Weight of the Garner Motion

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.