Brand New Packaging!

Southern Baptists attempt to save denomination by going incognito

The webpage of Louisburg Southern Baptist Church reads: “We are still SBC; we still believe in inerrancy; we still cherish our seminaries and mission bodies: We changed our name from Louisburg Southern Baptist Church to Eastside Church of the Cross.”

What happened in Louisburg, Kansas is not an anomaly, but a growing trend.

Wikipedia describes the trend this way: A recent trend (most common among megachurches and those embracing the "seeker movement") is to eliminate "Baptist" from the church name, as it is perceived to be a "barrier" to reaching persons who have negative views of Baptists, whether they be of a different church background or none. These churches typically include the word "Community" or other non-religious or denominational terms in their church name.

Why are the Southern Baptists suddenly reluctant to use their own name? Simply put, it’s a marketing decision. The Southern Baptist Convention (SBC) has been embroiled in controversy and declining in membership for the last decade. The longstanding doctrine of church autonomy and personal autonomy (known as soul competency) has been replaced with social and political messages of intolerance and top-down Catholic-style micromanagement.

Take, for example, the issue of women in the pastorate. While the SBC has always had issues with sexism, individual churches were historically allowed to call their own pastors. As a result, many SBC churches were led by women in the 70’s, 80’s and 90’s.

In the year 2000, SBC leadership pulled out all the stops to eliminate these women. Married missionaries were forced to sign a statement recognizing the husbands as the true missionaries while the wives were just their underlings; couples who refused lost their funding. The SBC also stripped female chaplains of endorsement – but only those who were ordained. Although the SBC banned female pastors nine years ago, at this late date the purge continues with attacks on First Baptist Church of Decatur, pastored by Julie Pennington-Russell. FBC Decatur has been warned that unless they fire their pastor, they will be ousted from the Georgia Baptist Convention.

As a response to this religious fascism by the SBC, the Cooperative Baptist Fellowship (CBF) began to grow. The CBF is not a convention like the SBC. Emphasizing the freedom of every church and every individual, the CBF commits not to exercise creedal or papal authority over the network of churches that fund and endorse the organization. Many local churches, including First Baptist Church of Ringgold and First Baptist Church of Chattanooga, split their funding between the two organizations, allowing individual church members to designate which one they prefer to support.

Other churches pulled out of the SBC entirely – including the First Baptist Church of Greenville, S.C., whose founder William B. Johnson was the first president of the SBC in 1845 and is considered the father of the denomination. Pastor Harvey Clemons explained the church’s break with the SBC this way: “After about 150 years of the Southern Baptist Convention having unity in diversity, it's become a fundamentalist organization, more concerned with creedalism and politics, and we're not. When they added the statement to the Baptist Faith and Message about submissive women, it was just one more in a long series of incidents.”

Attempts at reviving the denomination include renaming old churches and misnaming new churches. Locally, north Georgia has seen the emergence of a number of misnamed Baptist churches. The Church at Catoosa may be the largest local SBC church hiding behind a non-denominational name. Although the church readily admits SBC affiliation when asked, the word “Baptist” does not appear on the website.

The newest undercover Baptist church around here is Origin Church, which uses the slogans, “For people who don’t go” and “No perfect people allowed.” Through MySpace and FaceBook, Origin stealthily targets people who have no intention of setting foot inside a Baptist church. Origin meets in the Ringgold Depot, offers free Starbucks coffee and does not use the word Baptist. Affiliation is sketchy, noticeably absent from their literature but not from the pastorate. A quick phone call receives a “yes and no” answer. They have gone back to the original Baptist message (None of us is worthy, but God loves us anyway) even as they ditch the Baptist name.

Is it really revolutionary and forward-thinking to pretend to be someone you’re not? Or, to put it more accurately, is it okay to pretend not to be someone you are? To the church-hunter who has already disavowed the Baptist denomination, it may seem like a bait-and-switch.

What’s wrong with being a Southern Baptist church? As a Nazarene, I could write a bullet list of points on which I strongly disagree with the SBC. Nevertheless, I think Southern Baptists should be proud to be Southern Baptists. If you cannot be proud of your faith, either disavow it or reform it. Don’t pretend to be above it, burying the truth somewhere down in your fine print.

The Bible tells us that by faith, our father Abraham was able to “call the things that were not as though they were.” It never says to call the things that were, as if they weren’t.

What I love best about Baptists is their humility. As a writer with a deep interest in religion and a healthy dose of skepticism, I have criticized many organizations and denominations in print. The Catholics ignore me; apparently I have not made the Pope’s radar. The Mormons threaten my business. The racists threaten my person. The Baptists inevitably respond with, “Wow, you are so right” and “I’m going to preach about this Sunday.”

This humility is what makes Baptists unique in the land. Their religious language for it is “the total depravity of man.” They read the same Bible I read, but their emphasis is a little different. They focus on the distance between God and humans – our complete inability to ever get it right. We can never reach God in the heavens; yet God reached down to us, becoming one of us and dying a sinner’s death.

The Baptist message is beautiful and important. I ask my Baptist friends not to lose sight of who you are, and why we need you. Give up the political agendas that don’t further your mission, but don’t give up your name. Grow out of the antiquated ideas about who is fit for ministry (because your writings teach that no one is fit, save through Christ), but don’t forget your heritage.

If you don’t like how the Baptist denomination is perceived, change the organization instead of the name. Be more inclusive. Get back to your roots and remember that no one is worthy of Christ – not even white, middle class, red-blooded, English-speaking American males who cut their teeth on the church pew. Reclaim the message and the mission that God set before you. Then you can be proud to put the Baptist name back on the signs.