In 1979 the Southern Baptist Convention (SBC) began making a sharp theological turn to the right. For those who called themselves theologically moderate, this turn was tantamount to a fundamentalist takeover of the denomination they loved. The takeover was accomplished by the continual election of conservative leaders to the SBC presidency and the power of the SBC president to make appointments. Eventually, the six SBC seminaries were headed by conservative leaders, and moderates were removed. The process took over a decade, but by 1990 moderates had made the decision that some new missions organization was necessary. The outcome of that decision was the Cooperative Baptist Fellowship (CBF).
In the beginning, the CBF thought of itself as a moderate organization. The CBF’s leaders did not think of the new leaders of the SBC as conservatives, they thought of them as fundamentalists. In fact, while the denominational struggle was being waged in North Carolina, CBF leaning thinkers tried to change the terms of the debate by using new labels for the disparate parties. They tried to call the conservatives “fundamentalist-conservatives” and tried to call themselves “moderate-conservatives.” The labels did not take. “Moderate” became the theological description of the CBF.
The CBF became a very innovative organization. It chose not to own its own seminaries but instead chose to partner with free-standing seminaries and university-based divinity schools. Partnership rather than ownership was an important principle of the CBF. As a friend of mine likes to say it, the CBF has “no ecclesial real estate.” Importantly the CBF choose to see itself not as a denomination but a partnership, a fellowship, of like-minded congregations. The CBF saw itself as the servant of congregations, no their master. All of these innovations have my enthusiastic support.
The CBF also did not make a theological confession central to who they were. This decision made perfect sense at the time. They had just been burned by theological debates. Many of their leaders had been misquoted and maligned over theological differences real and imagined. Moderates had witnessed the terrible treatment of people like Russel Dilday and Karen Bullock and had no desire to repeat them. So, the CBF decided to keep its list of theological statements small. The only real theological issue the CBF was connected to was the role of women in ministry. The CBF supported women in ministry fully at every level. The CBF, however, did not produce a confession of faith.
The decision to not produce a shared confession of faith had consequences that are now emerging as the CBF’s leadership has fully embraced progressive theological thought. I am aware that many will disagree with my statement so let me explain. First, I do not come to this conclusion easily or lightly. I have been involved with the CBF from the beginning of my time in ministry. I have earned two graduate degrees from CBF partner schools, and have served in congregations with CBF connections. CBF has been a part of my life since 1996, even my closest ministerial friends are all CBF. The CBF is my family, describing them in this way is difficult for me. Secondly, I do not come to this conclusion alone. None other than Roger Olson of Truett Theological Seminary has encouraged many within the CBF to stop using the “moderate” label. Lest you think this is hasty, Olson was making this argument 5 years ago.
While I would argue that the CBF has been leaning left for some time, 2018 was a watershed moment. The “Illumination Project” was designed to find a way to hold to unity and face the issues of human sexuality, particularly those presented by the LGBTQ community. The project removed the CBF hiring ban on practicing homosexuals and expanded the roles homosexuals could have in the CBF. The report was not well received by moderates or progressives. For moderates, the report represented a shift away from traditional orthodoxy. For progressives, the report did not go far enough. Some progressives began conversations about leaving the CBF. No move toward their position, short of full inclusion, was enough. What progressives have undervalued is that the Illumination Report gives no theological reason to avoid hiring gay missionaries, only practical ones. The chief reason listed for not moving to full inclusion was that CBF’s ministry partners would recoil. Implicit is that when the resistance by the ministry partners recedes, full inclusion would happen. So, theologically, the Illumination Report is fully supportive of LGBTQ clergy and missionaries if only implicitly. This position is not moderate, it is progressive.
Shortly after the Illumination Report’s release, Suzi Paynter, the director of the CBF retired. In her place, Paul Baxley was hired. Baxley was the Senior Pastor of First Baptist Church Athens, GA and was on the committee that produced the Illumination Report. Further, Baxley’s church and Baxley himself supported the ordination of gays. It is difficult to call this a moderate position. While I recognize that there are many who do not share the Baxley’s position on this issue and the Executive Director does not speak for the CBF or all of its churches on this or any other issue, the elevation of someone with Baxley’s theological commitments is not something a moderate organization would do.
Further, this is a marked shift from CBF’s roots. In the beginning, the CBF was accused of being pro-gay. It was one of the epithets hurled at the organization by uncharitable critics. In fact, one such critic was busy connecting CBF leaders to pro-gay thinkers through mutual acquaintances and boards. The critic was roundly denounced for practicing “guilt by association.” It is a profound curiosity how a denomination who considered it slanderous to be connected to pro-gay groups just 25 years ago has moved toward inclusion now. If the CBF’s position 25 years ago was a moderate one, what is the position now? The only word is progressive.
David Gushee, a Baptist ethicist at Mercer University, said “Over these 25 years, CBF life has produced far fewer leaders and people who could be described as evangelicals or moderate-conservative Baptists, and far more who could be described as something like mainline Protestants. . . The CBF has become an uneasy coalition of moderates (who, it must be again remembered, were labeled moderate-conservatives back in the day) and real-life liberals. The latter are mainly, though not exclusively, younger, and among the clergy, most are products of the new Baptist seminaries.”[1] In effect, the youth, energy, and, therefore, the future of the CBF are progressive. Despite letters assuring moderates that they still have a future in the CBF,[2] I’m not so sure. I think moderates will be welcome to participate in CBF, but its leadership, direction, most of the seminaries and boards it supports will continue to trend left, and moderates will begin to fell most unwelcome in those places.
