Southern Baptists Then and Now

The Southern Baptist Convention has been in the national news (again) this month, and I am reflecting here upon that denomination with which I was directly connected for sixty years. 

The Southern Baptist Convention (SBC) was formed in 1845 at a gathering in Augusta, Georgia. It was founded by Baptists who disagreed with the antislavery attitudes and activities of Baptists in the North.

In 1967, the SBC became the largest Protestant denomination in the U.S., surpassing the Methodist Church. Its peak membership of around 16,300,000 was reached in 2006.

I began attending an SBC church in 1945, exactly 100 years after its founding. I didn’t know anything about the SBC’s beginning for a long time, and I wasn’t happy when I finally learned about the reason it was organized.

Still, I was happy to be a Southern Baptist during the ten years I attended the SBC church in my northwest Missouri hometown. I was happy with the vibrancy of the SBC as I knew it in the 1950s and remember well the nationwide membership drive for “a million more in ’54.”

And I was happy to graduate from two Southern Baptist colleges in my home state (Southwest Baptist and William Jewell)—and then go on to The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary (SBTS) in Louisville, Kentucky.

During my years as an undergraduate and then as a graduate student at SBTS (1959~66), I was happy to serve as pastor of two small-town Southern Baptist churches in Kentucky, Ekron BC (1959~63) and Clay City BC (1964-65).

Further, June and I were happy to be appointed in 1966 as SBC missionaries to Japan, and during our 38 years there we greatly appreciated the support of SBC churches through the Cooperative Program and the Lottie Moon Christmas Offering.  

A strong shift to the right in the SBC began in 1980. As a result, I increasingly became an embarrassed Southern Baptist,** and in the 1980s and early 1990s many respected SB professors and pastors, including some close friends, left the SBC.

Disgruntled Southern Baptists formed the Alliance of Baptists in 1987 and the Cooperative Baptist Fellowship in 1991. One of the co-founders of the former was Dr. C. Welton Gaddy, who died on June 7 at the age of 81.

Gaddy and I were graduate students at SBTS at the same time, but I didn’t know him well (he was three years younger than I). But I remember him as a bright, talented young man.

The sub-heading of a June 16 New York Times article about Gaddy states, “He started out in the Southern Baptist Convention, but when that group took a sharp conservative turn he became a voice for tolerance and diversity.”

Gaddy was known nationwide because of serving as president of the prestigious Interfaith Alliance from 1997 to 2014. Had it not been for that “sharp conservative turn” in the SBC, he could have served in that position as a Southern Baptist.

The 2023 annual meeting of the SBC was held earlier this month, and there was much that needed attention, such as last year’s half-million decline in membership. (Unlike “a million more in ’54” they could have talked about “why so few in ’22?”.)

But the action that garnered the most interest in the news media was the SBC’s renewed objection to female pastors. Rick Warren, the retired pastor of Saddleback Church in California, made an appeal for that megachurch to be restored to membership in the SBC.

Not only was Warren’s appeal rejected, opposition to female pastors even intensified. On June 22, The Washington Post published an opinion piece by Warren. It was titled “Expulsion of female pastors will only speed the Southern Baptists’ decline.”

The nationally known SB pastor remarked that the votes at this year’s annual meeting “helped ensure that the once great SBC will be known as the Shrinking Baptist Convention.”

Even though I’m glad not to be a Southern Baptist now, I still am sad because of the recent decline in the SBC and the likelihood that there will be even greater decline in the decade ahead because of its stance on women pastors—as well as because of its being a hotbed for the MAGA Movement.

_____

** In my book Fed Up with Fundamentalism, first published in 2007, I included a short section titled “An Embarrassed Southern Baptist” (see p. 5 in the revised/updated 2020 edition).

Why are Teenage Girls “Not Okay”?

Soon after posting my February 16 blog article in which I referred to Diana Butler Bass, I read Bass’s latest newsletter on her Substack blog called The Cottage (which has 32,000 subscribers!) It was partly about teenage girls, which hit home with me. 

Image from Bass's newsletter

Natalie, my youngest granddaughter, turned 13 that very day. I first mentioned her in the blog post I made on February 19, 2010, three days after her birth, and I will probably refer to that article again in an upcoming blog post.

Naomi, Natalie’s sister, is celebrating her 19^th birthday today, so the youngest two of my five granddaughters are both teenagers. They have been, and are, a great delight to June and me. 

“The Girls Are Not Okay” is the title of Bass’s newsletter (click here to read it). Bass was not writing about all girls, and I am deeply grateful that she was not writing about girls such as my granddaughters, who both seem to be well-adjusted young women. But sadly, many girls are “not okay.”

