Why the BF&M must be a minimum rather than a maximum.
"Baptists cherish and defend religious liberty, and deny the right of any secular or religious authority to impose a confession of faith upon a church or body of churches. We honor the principles of soul competency and the priesthood of believers, affirming together both our liberty in Christ and our accountability to each other under the Word of God.
Baptist churches, associations, and general bodies have adopted confessions of faith as a witness to the world, and as instruments of doctrinal accountability. We are not embarrassed to state before the world that these are doctrines we hold precious and as essential to the Baptist tradition of faith and practice. " Taken from the preamble of the Baptist Faith and Message, 2000
Here we have it, a document of doctrinal accountability. The idea of accountability is that we maintain a sense of integrity and use methods to insure integrity. Accounting principles are used by auditors to assure integrity in books. The BF&M is used to assure integrity in doctrine. Surely at least the trustees of our institutions should display doctrinal integrity with our confessions.
It has been called a confession. As young Baptist I was taught that confession meant at least to agree. When we speak of confession of sin it has two elements, to admit and to agree. When sin is confessed we admit that we have sinned and we agree with God that it is sin. When a person confesses a statement of faith they admit the doctrine is true and they agree with the doctrine. A confessional statement is an agreement of doctrine.
The Garner motion approved at this years SBC states, “…nevertheless we further acknowledge that it is the only consensus statement of doctrinal beliefs approved by the Southern Baptist Convention…” Imperative to understanding this statement is the word consensus. Merriam Webster’s online dictionary lists two definitions for the word consensus. 1. General agreement:UNANIMITY and 2. group solidarity in sentiment and belief. Using these definitions we have approved a document, a consensus document, and a document that is a document of group solidarity in sentiment and belief and is therefore a minimum.
This post is not arguing the issue of whether the document should be used as a maximum when dealing with convention matters. I am only arguing here that it must be used as a minimum for our trustees.
Are there issues in the BF&M that do not require agreement? That is a matter for the convention to decide, not an individual. I believe the convention has decided with the adoption of the Garner motion. A consensus statement of doctrinal belief.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
Posts
9 comments:
test
Gary,
The debate over the meaning of the Garner motion reveals a tension that has been built into the BF&M from its beginning. The BF&M2K's preamble quoted from the 1925 preamble, two points of which I will now cite: (1) "That they [confessions of faith] constitute a consensus of opinion of some Baptist body ..." and (2) "That we do not regard them [confessions of faith] as complete statements of our faith ..." Dr. Mohler's insistence that Southern would continue to go beyond the BF&M2k is due to his concerns about the second of those statements. The bloggers who instigated the Garner motion are concerned about the first of those statements. The real question is what our agencies are to do in those areas where the BF&M does not speak directly. And what are they going to do when reactions within the SBC indicate that perhaps there is not the consensus that they think they have. The Executive Committee could do us all a favor by coming up with some sort of process for working this out.
I read the definitions several times and could not find where they led to either a maximum or a minimum "quality" for the BFM. In the last two paragraphs of the post, are you saying that the BFM should be signed without "hedging" by trustees or is it a minimum position that trustees should start from when administrations of entities propose rules and restrictions?
I helped write policy for my church. The test that every policy got was "would I know what to do or what would happen when [some past or hypothetical event] came up, based on this policy." If the answer was "no" then we worked on the policy some more. I feel that neither the Garner motion nor your post passes this test.
Personally I have found that Baptists had a unique, efficient and supportive system (the cooperative program) for many years, but they are no longer the only one who has one. There are now numerous systems and organizations (many as efficient, ethical and committed as ours) through which Christians can serve our God. One of my children worked for 11 years for one of them. This was a strain for me at first because I was so committed to the system of the cooperative program--but I got used to it and came to appreciate the advantages that it provided. Again, personally, I really don't care what criteria any Baptist organization cares to burden itself with--if they are up-front about the requirements. One should never go to the IMB expecting to be appointed a missionary and be turned down. The hoops that you have to jump through should be so clear that any who would fail to pass cleanly could move on to an organization that would welcome them.
However, if you get most of your money and [even more importantly] your purpose from the convention, then the convention should have the ability to control your doctrinal policies and rules. The SBC seems to have found that it may not have any effective way to really do this--and thus the Garner motion may be the start of an effort to assert some control.
Bennett Willis
Bennett, welcome to LifeEveryday.
The point I am intending to make is that the BF&M has been adopted as an instrument of doctrinal accountability and has been approved as a consensus document. As such a document, we should only elect trustees to govern our institutions who are in agreement with our doctrinal accountability statement. If one chooses to cooperate with the SBC knowing they disagree with certain doctrinal parameters, that is their prerogative. It is also one that many of us exercise with other organizations from time to time.
