Brewing Battle

Christianity Today has a short article recapping the situation with Missouri Baptists: Brewing Battle.  Nothing terribly new or informative to those who have been keeping up, but concise with some helpful external links at the end for those needing to catch up.

The policy addresses an ongoing SBC debate. Baptists have championed alcohol abstinence since the late 1800s, but a growing number want the SBC to reexamine the issue, said Timothy George, dean of Beeson Divinity School.

"There is growing discontent, people saying that we shouldn't be mandating things that aren't spoken clearly about in Scripture," George said. "It's hard to argue that the Bible requires total abstinence."

Comments

[Matthew]

Thanks for this, Steve. I admit that I have dropped out of this particular "conversation" for quite some time...

[G. F. McDowell]

Wasn't there a Reformation nearly 490 years ago about whether the church's authrority should be scripture or tradition?

MBC Executive director David Tolliver in the article is quoted as saying, "We need to engage the culture, but without compromising our biblical, traditional Baptist values," [bold mine]

What if our traditions aren't biblical? What if they are not only teachings not found in scripture, what if they actually contradict scripture?

Tolliver finishes out the quote with a remarkably postmodern statement:
"For me, that includes abstinence from alcohol." [bold mine]
For a state convention that is ready to dissociate with Acts 29 for its alleged postmodernism and close association with McLaren and the Emergent "conversation," MBC's executive director sure talks like a postmodern man. Apparently what is true "for him" is different from what is true "for me". What happened to Sola Scriptura, or the regulative principle, for that matter?

[Justin Vance]

ah... seems the MBC folks will have to choose between making themselves vulnerable by being open to changing their sacred "bi-laws" and such to closer follow both culture relevance and scripture or stay in step with the "country club" because "that's just the way we've always done it..."

maybe the SBC will follow suit...

[jeremy bouma]

What irritates me about this whole drama isn’t so much that “traditional Baptist values” exclude alcoholic consumption so much as those exclusive, value preferences are placed within a “biblicalness” that far surpasses what is biblical. And more so, this tradition and preference is completely acontextual and wholly unhelpful in reaching the "Other."

Prefer alcoholic abstinence if you must, MBC/SBC. But please, please do not equate traditional, value preferences with Scripture. And please, please keep your grubby dogmatic hands off of missional, gospel enterprises that desire to reach people outside of the sterile, drooping walls of the Churchianity!

[Justin Vance]

Well said, sir...

[F. Turk (centuri0n)]

Steve:

I want Beer Goggles like the ones in your photo overthere. Pure Genius.