Bass’s article begins by referring to the new study of USAmerica’s teens released by the Center for Disease Control’s Youth Rick Behavior Survey (YRBS), and she reports the findings were “stark and frightening.” She writes that “the crisis is particularly urgent among teenage girls.”*

The YRBS report states that according to the data, “teen girls are confronting the highest levels of sexual violence, sadness, and hopelessness they have ever reported to YRBS.” (A summary of the YRBS report can be found here.)

Interestingly, Bass seeks to link the malaise of teenage girls to an aspect of contemporary society that would not at first glance be considered a cause of that dis-ease.

“White Christian Nationalism” is part of the problem, according to Bass. She refers to “A Christian Nation? Understanding the Threat of Christian Nationalism to American Democracy and Culture,” a study released by Public Religion Research Institute (PRRI) on February 8 (see here).

That study indicates that White Christian Nationalists, by and large, “believe women must submit to men” and that “society is diminished when women have more opportunities to work outside of the home.” These ideas reflect a belief in “complementarianism,” a widely held view by evangelical Christians.

Bass (who celebrated her 64^th birthday last Sunday) states, “There is little doubt among historians that second wave feminism of the 1970s improved the lives of women and girls in terms of education, health, work, finances, and overall equality.”

She mentions the significance of the 1974 book All We’re Meant to Be: A Biblical Approach to Women’s Liberation, authored by Letha Scanzoni and Nancy Hardesty. As Bass says, that book “caused a sensation in evangelical churches and theological circles.”

June and I, along with many other progressive evangelicals, read that book with much appreciation during the mid-1970s. But a decade later, conservative evangelical opposition had grown to the extent that an organization to oppose the emphasis on gender equality was formed.

That organization called The Council on Biblical Manhood and Womanhood was founded in 1987.** That group was the result of anti-equality backlash, and it forwarded the position of “complementarianism.”

While, of course, there are several other important reasons why so many teenage girls are not okay today, I think that Bass is right in declaring that “evangelical theology” with its emphasis on complementarianism for a generation now “bears a significant part of the blame.”

As Bass gladly notes, formerly prominent Southern Baptist Convention (SBC) leader Russell Moore ten days ago now posted “a somewhat repentant editorial against complementarianism” (see here).

Unfortunately, though, the SBC continues to support male supremacy. Just two days ago Religious News Service reported that “Southern Baptists oust Rick Warren’s Saddleback Church for naming a female pastor.” That’s a bad sign for teenage girls in the nation’s largest Protestant denomination.

 
Strong egalitarian homes with nurturing parents is one of the most important keys to rearing teenage girls who are okay. I am truly grateful that my teenage granddaughters have such a home—and have also been strongly supported by their egalitarian American and Japanese grandmothers.

_____

* Not long after reading Bass’s newsletter, I read “American teens are unwell because American society is unwell,” a Feb. 15 opinion piece on The Washington Post website. It was directly related to the same YRBS report. And then on the morning of Feb. 17, the WaPo posted “The crisis in American girlhood,” another opinion piece regarding the same report.

** In “Fed Up With Fundamentalism’s View of Women,” the eighth chapter of my book Fed Up with Fundamentalism (2007, 2020), I wrote about the founding and influence of this organization among “fundamentalists” (see pp. 240~2). 

Have the Fundamentalists Won?

 Most preachers would be pleased if one of their sermons was remembered for 100 days. But Harry Emerson Fosdick preached a sermon 100 years ago that is still remembered today. That sermon delivered on May 21, 1922, was titled “Shall the Fundamentalists Win?”* 

Harry Emerson Fosdick (1878~1969) was, in the estimation of Martin Luther King, Jr., “the greatest preacher of the twentieth century.” He was also one of the first vocal opponents of Christian fundamentalism—and was, consequently, a primary target of the fundamentalists.

In 1921, and less than a year before his renowned May 1922 sermon, Fosdick was the guest preacher at missionary conferences in China and in Karuizawa, Japan. It was an eye-opening experience for him.

In The Living of These Days, Fosdick’s autobiography published when he was 78, he wrote:

It was one of the most informing and revealing experiences I ever had. For one thing, I saw fundamentalism for the first time in its full intensity. The missionary community was split wide open. On one side, some of the largest personalities and most intelligent views one could meet anywhere; on the other, such narrowness and obscurantism as seemed downright incredible.

In “Shall the Fundamentalists Win? Fosdick discussed briefly four of what the fundamentalists considered essential (=fundamental) to the Christian religion: the virgin birth of Jesus, the inerrancy of the Bible, the substitutionary atonement of Jesus, and Jesus’ literal second coming.

However, while he did not agree with the fundamentalists on those points of doctrine, Fosdick’s main criticism was not their doctrinal beliefs as such but their intolerance for those Christians, such as him, who espoused alternative interpretations of Christianity.

He emphasized, “We must be able to think our modern life clear through in Christian terms, and to do that we also must be able to think our Christian faith clear through in modern terms.”