As a moderate, this concerns me greatly, and I have been thinking about how to proceed for many months. As I have thought about the issue, I have tried to think of models, people who have faced similar circumstances, and follow their lead.
The first model to consider is what I like to call the Cecil Sherman option. Cecil Sherman was the founding coordinator of the CBF. Sherman, from what I can tell, did not intend to start a new denomination. He intended to fight the rising tide of fundamentalism in the SBC. The fight was unsuccessful. I met Sherman once. He was visiting Cullowhee Baptist Church in the early days of the struggle. As I recall the meeting, Sherman described his strategy. At first, the strategy was to simply protest. Congregations would send money to Atlanta. The money would be delayed for 30 days and then be sent to the SBC. The effect would be minimal but would register a protest against the denomination.[3] The SBC finally stopped receiving the money, and it led to the birth of the CBF. While Sherman’s strategy is interesting, I’m not convinced it would be effective in these circumstances. Just as Sherman’s strategy did not stop the SBC from becoming fundamentalist, using his strategy here is unlikely to prevent the progressive drift of the CBF. In fact, moderates not participating will likely only hasten the pace of the progressive drift because the leadership of the CBF will then have to be more responsive to its leftward drifting core. Even if successful, the Sherman option has the potential to cause a schism. Any schism reflects negatively on the Christ we serve and the name of Baptists. We don’t need that.
Another model I have pondered is what I like to call the Donald Bloesch model. Bloesch was a member of the United Church of Christ (UCC). The UCC, a Mainline Protestant denomination, began its leftward shift during the last century and is among the most progressive denominations in the United States. Bloesch disagreed profoundly with the direction of the UCC. He did not leave, however. He remained in the denomination. He focused on producing solid, scholarly, orthodox research, and worked within the denomination to resist the progressive pull. If one were to measure Bloesch’s success or failure by the ability to keep his denomination from continuing its progressive trajectory, Bloesch was unsuccessful. While his scholarly work and efforts are in themselves excellent, he was not able to keep the progressive voices in the UCC from their ascendancy.
I do not have a better name for the third option than the Paul Pressler option. I wish I did because the mere mention of his name in moderate circles rightly raises hackles. Those familiar with SBC history note that Pressler put together a strategy for the takeover of the SBC in the 1970s. Following the Pressler strategy would be to plan, organize, and execute a correction of the CBF. The Pressler option requires a group of loyalists and organizational genius. Frankly, if moderates could have organized a good BBQ they would not have lost the SBC, but that is another story. Personally, I am weary of denominational fights. They just give a black eye to the Gospel. I am also dubious as to the success of the Pressler option. I think the Pressler option is best left behind.
Then there is what I term the Baptist option, just leave. It is a running joke among Baptists that when we disagree we divide. It happens entirely too frequently on the local church level, but it is a fact that Baptists frequently disagree and divide. So why not just leave? It is much more complicated than that. If moderates were to leave, where would they go? Surely not the SBC. If one were to pursue the just leave option how would they fund missionaries or seminaries? Who would be responsible for the tasks denominations—or denomination like entities—normally accomplish? Further what would be the effect of at the local church level? Would it not cause great harm? The question is not so easily answered.
Of course, one could always do nothing. To do nothing, however, is essentially to give in to the progressive drift of the CBF. Doing nothing is saying that one is not comfortable with the direction, but is willing to do nothing for the sake of comfort. Finally, however, that strategy ends in tacitly agreeing with the direction.
Effectively, none of these options work. All of these options, however, share a similar flaw. They are organizational or institutional in outlook. What if the best option to pursue was not organizational or institutional but confessional. I think the best option is what I will call the Edwin Friedman option. Rabbi Edwin Freidman was an organizational thinker using family systems theory to describe how leadership is best done in congregational life. In his work, Generation to Generation, Friedman teaches that when anxiety emerges in a congregational setting the best thing the leader can do is get up and give an “I Have a Dream” speech. The leader’s speech should be full of “I believe” statements. The ability to say “I believe” in the face of others’ unrelenting “you must believe” is the hallmark of a good leader. In effect, I have concluded that the understandable instinct of the nascent CBF to make very limited theological anchor points was a mistake.
So, rather than organizational thinking, I am arguing for a theological statement on what moderates believe. The very name moderate points to the reality of our problem. Moderate is simply a middle point between two poles: fundamentalist and progressive. The problem is that those poles are not necessarily fixed. When one of them shifts, do moderates have to shift in order to maintain an equal distance between the poles? That kind of rootless existence is a road to nowhere.
To avoid the progressive direction of the CBF and a rootless existence, I will spell out some theological touchpoints for moderate life in my next article. While I cannot speak for all moderates, I hope to generate conversations about shared convictions about a way forward.
Until next time Grace and Peace.
[1]David Gushee, Still Christian, 112-113.
[2]See https://baptistnews.com/article/letter-to-the-editor-centrists-in-moderate-baptist-life-have-little-reason-to-worry/#.XhYsmi2ZPBI
[3]I am reconstructing Sherman’s strategy based on my memories of his discussion. If I am mistaken in detail, I would gladly be corrected.
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