Todd Littleton blogs at The Edge of the Inside. He wrote a four part series reflecting on the 2012 SBC Annual Meeting through the lens of offering his first ever motion on the floor of the SBC. While the nexus of his thoughts turn on a singular incident, Todd finds it illustrative for what ails us. Rather than post these in series form. Todd offers them as stand alone posts. His first post on the subject ran recently here at Voices.
Southern Baptists pride themselves as literalists. The tendency is to employ a rabid love for the meaning of words until it does not suit the purpose. Southern Baptists are then rigid pragmatists. In both instances stridency becomes virtuous, even in the face of withering contradictions. Most people face this oxymoronic existence at least once in life.
Before proceeding with Part 2, Ruled Out of Order or, A Pusillanimous SBC, let me point to an intentional word play and one deliberate word choice that might have gone un-noticed in Part 1. This does not mean other words were flippantly selected.
First, the title of this series, Ruled Out of Order or, A Pusillanimous SBC, uses the indefinite article, a, to describe the SBC. Had I used the definite article, the, I would have been making a sweeping generalization. Dr. Clarke taught us in freshman philosophy all those years ago; this would be considered a logical fallacy. Embedded in the critique is the hope the SBC will not always express a pusillanimous faith.
Second, Aaron Weaver picked up Richard Land’s plagiarism as he found the word, thereby, to be troublesome for a radio show. Twice in my presented motion I used the word. In the course of Part 1, I found other opportunities to use thereby. It is understandable that some would miss this subtle reference to the entire debacle. But, it may be worth keeping a keen eye out for other possibilities.
Prophesy Not Protect
One of my first books as a young wanna-be-preacher-boy was Dr. W.A. Criswell’s, Why I Preach the Bible Is Literally True. The First Baptist Church of Dallas cast a long shadow north into my world in Oklahoma City. We believed every word of the Bible from cover to cover including the notes and the maps.
Listening to the arguments in favor of the Conservative Resurgence in the SBC during my latter years of high school prompted me, and many a young preacher-boy like me, to take up arms in the effort to win the Battle for the Bible. A victory would rid the SBC of skunks. And, who really likes skunks?
Years passed. One of my good friends read that literal Bible and found a reference to Memphis during a moment of devotion. He headed east. I went south. We kept in contact by phone. One day I learned my friend decided to go to work on a PhD. Along the way he planted a church. My friend drafted the guiding documents for this new work. He included instructions in the event church discipline was needed. Many believed some, if not all, ecclesial conflicts could be mitigated with a well-understood church covenant and accompanying guidelines in the event ever there was a breach.
Some time after the church began to whir and grow, my friend became the subject in need of church discipline. I listened as he told me the story. We had not talked in some time. I hurt for my friend and his family. But my friend he was. He told me he willingly submitted to the prescriptions for those who violated the church membership covenant. To say he lost would be an understatement.
During the days of the CR we young fellows were told stories of those whose ethics and decisions were so far beyond the pale of the Word of God we needed a good cleansing. The promise at the other end was a purer church, greater integrity, and growth. Statistics of every other denomination who suffered leftward drift became standard fare when rallying the troops. Unless we wanted to go the way of . . . we needed to remain vigilant; the dominant theme of this year’s Baptist21 Luncheon.
Somewhere along the way we learned the standard did not apply to everyone. These stories got shuttered. Then, a young black man walked home from a convenience store in Florida. From there the details remain under debate. Trayvon Martin was killed. Dr. Land went live. He spoke into these events on his radio program. Following the pattern established by Limbaugh and Beck he seized the moment to assault others with accusations including the President of the United States. Another barnacle broke loose from the SBC ship and surfaced on the electronic sea.
Who on earth would ever read a transcript? But read it was. A young PhD student noticed thereby used in said radio transcript. Aaron Weaver thought it odd to use thereby in spoken word. The rest is recent history. Shortly it was clear Dr. Land had cobbled together paragraphs from op-ed pieces with his own words and failed to give due credit. His subject was the Trayvon Martin-George Zimmerman case.