Fosdick continued, “Now the people in this generation who are trying to do this are the liberals, and the Fundamentalists are out on a campaign to shut against them the doors of the Christian fellowship.”

So, this was the pivotal question, “Shall they be allowed to succeed?”

Fosdick’s answer to his question was of course in the negative, and he confidently concluded: “I do not believe for one moment that the Fundamentalists are going to succeed.”

But have the fundamentalists won? This month, various Christian writers have reflected on Fosdick’s 100-year-old sermon, and some have concluded that, indeed, the fundamentalists have won.

For example, James Lupfer, a Florida-based journalist, wrote, “100 years later, Fosdick’s question, ‘Shall the fundamentalists win?’ still echoes.” He concludes in that May 20 article published by Religion News Service, “The answer, improbable at the time, was, ‘Yes, they shall.’”

More importantly, Diana Butler Bass (b. 1959, ten years before Fosdick’s death), a trustworthy American historian of Christianity, posted four essays between April 29 and May 20 regarding Fosdick’s 5/1922 sermon.

The subtitle of the first one is, “A Century After the Question: They Have.”

Near the end of Bass’s fourth essay, she quotes Fosdick’s confident assertion about the fundamentalists failing and then concludes, “I confess that I do not share his certainty. I do not know if they will ultimately win, but they are—right now—stronger than ever.”

But I disagree with Lupfer and Bass and others who agree with them regarding the fundamentalists having won.

True, fundamentalists, now generally known by the label “conservative evangelicals,” have gained and wielded considerable political power and have been victorious in various culture war battles since 1980, but that is not what Fosdick was dealing with in his sermon.

(And it can be credibly argued that the Republican Party has “won” by using conservative evangelicals far more than the latter have “won” by their influence upon the GOP.)

Certainly, conservative evangelicals have “won” in some Christian denominations—such as the Southern Baptist Convention, which did succeed in dispelling moderates/progressives (such as I).

Most of the respected and influential Christian spokespersons cited in public media, though, are not conservative evangelicals (=fundamentalists). The latter are most often described somewhat disdainfully.

To paraphrase Fosdick, “I do not believe for one moment that the fundamentalists have succeeded.”

_____

* Fosdick’s sermon in its entirety can be found at this website.

** For further consideration of this topic, I recommend the detailed essay “Did the Fundamentalists Win?” posted on May 17 by my friend Brian Kaylor and his colleague Beau Underwood. And for more about Fosdick and Riverside Church (where he was pastor from 1925~45), see my 10/5/15 blog post.

Leaving Lottie: My Sad Journey Away from the LMCO

This month I have been feeling nostalgic for the early Decembers fondly remembered in past years.

Those were times when I was privileged to preach/speak in Southern Baptist churches about world missions, which I always did with gladness—and with appreciation for the support received from those churches as an SB missionary. But, sadly, things have changed.

An Enthusiastic Supporter of the LMCO

Except for active Southern Baptists, past and/or present, few know (or care) what LMCO stands for. It means the Lottie Moon Christmas Offering, which has been a lifeline for missionaries deployed by the International Mission Board (IMB) of the Southern Baptist Convention. 

An IMB webpage explains that the LMCO “is an annual offering collected by Southern Baptists to support international missions. The offering was officially named in 1918 by Woman’s Missionary Union in honor of the missionary to China who urged churches to start it and give sacrificially.”

(For information about the SB missionary Lottie Moon, see my 12/26/12 blog article about her and the LMCO.)

The same IMB webpage reports, “Through the Lottie Moon Christmas Offering, Southern Baptists have given over $5 billion to international missions.” That’s a lot of money!

My family and I were on missionary “furlough,” now called “stateside assignment,” in 1971, ’76, ’81, ’86, and ’91. Each of those years provided opportunities to visit churches, especially in early December, to promote giving to/through the LMCO—and to thank Southern Baptists for their support.

A Reluctant Supporter of the LMCO

Since 1980, the Southern Baptist Convention steadily became more and more conservative/fundamentalist. In that same period, my own faith had grown in the opposite direction. In the 1990s I increasingly became only a rather reluctant supporter of the LMCO.

After 2000, it became even more difficult for me to promote the LMCO enthusiastically, as I had done for decades. The problem was the adoption of a revised Baptist Faith and Message document that, among other things, mitigated against women serving as pastors.

After being forced to retire as an SBC missionary in 2004, my support for the LMCO virtually ended in 2005. Reflecting back, I grieve over that sad separation from a long and meaningful relationship.

A Non-Supporter of the LMCO

As the SBC grew more and more conservative, being a Southern Baptist meant not only opposing women in ministry but also being stanchly opposed to pro-choice (=anti-abortion) and pro-LGBTQ (=anti-gay) positions.

Naturally, the change in the SBC meant that newly appointed missionaries, and those older missionaries who chose to remain with the SBC, were mainly those who agreed with SBC’s theological and ethical positions.

