OK, it’s taken me 2 days to get through this thread. Last night it was 4 pages, today, 7.
The split in the SBC started in the mid 70’s at a SBC meeting in Houston, Texas. A local politician, Judge Paul Presseler, made a speech that was politicizing and divisive, and a good number of the people there left, including a number that were on the podium, including me. My college choir had sung, and I was to sing the solo part on the next choral performance, therefore, I was on the main platform to be near a mic.
When Presseler gave his hateful and nasty position, and stated that he intended to lead the SBC in that direction, he said “If you don’t agree, you should leave right now”. Over half of the people there DID leave, and I was the first one off the podium. (I also muttered JERK at his back as I passed him.) The origin of the Cooperative Baptist Fellowship took place in the hallways of that venue, the old Houston Coliseum.
However, the cause of unity was dragged in, the idea that we could work together to keep up the missions work, the good things (disaster response, church building teams headed by retired builders) and the good programs that the SBC had built over the years. (Sunbeams, G.A. and R.A.'s, the camps, the colleges). People were willing to work together for the common good.
Presseler and Paige Patterson (and believe me, the fact that both had the initials PP caused some fairly risque’-for-Baptists comments) continued to politicize the SBC, dragging in every argument possible for THEIR way, their beliefs. Anybody notice that the inerrantist position and the Religious Right/Republican South (especially Texas) all happened in the some time frame? That was no coincidence. It was very carefully planned out ond executed.
I witnessed the first shot. It was ugly, and I said that day that I would never leave my church, it would have to leave me. When i’m here, I attend a multiracial church that is a Texas Baptist Convention member, and a SBC member as well. (The Church Loan program for buildings is a valuable resource for our church, as we’ve become quite poor–yuppie flight to go to church with Tom DeLay out at Williams Trace in Sugar Land–and have had to re-finance the last of the loans on the buildings.) Do I even pretend to believe for one moment that we are going to pay attention to this current campaign? No.
The SBC has a “victim of the year” thing they do to try and evangelize the world. Jews, Mormons, Mexicans, whatever…and everybody gets their little packets and ignores them. In 6 months, they won’t even remember who the target group was this time.
When i’m in Austin, I attend church at a church of “like faith and order”–same tenuous links, mostly tradition and working from within–that has several gay deacons. And ordains women.
The SBC left me, I didn’t leave it. I have stayed the same, the right wing just took over. Don’t like it, won’t support it, working to help pay my church’s loan and get away from their influence as much as possible. But I can’t change it from within if i’m not it there.
I was an elected messenger to SBC meeting twice. And I voted the way my fellow congregants and my conscience said to. And I was strongly castigated by many people. AND I told them that I was not their God, and I was not their conscience, so just back off trying to be mine.
The REAL problem with Baptists is that if you put 10 of them in one room to try and get consensus, you’ll end up with 12 differing opinions on EVERYTHING, and inevitably someone will say “We’ve never done it that way before”. And then it’ll be time to eat.
ALL Baptists DO agre on that. It’s generally time to eat.