Jonathan Merritt wrote a piece for the Huffington Post wondering when or what would become of such an action. I wondered too. Over the course of a couple of months I wrote a number of posts thinking through various angles and implications. The one thing that I could not escape was the feeling betrayal by literalists. Words mean something. Or at least that is the brand of conservatism proffered we who cut our teeth during the Takeover.
What was good for my friend is good for any leader. In the same way my friend patterned his new work with a higher bar, those who planned and carried out the CR made promises they too were raising the bar – the Bible. Those who led and spoke did not mind being referred to with the prophetic reference, “he who troubles Israel.” Some CR leaders launched a conference and others a school under the banner, “The School of the Prophets.” Cleary the aim was to train young prophetic leaders. Today we protect our leaders.
The inerrant Bible became an empty signifier. It is fine for a pastor to suffer the consequences of violating a church membership covenant based on an inerrant Bible. He should step aside. But, there is a different standard for our entity heads. A local pastor’s years of faithfulness are wiped away. A prominent figure in the CR is credited with his faithfulness even if he stumbles and falls.
David Platt demonstrated the prophetic. I had never heard David preach. I am glad I did at this year’s SBC Pastor’s Conference. Knowing the undercurrents at work leading up to the Annual Meeting left me thinking, “Someone forgot to tell this young fellow the history of the CR?” Maybe there are yet a few prophets among us I mused. Just maybe they will weather attempts to keep from being tamed. But, it will not be easy.
The lure of power, prestige, and panel positions make strange bedfellows. Dr. Rankin calls attention to the illusion of unity. Some of the one thousand of us may have witnessed quite the sleight of hand over lunch. Prophetic voices gave way to protective voices. “We must keep what we have won,” the tagline for the B21.
Some committee somewhere needs to rule that opinion out of order. A movement built on our insistence on the meaning of words suffers violently when our leaders equivocate. We suffer the weight of the implications. It begs the question just what was won long after victory is declared. Somewhere someone is listening. And, when we witness theft we cannot call it anything less. The CR leaders taught us such.
There is a story in that Authoritative Book. A shepherd boy became king. He daringly warded off would-be thieving animals that sought his father’s sheep. Once he reached ascendency a thief became he. All might have gone unnoticed were it not for the meaning of theft. The prophet of God would not protect the king but remind him what stealing meant. What began in hope ended in tragedy.
Tragedy appears to have been avoided but at what cost. We lose our prophetic voice when protection becomes our choice.
Image Credit: Prophet Ezekiel
Forgive me, but I think you to be a bit melodramatic here. ERLC trustees made a judgment based on the totality of the matter. I may have decided differently. You may have desired a different outcome but the process was deliberate and appropriate.
Is it not inherent in systems to preserve and protect? From the moment the CR solidified its victory a generation ago there was a shift to protecting and preserving and one can point to a handful of instances where such actions were questionable.
Unless you wish to provide details for your friend’s fall from grace, I think that the equivalency you make of it requires excessive assumptions from the rest of us.
I would and do, however, join you and any others who believes that viligance in the SBC by those of us who are not trustees, employees, or elected leaders should never wane. The SBC is far to important to be entrusted only to such people.
God bless you.
The post is a bit rambling and the agenda of the writer seems quite clear.
My response is that we “should” protect. The Word seems clear on this matter that “love covers a multitude of sins” (1Pet 4:8, I think).
I get from this writer that “prophesy” is a synonym for “club into submission.”
I’m always leery of persons who in the name of the Lord keep a stake and pile of green wood close by.
Frank,
It seems to me you will get what you want from any post if you take prophesy as beat into submission.
I am always leery of interactions with such reading habits.
William
Forgive me. Re-read the motion in the first piece. I agreed with the ERLC Trustees.
The correlation between my friends experience and the instance of Dr. Land’s actions is simple. We must be held to the standards to which we hold others. Reading anything else might lead me to make Jared Wilson like assumptions.
The SBC is not any winner’s institution to protect, if we understand Baptist polity and ecclesiology.