It was not too surprising, then, that an overwhelming majority of Southern Baptists voted for Trump in 2016 and 2020. And it seems that Baptists in other countries have been influenced in the same direction by SB missionaries.

Brazil is one of the countries to which Southern Baptists have sent the most missionaries for the longest time. As a boy, I grew up hearing about the Bagbys of Brazil. Buck and Anne Bagby arrived in Brazil as SB missionaries in 1881. Five of their nine children later became missionaries to Brazil.

But just as Baptists in the U.S. have been, and still are, big supporters of Trump, in recent years Brazilian Baptists (and other evangelicals) have been strong supporters of President Jair Bolsonaro.

Bolsonaro (b. 1955) has reportedly remained a Catholic. But in 2016 he was baptized (immersed) in the Jordan River by an evangelical pastor, and he attends the Baptist church where his wife is a member.

Mrs. Bolsonaro’s church is the Attitude Baptist Church (interesting name!), which was organized in 2000 mainly through the work of an SB missionary.

“Bolsonaro’s faith-based enablers” is a Dec. 1 Christian Century article that describes how Bolsonaro and his evangelical support in Brazil mirror Trump and his evangelical support in the U.S.

As an outspoken critic of Christian fundamentalism for the past two decades, I am sadly no longer able to affirm a mission board and the long-esteemed LMCO which now mainly supports conservative evangelical missionaries who nourish similar believers in other nations, such as Brazil.

Women in the Church

Five days ago, I posted an article about an important decision made in the Roman Catholic Church in 1870. This article is about an action of the Catholic Pope 100 years later, as Pope Paul VI announced in July 1970 that he was going to name Teresa of Ávila the first female Doctor of the Church. 

Teresa of Ávila (1515~82) 

Women Doctors of the Church?

“Doctor of the Church” is a title given by the Roman Catholic Church to saints recognized as having made a significant contribution to theology or doctrine through their research, study, or writing.

Up until 1970, there had been thirty named as Doctors of the Church. The first four, so designated in 1298, were Ambrose (340~397), Jerome (c.343~420), Augustine of Hippo (354~430), and Gregory the Great (540~604).

Over the next 672 years, twenty-six other men were similarly declared as Doctors of the Church. But then on September 27, 1970, Pope Paul VI declared Teresa of Ávila (1515~82) the first female Doctor of the Church. Just a week later, Catherine of Siena (1347~80) was also so designated.

Since then four more Doctors have been added to the list, and two of them are women: Thérèse of Lisieux (1873~97) and Hildegard of Bingen (1098~1179).

In spite of this high recognition of four outstanding women of the past, though, the Roman Catholic Church still does not permit women to be ordained as priests.

Women Pastors in the Churches?

Before 1970, hardly any Southern Baptist (SB) women had become preachers/pastors. During the time I was a graduate student at The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, though, in 1964 Addie Davis (1917~2005) was ordained in an SB church in North Carolina.

Other Protestant denominations had ordained women much sooner. For example, Anna Howard Shaw was ordained by the Methodist Church way back in 1880, and women were similarly ordained by the Christian Church (Disciples of Christ) in 1888.

According to this 10/18 Christian Century article, at seminaries and divinity schools affiliated with mainline churches, women have been about half of M.Div. students since 1998—but are still only 27 percent of pastors in congregations.

The church that June and I are members of belongs to the Western District Conference of Mennonite Church USA. An Aug. 2019 article in Mennonite World Review reports, “Today, 40 of Western District’s 85 active pastors are women.” This includes Ruth Harder, who has been June’s and my pastor for the past six years—and a fine pastor she is!

My Experience with Women Pastors

Long before being a member of a church with a woman pastor here in the U.S., from the early 1980s I began to have more and more female students in the seminary classes I taught in Japan. Many of them went on to become pastors in Japan Baptist Convention churches.

One of my students was Okamura Naoko-san. While a student, she began attending the Fukuoka International Church, of which I was the founding pastor, and then after graduation she became the assistant pastor. A few years later she became my co-pastor, and that worked out well.

It was my privilege to preach Okamura-sensei’s ordination sermon. And it was partly because of that close relationship with a woman pastor that June and I could not conscientiously sign the statement that we would work “in accordance with and not contrary to” Baptist Faith & Message, 2000.

That historic doctrinal statement of Southern Baptists as revised in 2000 stipulated that women should not serve as pastors. Our refusal to sign our agreement with that statement led to our being unilaterally placed on retirement status in 2003 by the International Mission Board of the SBC.

The Catholic Church, in spite of now having four female Doctors of the Church, and the Southern Baptist Convention since 2000 are, by far, the largest Christian churches/denominations that do not ordain women.

What a shame!

