SBC Theologians

Please read this by Michael Spencer (Internet Monk) on Who Let the Theologians in Here? (The SBC, that is.)    What do you think?  You need to read the whole post to get his point, but here's a blurb...

The growing "theologian class" in the SBC has very few places to go. They must make their own mischief. Once the seminaries and colleges are in conservative hands, then we can expect the theological battles to move "in-house." Watch for more doctrinal contention about matters less than crucial to the mission of church. Watch for "theological renewal" to take on more and more the cast of predictable "theological battles" between various teams in evangelicalism. Watch for the conservative resurgence to increasingly sound like a lot of young preacher boys arguing about Calvinism. (Around Louisville, it already does. With a liberal Presbyterian Seminary across the road, it's SBTS that is turning out preachers of TULIP.)

Watch for one strange turn. The new SBC theologians are culture warriors. They want to "engage" the culture, but what they mean is to assert conservative Christianity in the cultural battleground issues. These issues motivate many pastors and churches because they are "red meat" issues. Backed up by Dobson and the new evangelical media, the theological class is writing less about Baptist views of the church and more about fundamentalist views of the culture war.

Many of these theologians work hard to function as pundits of political and social concerns. These theologians will lead the church full speed into the culture wars....with little interest in how this will affect the overall mission of the church. And there is no denying that it is difficult to fight the culture war on one hand, and be focused on missional vision at the same time. Theology and mission are interwoven, but the negative, "fighting mode" vision of the culture warriors grows churches by bringing in the like-minded: White, suburban, Republican families.

Comments

[David Wilson]

Then imagine yourself in a church a few hundred yards from the largest Air Force base in America. :) It's all I can do to not turn every holiday into Kate Smith worship. So reading that post gave me the heebee jeebees.

It'll just put up another set of barriers we'll have to work hard to knock down with relationships.

Example: Dr. Dobson v Sponge Bob. (I know, not really) The early AFA response emails caused some in our church to want me to "get tough" on homosexuality. Then ouu outreach - reached out and we met a young woman who is a lesbian. She's visited several times, including a Bible study where we were studying Genesis - yes, that night Lot offered his daughters. :) But we've reached out with grace, loved her as she is, and continue to do so.

The climate cooled as hearts warmed to a person they knew. The new "theologians" don't see people. So it's up to the forgotten local pastors and people to show Christ.

[Big Chris]

White Suburban Republican Families need God too.

Big Chris
Because I said so

[Makrothumeo]

I think the author makes a bogus distinction...while "it is difficult to fight the culture war on one hand, and be focused on missional vision at the same time," to say we can't or shouldn't do both is ridiculous. I am the pastor of an independent Baptist Church, and I would simply say that through the power of the Holy Spirit, we have to win the "culture war" every day -- we are losing an entire generation because we have over-focused on "missional vision" and have sacrificed our children to the battles in the culture wars we haven't bothered to fight.

Churches are dying because we're not engaging the enemy...instead we're following Rick Warren and others with "missional vision" into the "seeker friendly" morass of touchy-feely anti-theology.

[Steve McCoy]

Makrothumeo, please define "missional" for me. Please explain how having a "missional vision" would sacrifice our children. It doesn't seem to me that you understand that word.

[Makrothumeo]

My understanding of "missional" is the mission of the church...to reach out with the gospel of Jesus Christ, to make disciples and to baptize (Matt. 28:18-20)...if you have some different definition, then I apologize for the comment....And if you read my comment, I DIDN'T say having a missional vision sacrifices children--I said we have "sacrificed our children to the battles in the culture wars we haven't bothered to fight."

[Steve McCoy]

I read your comment, and you are obviously tying together missionality (over-focused) and sacrificing our children. Right? Missional is deeper than you understand it. It is the idea that we are the mission, mission is not just one of the things we do. So how can we over-focus on something that is a part of our identity as sent out people?

By the way, I've been to your blog(s) and it looks like a right-wing blog. It's like Michelle Malkin without the same writing quality. I don't think that Jesus would be so clearly proclaiming his affiliation with a political ideology if He were alive today. Do you?

[Makrothumeo]

Yes I do.

[Steve McCoy]

Wow.

Your approach is one reason the SBC and the rest of evangelicalism is having little cultural impact. We think that scolding the culture is fighting a "culture war." I think Jesus was creating an alternative culture to the rest of the world, not finding one that looks the "most biblical" and then sycretizing with it. Whether you think so or not, that's what you are doing. Your site shows anger toward "liberals" and I want to love them even when I strongly disagree with them. We can't love them to Christ while we point our finger in their face.

I heard a speaker say, "It does no good to give someone a rose right after you have cut the nose off their face."

[Benji Ramsaur]

OK, OK, OK,.....Steve, you have got to help me understand where in the world you guys are coming from. Does being missional mean that all Christians should see themselves as missionaries and not just people who are commonly called missionaries? Is being incarnational another way of saying that we should be "loving" when we reach out to the lost?

What is so unique about the terms "missional" and "incarnational" that you guys feel the need to use them?

To be honest, you guys are scaring me a little bit when it comes to your talk about "scolding the culture". If what you mean is someone who speaks hard words to the culture out of a self-righteousness, then that would be wrong. But are you guys going to say that someone is scolding the culture if they speak with any kind of "edge" to the culture?

[iMonk]

Benji...scolding the culture might have something to do with this: 1 Corinthians 5:12 - 6:1 12 For what have I to do with judging outsiders? Is it not those inside the church whom you are to judge? 13 God judges those outside. "Purge the evil person from among you."

What have I do to do with judging outsiders? Written to a church that was rife with immorality of every kind.

The church isn't to scold the culture. It is to be a counter culture.

