Baptist Press is reporting on a meeting of “SBC Conservatives” led by Kent Cochran, with about 20 people in attendance. I have no idea who was there (the details of the meeting were kept secret and attendees names withheld). I would make the following observations and points.
1) The beauty of the SBC is that anyone can meet and can express their opinions. We are a free church/free convention. They let Wiley Drake speak about 500 times yesterday. In reality, for all the talk by groups on all sides of being marginalized, no one in the SBC is marginalized. Become a messenger, come to the convention and bring a majority of messengers with you and you win your point.
2) Why is this news?
I am guessing there were a lot of meetings of 20 people or more going on all over the convention, none of which was reported on by BP. Why did this meeting get reported on? I was involved in a dinner party last year which had almost this many people, but BP was completely silent about it.
3) I resent a little bit their self-designation as “SBC Conservatives.” I am SBC and I’m about a half a tick left of fundamentalist. I don’t even know what they were trying to organize or what their goals are, but the name annoys me a little, because it seems to imply that if we aren’t on their side, we aren’t conservative.
4) They have opened a website, “SB Conservative Resurgences 2” (not sure why the double plural is used – perhaps that is a typo that will eventually be corrected), but there is not a name attached in any way. We have no idea who these people are, except for Kent Conrad. There is a phone number and an address.
Again, the implication here is that those who disagree with them are not really conservatives, but are trying to reverse the course of the CR. That is simply not true. While there may be a few closet moderates hiding among us, you could not ask for any clearer assurances of a commitment to inerrancy than the one given by Bryant Wright in his presidential address, or those by other leaders.
To imply that those who have stylistic differences with the traditionalist Southern Baptists are secretly trying to turn us away from our core commitments to inerrancy and sound doctrine is unfair and unworthy of those who were involved.
I won’t have time to do it, but I would love to hear what info you can get through the phone number if someone wants to call and report back.
5) The motion they made died a quick and painless death, being referred to the Committee on Order of business and then immediately ruled out of order because the EC is already doing what they requested.
6) My guess is that very little will come of this group and it will likely be forgotten in a few weeks. Maybe I will be wrong. It won’t be the first time.
I would LOVE to hear from someone who participated in the group and get a counterpoint here. In fact, I would love to publish a follow up article by a participant in the group explaining the purposes of this group.
Again, they have every right to do what they have done. We have every right to oppose it. That is what being Baptist is all about.