The Southern Baptist Convention: 175 Years of Turmoil

Christian Leopold (C.L.) Neiger, my only great-grandparent not born in the U.S., was born in Canton Bern, Switzerland, 180 years ago today, on May 30, 1840. Five years later, and sixteen years before C.L. immigrated to the U.S., the Southern Baptist Convention was formed in 1845.  

The International Mission Board of the SBC was formed
 on the same day as the new convention.

Turmoil at the Beginning

The Southern Baptist Convention was formed because of turmoil over slavery. There were some other issues that also led to the formation of the new convention, but the slavery issue was unquestionably the most decisive one.

Specifically, in response to the policy adopted in 1844 that slaveholders would not be appointed as missionaries, Baptist delegates in the South formed the SBC.

In May 1845, those delegates met in Augusta, Georgia, to form the new Convention. Beginning with a total membership of nearly 352,000 in over 4,100 local Baptist churches, it was geographically restricted to states that would eventually become the Confederacy.

Turmoil through the Years

Most of the turmoil in the SBC after its founding has been theological. One of the first such controversies centered around C.H. Toy, professor of Old Testament at The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary. He was forced to resign in 1879.

Fundamentalists, such as those led by J. Frank Norris, the fiery pastor of First Baptist Church of Fort Worth, caused turmoil in the SBC from the 1920s to the early 1950s.

Turmoil in the SBC again emerged after Ralph Elliott, professor of OT at Midwestern Baptist Theological Seminary, published The Message of Genesis in 1961. He was fired the next year.

The “conservative resurgence” of the SBC (aka the “fundamentalist takeover”) began in 1979 and following years of turmoil, the convention made a massive move to the theological—and to the political—right.

And now this year a new movement has started. It is called the Conservative Baptist Network (CBN), and some are calling it a “second conservative resurgence.” It remains to be seen how much turmoil CBN will cause in the coming years.

An Embarrassed Southern Baptist

Not long after C.L. Neiger married my great-grandmother Margaret (Abplanalp) in Indiana, they moved to Worth County in northwest Missouri, the county where I was born about 70 years later.

C.L. and Margaret’s daughter Laura married George Seat, my grandfather. George’s great-grandfather, Littleton Seat, moved from Tennessee to Cooper County, Mo., about 1818. He moved to Worth County with his family in 1844—and died there the next year, the same year that the SBC was founded.

In the eighteenth century the Seat family lived in Virginia—and they owned slaves. According to family stories, two of Littleton’s older brothers were killed by a 13-year-old slave boy in 1786.

When the Seat family moved to near Nashville, Tennessee, about the turn of the century, they likely took some slaves with them, although the three Seat brothers who moved to Missouri before 1820 didn’t seem to have slaves—and it is quite certain that the Seats in Worth County never had any.

Near the beginning of my book Fed Up with Fundamentalism, I wrote about being an embarrassed Southern Baptist—and  in June 2015 I wrote about being both a proud and ashamed Southern Baptist—but that was because of what the Southern Baptist Convention had become, theologically, after 1980.

My first embarrassment, though, was when I learned why the SBC was formed in the first place. As a boy, I always identified with the North/Union in thinking about the Civil War—and I wasn’t prejudiced against African Americans, for I never saw a Black person in my home county.

The SBC formally apologized to African Americans in 1995 (at the annual convention marking the 150^th anniversary of the SBC’s founding) for the denomination's pro-slavery past. Some charged that that was too little, too late. But I am on the side of those who say, Better late than never.

During all the years I was a Southern Baptist, I disliked the name, which embodies its racist beginnings—and I have been an advocate of a name change since my student days at The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary in the 1960s.

After 175 years, surely the time has come for a name change—and after 40 years of turmoil caused by those on the theological right, surely the time has come for a move back toward the theological center.

Did Jimmy Carter Lose His Religion?

As was widely reported in the news media, on October 1 Jimmy Carter celebrated his 95th birthday, becoming the first U.S. President to reach that age. But has Jimmy lost his religion? In the last few months, I have repeatedly seen Facebook friends post the link to Carter’s article titled “Losing My Religion for Equality.” 

Jimmy’s Article

The linked-to piece with that title was, in fact, published on July 15, 2009, under Carter’s name by The Age, a daily newspaper that had been published in Melbourne, Australia, since 1854—and that article is still available online.

In April 2015, The Age reported that Jimmy’s article has been the highest rated story ever published on theage.com.au, having been viewed more than 1.9 million times—and it has been viewed many more times since then.

The Desmond Tutu Peace Foundation even published Carter’s article on their website in April 2017, erroneously indicating that it was a newly published piece.

Carter’s article has been viewed so many times on the Internet this year that in July Snopes.com reported on its veracity. Snopes correctly explained that even though “the letter is often shared along with the claim that Carter renounced his faith,” that “isn’t the case.”