Todd, I was struck by Williams’s verbiage: “…solidified its victory…” One wonders what sort of victory it was and at what cost. As an outsider, I’ll happily say that it cost the organization its good name. The trajectory of institutions is always away from the prophetic and on to the maintenance of some nebulous status quo; typically, the status quo takes the form of consolidation and preservation of power. Having divested itself of the “liberal threat,” what was the next enemy to win a victory against? I am quite frankly waiting with absolute joy for the Calvinists and non-Calvinists to take the gloves off and repeat the CR. One only hopes it’s not a Calvinist resurgence. The Servetus in all of us quakes.
With “absolute joy” are you? How about with “grave concern for Christian brethren and sistren”?
…sounds better. :). ( for Dave )
Todd, I would edit my earlier comment…but cannot.
Protecting is an appropriate Christian endeavor. I merely note that such is inherent. I am not finding more than a general, and generic, appeal in your article…not a problem…but I would like to see a list of things you would change.
William, I do hate it when I post a comment and cannot edit it. Someday a plugin may be developed to give us such an option. Protecting what a person or group of persons has obtained is certainly natural. I am asking for something beyond what is natural. Let’s say those who plotted, planned, and executed the CR won something. Had they won a trophy they would have put it behind glass and locked it. But, the assertion is they were saving/winning for the cause of the Bible. Further it was the use of the Scriptures that required this action. The Southern Baptist Convention would soon experience lagging baptisms and growth. Winning the Battle for the Bible and its related interpretation became a necessity. The Bible and its accompanying interpretation was somehow in the grasp of the marauding liberals and it must be rescued. Something like reclaiming the Ark of the Covenant. But, we all know that reclaiming the Ark never ensured faithfulness to the covenant it represented. Same could be said for the Scriptures. Just because those leading the CR won the Bible for Southern Baptists and the accompanying interpretation could not and did not guarantee faithfulness to the God revealed in Jesus. Now we are decades removed from the win and there are illustrations, most recently the Land Affair, that expose the fallacy that winning the Bible and interpretation would result in a higher ethical position, greater evangelistic results, and overall growth. My post attempts to illustrate how a young soldier recruited into the CR army followed the trajectory laid out for him complete with a renewed interest in church discipline. When he violated the membership covenant of the church he planted, he submitted to the protocol prescribed in the church’s documents. Now, years later, we have a leader immune to little more than a slap on the wrist and the recognition we do not need a Southern Baptist Rush Limbaugh. It seems disingenuous to ramp the rhetoric in such a way young people were persuaded of the need so we could obtain a better image for the SBC and yet when a leader form that era and group falters, giving little more than what is natural, we lower our bar, point to years of service, and give a slap on the wrist. In this context you ask, “What would you change?” I would change the expectations that… Read more »
truth can stand on its own . . . I think the role of a Christian in protecting others is valid when innocent people are being marginalized, abused, bullied or otherwise harmed. Covering up for someone who has done wrong is not protecting them . . . it is being an accomplice, and yes, that kind of behavior would indeed hurt one’s Christian witness to a watching world.
Todd: You hit the nail on the head. Not many can look at themselves or their party or group or clique with critical eyes. As a result the transgressors often get away, as the saying goes, with murder. The same goes for interpretation of the Bible. I hold to a pretty strong literalist approach, but then as R.C. Sproul pointed out in one of his works, if memory serves correctly, that literal can also mean according to literary principles. Now that puts a different slant on things. Likewise, I found that looking at the word of God in the light of other ways helps to grasp larger intents and purposes. Forty plus years ago, I came to look at the Bible in the light of the idea that as it was inspired by the Omniscient God, it follows that it must therefore reflect a depth of subtlety and profundity of meaning commensurate with such an origin. In other words, the effect must be equivalent and consequential to the origin, and it is.