Your second paragraph deals with organizational policy. According to Baptist polity, our trustee boards are responsible with their agency heads to develop policy. The Garner motion asserts that the BF&M 2000 is to be the guide that assists them in developing policy. In itself, that motion does not say they cannot establish policy outside the parameters of the BF&M. If it had, it would have been ruled out of order on the convention floor. As a statement of faith, the BF&M is not expected to be a policy manual. To develop one policy manual for all of our agencies and institutions would not be practical.
The trustee system has served us well and protects us from radical shifts in direction due to one particular convention. It is cumbersome at times. I do believe the warning has gone out and the trustees are on notice concerning the parameters they impose. The discussion over the Garner motion is indicative of the fact that there are definitely limits to what they can impose before there is an uprising.
Thanks for a reply.
I still have the expectation that the Garner motion will be interpreted differently--because I see different interpretations being discussed in different places. Actually, I expect it to be largely ignored. If the BFM is "merely" a guide, then the Garner motion has placed no restrictions/controls/accountability because the administrations can just go ahead and do what they have been doing--what ever that is. And I think that I heard Dr. Mohler say in a loud voice that was Southern's plan. I hope that someone understands the "policy" well enough to know what should be done if/when this happens.
My feeling is becoming that many trustees have a problematic mentality on offering independent thought as a result of being too firmly identified with those who nominated them--and not adequately identified with those who elected them. It is really hard to be the only fellow voting against the rest--look at the PPL vote at Southwestern and the eventual outcome.
Anyhow, I have a conference to go to in Dallas. I'd like to be optimistic about how this is going to work out, but many of the present management did not get where they are by being gentle.
And since I've been watching this since I was in college in the early 60's, it all seems so predictable. I think that this will be my last comment along this line. Maybe I'll be wrong--and I'll try to find a nice blog to apologize on if I am. I'm going to try to just read rather than making comments--but my training gets in the way. :)
(I'm going to hate it when school starts and I have to make comments on student papers rather than blogs. :))
Have a good day.
Bennett Willis
Bennett:
Keep commenting.
Bennett,
You are absolutely correct in seeing the way the motion is being interpreted. The focus has been on whether it is binding and whether it is a maximum. I would like to see the conversation include interpreting it as a minimum as well. I am under the impression that many if not most Southern Baptist expect the nominating committee to bring trustee candidates who agree with the BF&M without reservation. I have been surprised to discover that some of our trustees disagree with out statement of faith now called a consensus document.
I agree with Joe, don't stop commenting. Now is the time for Southern Baptist to speak their minds and the blogs are giving opportunity.
I visited Boyd Luter's blog this morning. He was contrasting the SBC meeting in SA and a Promise Keeper's meeting there. [http://boydluter.wordpress.com/] He makes the point that PK stays together because they focus on what their shared objective is—despite the wide doctrinal range of the participants. And their leadership is helps this work because this is the goal of the organization—and because they are humble. (Not quite what Boyd said, but bent to fit this comment. :))
I have problems with "over specifying" things and I feel that we have clearly moved in that direction. If you go back to geometry, you will recall that 2 points specify (determine) a line. If you insist that three points be involved, you are almost certainly specifying a circle as the likelihood that all three lie perfectly on the line is really low.
I worked in a strange little department when I first hired into industry. I became convinced over the years that if we just described ourselves perfectly to people who were being interviewed for jobs that we would not have to make any decisions on potential employees. Those who would fit would beg to work there and those who would not certainly would not want to work there. I think that seminaries do this same thing with their students (or certainly should)—just describe yourself and let the students select the place they fit. But I also feel that students should be exposed to different points of view—sincerely presented. This will do one of two things for the student’s beliefs on the point. Either they will really understand why they believe what they believe or they will change their mind to some degree—and understand why. Both are useful in the long term and I feel that both are being actively restricted within the SBC.
I recognize that you have to have some benchmarks of doctrine for a denomination or a professor, but you also have to have some degrees of freedom. There is no perfect solution but “signing” stuff just seems so non-Baptist to my tradition—or maybe it is just my ignorance of what really goes on. Anyhow, I come down on the side of a minimal document approach for the BFM (and feel that there are a few things that don’t belong in there that are in there already). Usually by the time you are hiring a person for seminary professor there is a paper trail that should clearly show the individual’s philosophy.
So all you have to do is to be sure that the people on the hiring committee actually read what the interviewee has written. :) But you have to be willing to live with the occasional “light bulb moment” that comes with experience—or deal with it when it happens.
Bennett Willis
Post a Comment