Snopes continues, “While Carter rejected the notion that women were subservient and severed ties with the Southern Baptist Convention [SBC], he never turned his back on his own religion.” And he certainly didn’t lose his faith in God.

Accordingly, I think that surely the title of Jimmy’s article was written by the newspaper, not by him.

Jimmy’s Point

Back in 2000 Carter severed ties with the SBC—a matter that was widely reported (such as in the Oct. 21, 2000, article in the WaPo.) Nine years later in his article published in The Age, he said that severing those ties “was painful and difficult.”

In January 2008, I talked briefly with Jimmy at the New Baptist Covenant meeting in Atlanta—and I gave him a copy of my recently published book Fed Up with Fundamentalism. As introduced in my 9/25 blog posting, the eighth chapter dealt with the issue that he wrote about in his 2009 article.

(I would like to think that that chapter in my book was of help to him.)

Thus, I fully agree with him and the main point he made in The Age article: “Women and girls have been discriminated against for too long in a twisted interpretation of the word of God.”

Carter later wrote a whole book about this matter: A Call to Action: Women, Religion, Violence, and Power (2014). The third chapter of that important book is “The Bible and Gender Equality,” and he explains his disagreement with the SBC—as well as his ongoing Christian faith.

Jimmy’s Reputation

Among most of us moderate/progressive Christians, Jimmy Carter is held in high regard. And even if some of us may think that he was not a great President, almost everyone agrees that he is the best ex-President the country has ever had.

I have been somewhat amazed, though, at how he is still criticized by conservative evangelical Christians (among others on the right, I assume). I sometimes see “friends” of my Facebook friends saying very negative things about Jimmy.

The two most cited reasons for criticism of Carter are his position on LGBTQ rights and his position on Israel. For those reasons, and perhaps others, his reputation among the Religious Right is not good—but for most of the rest of us, it is stellar.

Five years ago I posted a blog article wishing Jimmy a happy 90th birthday, and I am very glad that I can wish him a (belated) Happy Birthday again now. 

Remembering Paul Simmons

When he died in March of this year, Paul Simmons was called an “outspoken Baptist ethicist” and “a lightning rod at Southern Baptist Theological Seminary for advocating a woman’s right to abortion” (quotes from this article). I remember Paul as a Christian gentleman, a brilliant scholar, and a friend since 1955.

Introducing Paul

Paul D. Simmons was born in Tennessee on July 18, 1936, so this Thursday is the 83rd anniversary of his birth.

Paul matriculated at Southwest Baptist College (SWBC, now SBU) in the fall of 1954, and June and I met him a year later when we became students there. He was one of the “big men on campus,” and one of the upperclassmen at the junior college whom I admired the most.

After graduating from SWBC in 1956, Paul finished his college work at Union University in Tennessee, earned two degrees at Southeastern Baptist Theological Seminary in North Carolina, and then in 1969 completed his Ph.D. degree in Christian Ethics at The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary (SBTS) in Kentucky.

Paul was an instructor in Christian Ethics at SBTS while a graduate student and then joined the faculty there in 1970, receiving tenure in 1975 and promotion to full professor in 1982. Ten years later the trustees of SBTS began to work on ways to remove Simmons from the faculty.

In January 1993, Paul took “early retirement” (at the age of 56!) from SBTS. After a few years teaching in Louisville as an adjunct professor, he then taught 20 years as Clinical Professor of Family & Geriatric Medicine at the University of Louisville, retiring at the age of 80.

Introducing Paul’s Book

In addition to numerous scholarly articles for various publications, Paul was the author of three major books, the first of which was Birth and Death: Bioethical Decision Making (1983).

That book was published not long after the beginning of the “conservative resurgence” (a.k.a. “the fundamentalist takeover”) in the Southern Baptist Convention. In the early 1980s, the Religious Right began a strong anti-abortion campaign, and because of the position Paul propounded in his book he increasingly came under attack.

“Abortion: The Biblical and Human Issues” is the third of six cogently written chapters. In the initial chapter, “Bioethics: Science and Human Values,” Paul clearly states the two basic assumptions underlying his research and writing. “The first is that the Bible not only is relevant but is indispensable for Christian ethical understanding.”

Then, “A second major assumption is that there is no irreconcilable tension between the Bible and modern science” (p. 21).

The second chapter is “The Bible and Bioethical Decision-Making,” and Paul asserts at the end of that chapter, “The starting point for all Christian ethical action is in the person’s relationship to Christ” (p. 63).

I certainly agree with Paul’s two assumptions as well as his key emphases in the second chapter--and one would think that most contemporary Christians would also. Nevertheless, partly because of the sixth chapter in his book, Paul was, deplorably, driven away from his tenured faculty position by the ever-increasing conservatism of SBTS.

Reconnecting with Paul

In January 2011, June and I drove to New Orleans where I attended the annual meeting of the Society of Christian Ethics. One of the highlights of that conference was seeing Paul again and the three of us having a meal together.

