CEO of LifeWay Christian Resources...
In the American Conservative last week, George Hawley, politics professor at the University of Alabama, suggested the Religious Right was to blame for the decline of evangelical denominations including Southern Baptists....”
Part of the problem with the SBC is too many people in the overhead believe it is a business. No man controls the growth of the SBC because no man can convert any other man to Christ. The Spirit moves, and we don’t control Him!
I’d be happy to see our church withdraw from the SBC. We could still give to missions. But the hand-wringers in the SBC administration are more focused on “success” than on obeying God and preaching His word. A bunch of namby-pamby wimps trying to social justice growth into the SBC rather than measuring our success by our faithfulness!
The bible is great. Now God wants people willing to give it feet!
and Al Gore and Bill Clinton
Yup!
The best Christian ministry, whatever it is, will see contraction and expansion with the events of the times.
Well I think that is pretty much every denomination, however, there are still factions within each denomination that hold to conservative values. If those are the ones you are not including as liberal. But I can’t think of any single denomination that hasn’t been affected. But then again I don’t really know every denomination intimately. Just my opinion based on what I have seen, or should I say read about.
Preach it, brother!
Well said.
LC-MS and WELS are conservative. The day they are not is the day I begin worshipping solo.
I do not believe any earthly system is perfect. The rigid hierarchy of the catholic Church yields problems; the autonomy of Baptist congregations yields problems.
I have seen the abuses that result from either extreme approach.
I read once upon a time in the South a new person in town would be asked, “Are you a Baptist or a Republican?”
Despite that many not really familiar with Christendom in America often characterize Baptists as being conservative, in fact many of them are very leftist - I refuse to abuse the term liberal - politically, and often socially.
I attended a “non-denominational” prep school. Such are functionally a denomination unto themselves, but they tend consistently to be Armenian quasi-Baptist in theology, and many of the students and parents are moderately to very leftist. As a conservative and a Lutheran, I was not well tolerated.
I have known many Baptists, and most of them have been Democrats. My best friend - who attended an SBC seminary - was one such, and his politics and theology became so extremely leftist with time that it ended our decades-long friendship.
Jimmy Carter was/is not an outlier. His superficial social conservatism is merely a veneer over his Cultural Marxism.
I wish you well in that. Such was not my experience. I grew up in both LC-MS and WELS (depending on where we were living).
I served in lay ministry in a LC-MS reputed at Fort Wayne to be very conservative and orthodox, since they had seven native sons graduate from there. (I was supposed to become the eighth.) We had a major university nearby, and they invited a prominent Ph.D. in theology to preach on the occasion of Martin Luther’s 500th birthday.
The sanctuary was packed to overflowing. The sermon - and it was ostensibly a sermon, not a lecture - focused exclusively on “Martin Luther, Freedom Fighter” and did not, as far as I could tell, give any presentation of the Gospel of Jesus Christ, his crucifixion, resurrection, and expiation of our sins.
Luther himself, who admonished all to preach only Christ and him crucified, would have condemned it as heresy. I formally confronted the clergy and board of elders about it later. They rejected any suggestion of impropriety. It ultimately ended my ministry and membership in that congregation.
My parents were charter members there, and my father, an engineer, designed and helped build their first parish hall. In their later years, they did indeed begin worshiping solo. They were both lifelong Lutherans, originally from Wisconsin, and were quite devout.
You cite a relatively poor example.
A theology phd academic is NOT a in the trenches congregational pastor. All of mine have been extremely excellentand biblically sound. Both the current and prior pastors have been military chaplains.
The migration of Southern Baptists and other evangelical Christians to the Republican Party is a relatively recent phenomenon. The story is similar for Catholics.
Most Southern Baptist churches have financial ties to the denomination that forbid them from leaving it.
Who is this “J.D. Greear” (not a household name)?
He is from liberal Durham, NC, and does not use the King James Bible but a current modern translation.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.