Read this post I wrote on how Paul responded to homosexuality in his culture. It's mostly scripture.

http://www.internetmonk.com/archives/2005/01/019839.html

[iMonk]

Error in the above post: Written to a CULTURE that was rife with immorality.

[Steve McCoy]

First of all, I can't speak for anyone else. This is my site. So "you guys" doesn't really work here. :)

Every evangelical church talks about mission, but all of us should be missionAL, meaning where we see every one of us on mission all the time. Mission is thought of as one thing the church does, not its identity. Missional gets back to that, and defines a missing element. So it's just biblical living.

Incarnational is similar. It's living in the culture in order to work redemption. In our churches we often think of our mission as bringing people in, or maybe meeting them at the park. Missional-incarnational is getting our hand dirty in the culture in order to live with the people so that they can know Christ. The institutional church says stay out of bars because people get drunk there. The incarnational church says there are people needing redemption in bars, let's meet them there and build a relationship and bring redemption in their life.

Something like that.

I don't have time to explain where the line is in "scolding the culture", but the guy I've been discussing with is scolding the culture. I've read enough of his sites to know.

I won't be responding for a few days, so take your time if you want to discuss more.

[Benji Ramsaur]

Sorry about the "you guys" thing.

[Matt]

I had a post on this but I can't get my trackbacks to work.

Essentially we shouldn't scold the culture. And it's one thing for a parachurch organization to work on political/social issues, but when local churches do it, I think it hurts the Gospel.

[Joe Thorn]

The point is not that the church should stay out of social issues, but should speak to those issues redemptively.

[Steve McCoy]

I won't have access to the net for 4 days, so here's my last shot. I think Joe has it exactly right. And the fact we call it a culture WAR tells me we don't speak to social issues redemptively.

[iMonk]

Someone at the iMonk site just posted a comment to this pience indicating that he thinks I am hostile to the people at the Younger Leaders Summit and the emerging SBC mindset.

Duh...uh...what?

Let me be clear. (If that's possible.) The "theologians class" who are leading the charge into the Dobson-style culture war are in the mold of Mohler, Caner, etc, NOT in the mold of Joe Thorn or Steve McCoy or the other younger, missional leaders.

I mean, "Justice Sunday" and other culture-war scolding rallies are certainly not happening in emerging churches.

If I can clarify further, write me at michaelATinternetmonkDOTcom.

[Benji Ramsaur]

Steve,

Thank you for your clarification. It is very helpful.

[Matt]

Random thought in relation to iMonk's post. If there had been no 9/11 or Iraq War, would anyone care about what Ergin Caner has to say?

[Joe Thorn]

"...the major role of the church in relation to the great issues of justice and peace will not be in its formal pronouncement but in its continually nourishing and sustaining men and women who will act responsibly as believers in the course of their secular duties as citizens. There will indeed be occasions when the church acting corporately through its appointed leaders will have to remind those who hold power that they are responsible for all their actions to the one who sits at the right hand of God, and to warn them when they pursue policies manifestly contrary to his revealed nature and will. But these pronouncements will lack authority if they are not reflected in the activities of believers from day to day in their secular involvement."
Leslie Newbigin, The Gospel in a Pluralist Society pg. 139

[WC]

It is because we have not engaged the cultural battle that we have to fight back. Conservatives in the Christian World have moved in-house and have not stood up and engaged the Culture, so now when we do we are looked upon as freaks. I agree with what the seminaries are doing. There is no other way for us to stand up, then to have the people trained who will be able to make educated arguments in the media and on the different campuses around the country. Socially we have allowed the country to move to the left. Now that our churches are as well, we look just like the society. We have many churches that were once conservative are now allowing for homosexuals to be the pastors. Is this what we want?
Having in-house debates on Predestination and free will are annoying, but are they really all that bad if they are kept in perspective. If the church can debate with each other in a responsible way, then we can engage the culture in a responsible way.

[James]

First, I think that many Evangelicals are failing to grasp that fact that we do not live in a "Christian nation." They point to our heritage, etc., and want to "reclaim" it for our modern society. Quite frankly, whether or not you believe the Founding Fathers were Christians or Deists or whatever, it doesn't matter. We aren't living in the 1700s any longer. In the here and now, we must be salt and light in our nation (which is wicked). Being salt and light means living our lives under the authority of God and doing all things for His glory. It means building relationships with others so that they might hear and see the reality of the Gospel through us.

Second, how interested were the Lord Jesus and the Apostles interested in fighting the "culture wars"? They fought them, not through political maneuvering and boycotting and so forth, but through living and proclaiming the Gospel.

[James]

"Churches are dying because we're not engaging the enemy...instead we're following Rick Warren and others with 'missional vision' into the 'seeker friendly' morass of touchy-feely anti-theology."

So, who is the enemy we are to engage?
How is this enemy to be engaged?
Is 'missional vision' 'anti-theology,' or is it based upon the theology of the Incarnation of Jesus Christ?

[Benji Ramsaur]

James,

I'm not saying that you don't have a point, but it seems as if you are not taking into account the major difference(s) between the government of Jesus and the Apostles day and our own.

Does anybody think that we should merely evangelize the lost and not seek to change bad social structures through the political process?

[James]

Benji:

Is it the role of the Church to seek social alteration through political means?

I don't believe it is. The role of the Church is to seek social alteration through spiritual means, namely, the Gospel.

Should we, as citizens, seek to influence the decisions of our government? Yes. Should we be guided by the commands and teachings of Scripture in these areas? Certainly! But, again, we should do this as private citizens.

When the Church seeks to change society through polls and politics she has left her mission.

[Benji Ramsaur]

James,

No, it is not "the" role of the church.

Politics can become too much of an emphasis in the church.

Can you elaborate some on what you mean by influencing the political sphere as "private citizens" in distinction from influencing it as the church?