He was the same sincere, sweet-spirited person we had known 55 years earlier at SWBC, and we deeply enjoyed having conversation with him again.

So, we were greatly saddened when in March we heard of Paul’s passing, and we remember him with abiding appreciation for the fine man and good scholar he was.  (Click here for his obituary.)  

TTT #14 The Goal of Missions is the Kingdom of God

The article I posted on May 20 summarized some legitimate reasons why Christians still engage in, and support, global evangelistic missionary activity. (I encourage you to check out the comments made, here, about that article.) It is now fitting to consider what the ultimate goal of missions is.

Three Problematic Goals

In the history of Christianity there have been various goals for mission work, and while not equally problematic three such goals can be negatively stated as follows:

(1) The goal of missions is not primarily the expansion of Christianity.

It cannot be doubted that from the time of its beginning as a small Jewish “sect,” for centuries Christianity expanded greatly. Much of that expansion was clearly due to missionary activity.

That does not mean, however, that expansion was, or should have been, the primary goal of missions. Nor, certainly, does it mean that that expansion through the centuries was always done by legitimate or admirable means, even by missionaries.

Much of the expansion of Christianity in the seven hundred years between 300 and 1000, for example, was due to the military and political activities of powerful kings and emperors.

The expansion of Christianity, especially for political reasons, should in no way be considered the primary goal of missions.

(2) The goal of missions is not primarily the spreading of Western civilization.

To some Christians in the past few centuries, missionary activity was linked to the spread of “civilization” to the “benighted” lands of the world.

European civilization was considered superior to that of the indigenous cultures of the other parts of the world, so spreading that civilization, seen largely as the fruit of the Christian faith, was considered a legitimate and praiseworthy activity for many Christians, especially in Great Britain and then in the United States.

There were, of course, important contributions made by missionaries, along with others, who took “civilization” into “primitive” societies. The introduction of Western medicine, for example, was a great benefit to multitudes of people.

But local cultures, societal structures, and religions were sometimes trampled underfoot in that process, and that type of missionary activity has, justifiably, come under intense criticism.

The spreading of Western civilization cannot legitimately be recognized as the major goal of Christian missions.

(3) The goal of missions is not primarily the planting of churches.

During the last decade of my missionary career, the International Mission Board of the Southern Baptist Convention began to place almost complete emphasis not only on planting new churches but on the “church planting movement,” which was said to be the “rapid multiplication of indigenous churches planting churches that sweeps through a people group or population segment.”

While planting churches certainly is a commendable activity, still, that should be one means of reaching the proper goal of missions, not the goal itself.

The Proper Goal

As stated in the title, the goal of missions is the Kingdom of God, and as I emphasized in the article posted on Feb. 28, the main characteristic of the God’s Kingdom is shalom (peace and justice).

This matter was well presented by E. Luther Copeland, my former missionary colleague and good friend in Japan. His 1985 book is titled World Mission, World Survival: The Challenge and Urgency of Global Missions Today.

In his last chapter, “The Kingdom and the Mission,” Copeland (1916~2011) elucidates that the goal of mission(s) is the kingdom of God (p. 139). 

That often overlooked point was made more than 100 years by Christoph Blumhardt. He wrote to his missionary son-in-law, “[T]here is no other purpose in your mission work than to proclaim God’s kingdom.”

Yes; true then, true now.

[Christoph Blumhardt (1842~1919) was a German Lutheran pastor. His letters to Richard Wilhelm are presented in the 2015 book Everyone Belongs to God, compiled and edited by Charles E. Moore.]

[The 14^th chapter of Thirty True Things . . . (TTT), which includes much more than could be presented in this article, can be found by clicking on this link.]

Why Study the Bible?

For the first time in a long time, on Sept. 24 I attended a Sunday School class in a Southern Baptist church. That experience was the springboard for the question posed above.

Questioning Bible Study

June and I spent the last weekend in September in southwest Missouri. On Sunday morning we attended a very lively Baptist church in a rural area several miles south of Springfield. 

The study material used for the class we attended was the “Explore the Bible” quarterly produced by LifeWay, the publishing company known from 1891 to 1998 as the Southern Baptist Sunday School Board.

Exodus and Leviticus are being explored during this fall quarter; the Sept. 24 lesson was on Exodus 14:13-28. In the class we attended, the King James Version was the translation used, although LifeWay also offers two other translations.

By the end of the class, attended by 12-15 older adults, I began to wonder about the purpose of it all. There was almost no attempt, either by the teacher or the quarterly, to make the class any more than a study of the events found in the Bible passage.

After returning home, I was able to buy a digital copy of that Sunday School quarterly online. Here are a couple of statements in it indicating what readers might learn from study of Ex. 14:13-28. (i) “God delivers His people, providing a way of escape.” (ii) “Believers demonstrate faith in God by obediently following His directions.”