Dr. James–
Your comment points out the possible need for another discussion. I think all of us here affirm the inerrancy of Scripture. But what of our interpretive approaches? Individual hermeneutics are NOT inerrant. Calvinists are NOT inerrant. Traditionalists are NOT inerrant. Arminians are NOT inerrant. Baptists are NOT inerrant. The Bible IS inerrant.
You point to “subtlety and profundity of meaning,” and rightly so. If the effect is going to be “equivalent and consequential to the origin,” as you point out, then we somehow have to bring our conversation around to what the text says and what effect it has in our daily lives, do we not?
This, to me, seems to be a bit lacking in our current “tit-for-tat” discussion on Calvinism/Traditionalism. There is wrangling over words and definitions (I personally was accused of trying to redefine “total depravity” because my understanding of it wasn’t in line with the other individual’s definition–which, of course, led to him tossing me into the “semi-Pelagian” basket), but how are we approaching the text as a whole? If I come with a theological presupposition to which you don’t adhere, then I may come away with a much different meaning, may I not?
To bring it back to the issue at hand, then, when we demand adherence to the inerrant Bible, are we calling for “protecting” our own viewpoint, or are we willing to listen and heed the “prophetic” voice which comes from a group in which I may have no interest? As I read the NT, that seems to have been a problem for the Pharisees, the Sadducees, the Judaizers, the Gnostics, etc. Paul himself stated that there were those who “proclaim Christ out of envy and strife” (Phil. 1:15), but he rejoiced in the fact that “Christ is proclaimed” (Phil. 1:18).
Maybe one of our blog posters would be willing to undertake such a monumental task. I wouldn’t know where to begin……
Careful now! The evil liberals at the old SEBTS taught that to take the Bible literally is to take it as the writers meant for it to be taken.
John
To say, the Bible is inerrant but the interpreters are not is to say, no such Bible exists as no such Bible exists unless it is interpreted by somebody.
Inerrancy, for me is most useful as an ideal to strive for and a practical guide to use to approach that ideal–as in the Chicago Statement.
Inerrancy is both a concept, and an interpretive scheme it seems to me.
was ‘inerrancy’ first proposed to shore up ‘literal’ only interpretations of sacred Scripture . . . or, if parts of sacred Scripture were to be read in ways other than literal, WHO was to decide inerrantly WHAT parts were not to be taken literally?
my current thought is that ‘inerrancy’ was proposed by those who were concerned about interpretations that were different from their own, sometimes shockingly different . . .
but I never understood who got to make the call about what parts of Scripture were to be read ‘literally’ and what parts were not . . .
anyone out there with some info who can share? Thanks if you will.
No, inerrancy was first “propsed” when God declared His word to be inerrant. Israel and the early church recognized when scripture spoke, God spoke and that it was true, free of any error whatsoever, and authoritative.
The Chicago Statement says:
“Article XVIII
We affirm that the text of Scripture is to be interpreted by grammatico-historical exegesis, taking account of its literary forms and devices, and that Scripture is to interpret Scripture.
We deny the legitimacy of any treatment of the text or quest for sources lying behind it that leads to relativizing, dehistoricizing, or discounting its teaching, or rejecting its claims to authorship.”
Interpretation is open to fallibility. To say that the Bible is inerrant is to say that God’s Word is infallible. To say that interpretations are not inerrant is to recognize that human beings are involved. No one has a corner on the Biblical interpretation market. I’m not going to claim to get it right all the time, and I still have much to learn.
I appreciate the reference, DALE. Thanks for helping.
Christiane:
A good, simple introduction to the process of interpretation is “Living by the Book” by Howard and William Hendricks. Another is “How to Read the Bible for All Its Worth” by Gordon Fee and Douglas Stuart. A third book (though a touch more technical it is still very understandable) is “Grasping God’s Word” by Scott Duvall. I say good and simple because they can be used to help anyone in reading and understanding the Bible, not just the person who has training in biblical languages, history, backgrounds, etc. Hope that helps.
Inerrancy is not an issue of biblical literalism. I do not read all texts as literal. I do, however, believe the Bible to be inerrant, and I think the Chicago statement is a good description of what inerrancy means. It is available online.