Bible Study Questions

In listening to the Sunday School teacher, who was quite articulate in his lecture about the Bible passage, there were several questions that I would like to have raised. I did not have any chance to do that—and it probably would not have been appropriate to have done so as a visitor.

Here are some of my questions: If the Church is God’s people today, will God provide us a way of escape from our “enemies” similar to that provided to the Israelites whom Moses led to and through the Red Sea?

Since God did not tell the Israelites to build up armed forces and fight against the Egyptians militarily, why do so many U.S. Christians seem to think they should be supporters of massive armed forces now?

Then, what are God’s directions to believers today? Is God directing Christians in the U.S. to support the current President? My guess is that probably 80% or so of the people in the church I attended on Sept 24 voted for and continue to support DJT, even though (or because?) he threatens to unleash “fire and fury” upon North Korea and to “totally destroy” that country. Is that God’s will?

So, why study the Bible to learn about the past without considering or discussing what lessons there might be for the present?

Of course it is much easier, and far less controversial, for a teacher or a quarterly to deal with information about the past than to struggle with present-day implications of the Bible passage being studied.

Purpose of Bible Study

There is, certainly, some value in studying the Bible for understanding its content in historical context. Shouldn’t the primary purpose of a Sunday School class, though, be seeking to understand the meaning and challenge of the Bible for us in our context today?

But who is willing to engage in the hard work of that kind of Bible study? And to what extent would our interpretation be shaped by our political views rather than the latter being shaped by the Bible?

Still, we surely need to study/explore the Bible with the intent of finding it a lamp to our feet and a light to our paths.

What about Penal Substitutionary Atonement?

There will be decidedly different reactions to the main topic of this article. Some readers no doubt think that the Christian doctrine of penal substitutionary atonement is of utmost importance. Others, however, think that such a doctrine is wrongheaded and should be opposed. So, which side is right?

The Emphasis on PSA

The emphasis on penal substitutionary atonement (PSA) has been prominent in Protestant theology for nearly 500 years now. That theory of the atonement, however, has come under more and more scrutiny in recent decades

Some Protestants even reject the idea of PSA. Wm. Paul Young, about whom I wrote in my June 25 blog article (see here), is just one such person.

Because of the growing opposition to the idea of PSA, last month the Southern Baptist Convention passed a resolution affirming “the truthfulness, efficacy, and beauty of the biblical doctrine of penal substitutionary atonement as the burning core of the Gospel message and the only hope of a fallen race.”

That strong emphasis on PSA probably expresses the position of the majority of conservative evangelical Christians.

But other Christians disagree.

Questioning PSA

In addition to Young’s contention that the core element of PSA might be thought of as a “lie” believed about God, there are contemporary theologians who seriously question the PSA on biblical and theological grounds.

Of many who might be cited, let me mention only two Mennonite theologians: J. Denny Weaver and Ted Grimsrud. Weaver (b. 1941) is now Professor Emeritus of Religion at Bluffington University. He is the author of two important books about the atonement: The Nonviolent Atonement (2^nd ed., 2011) and, secondarily, The Nonviolent God (2013).

Grimsrud (b. 1954) served as a professor of theology at Eastern Mennonite University until his early retirement in 2016. He is the author of Instead of Atonement: The Bible’s Salvation Story and Our Hope for Wholeness (2013).

Both of these theologians reject the traditional doctrine of PSA, emphasizing that violent retribution, such as by Jesus’ crucifixion, was not necessary in order for humans to be saved from God’s wrath. Rather, because of God’s unfathomable love and mercy God has always been able to forgive sin and to restore sinners who seek forgiveness.

An Alternative to PSA

In 1967 when I was still in Japanese language school, I read Interpreting the Atonement, a new book by Dr. Robert H. Culpepper, my missionary sempai (older colleague).

After reading the book, I wrote two typewritten pages (which I still have) of reflections and questions. The main question I raised was about the necessity of penal substitutionary atonement, although I didn’t use those exact words.

Bob, as I came to know him, wrote a good and helpful book, but even then I was drawn primarily to the subjective, rather than an objective, view of the atonement.

An objective view of the atonement means that something had to be done, in history, in order for God to be able to forgive sinful humans. Sin had to be punished. The “something” done was the crucifixion of Christ, who became the substitute for sinful humankind.

The subjective view posits the need for repentance but sees no objective, historical event as necessary for God to be able to forgive sinful humans. God is seen as all-merciful, all-loving, and always ready to forgive repentant persons.

According to this latter view, the prodigal son’s father can be seen as depicting the true nature of God. Restoration with a wayward child is dependent only on that child's repentance and returning home. No violent sacrifice is necessary.

Reflect deeply on this point as you look at the following detail of Rembrandt’s “Return of the Prodigal Son.”