Permit me, please, some time to grieve. My denominational family home of almost 30 years isn't home any more. The locks haven't been changed, but the message on the welcome mat outside the Baptist State Convention of North Carolina (BSCNC) has been changed ... again.
For years I have sat on the floor of the annual convention meeting, listening with chagrin to the hoots and hollers and catcalls of those who cheered every effort to take money from the Biblical Recorder, to exclude churches who believe God has a place for gays, to exclude Woman's Missionary Union when it refused to be controlled, to exclude opportunities for supporters of the Southern Baptist Convention (SBC) and the Cooperative Baptist Fellowship (CBF)to work side by side on equal footing.
Every step toward exclusivity has been a step toward fundamentalism as the only option for full acceptance in the BSCNC family. Fundamentalism is, by definition, convinced of its rightness and intolerant of other views.
For many years, North Carolina bucked the national trend and refused obeisance to the notion that the BSCNC should live and act as nothing more than a state chapter of the SBC. We sought to work together beneath a big tent where unity amid diversity was not only allowed, but celebrated.
Those days are gone. The hooters and hollerers have had their say and won the day. They have declared an end to the toleration of CBF supporters in their midst. They have sold their Baptist birthright for a can of spinach. Some elder statesmen of the ultra-conservative movement will express chagrin that the young pastors who spearheaded the latest debacle did not remain in their seats, but you can't train up young guns and not expect them to shoot. And, it appeared that the vast majority of the 55 percent who voted "no tolerance" for CBF were much closer to 55 than 25.
While attending this year's meeting, I wore my reporter's hat. I focused on taking notes, counting votes, snapping pictures, putting it all into a cohesive story and then getting it posted. I was focused on reporting and living on adrenaline, refusing to let the righteous rhetoric of intolerance affect my feelings or interfere with my work.
That lasted until about 4:00 a.m. the next morning, when sleep fled and I awoke with a deep sense of sadness. It endured through the day as I did what I needed to do, but with the focus of a dust cloud and the energy of a wet noodle. A sort of delayed depression set in as I began to feel what had been lost. I gained a new appreciation for Jeremiah, the weeping prophet, who predicted Judah's downfall but took no comfort in being right.
I would rather have been wrong when I predicted that someone would move to delete the CBF option from the Cooperative Program Giving Plan Committee's well-intentioned proposal. I would rather have been wrong when I predicted that the effort would succeed.
I would rather not feel the way I do, but the convention I have loved and supported for nearly 30 years has changed so markedly that it's hardly recognizable -- and it no longer recognizes me and my non-fundamentalist friends as acceptable partners in mission and ministry.
Fortunately, like many others, I do have another home. I'll move on with my CBFNC family, where there are constant reminders that folks like me are welcome. Even so, it's hard to say goodbye to what is left of my former home.
Just permit me, please, some time to grieve.
Friday, November 14, 2008
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10 comments:
Though I'm chronologically ahead of you in the grief process, the latest occurrence could be disruptive for some congregations and pastors ... that is, current grief. My church had anticipated this event and had already shifted its budget allocations accordingly. As I understand it, the actual vote was by less than 900 folk. There is a subliminal message embedded.
A dramatic irony is that when a Disaster Recovery Team from The Memorial Baptist Church recently spent two weeks in Baytown, Texas, Baptists of all flavors and some non-Baptists were effective in doing Kingdom Work.
Take your time .... grief is a process.
I feel the same way. it is a very sad day. I grieve for the loss as well but have to trust that God will lead us into great days as wwe follow Him and Him alone.
Margaret
As always, you capture the moment perfectly. Thanks so much for your continuing contributions to the discussion.
It is a sad day, but the BSCNC we see now is so different from the one we loved. Losses are heavy, but the foresight of daring leaders has protected many inspiring ministries. One can only imagine the amazing things they will do once the energy and gifts now poured into this struggle are free to focus on the future.
LTR
As a young 20-something I don't remember seeing the BSCNC fall, I've just heard the stories of what it once was. I guess to piggyback on Dr. Cartledge's Jeremiah analogy, it kind of feels like I'm a young Israelite born in Babylon, but growing up on stories of Zion. I miss the home I never remember having.
My condolences in your grief over the latest decision of NC BSC to become even more oblivious to its brothers and sisters in Christ. In grief, you join countless women ministers who have been silenced for years, countless gay and lesbian Baptists who have been invisible, and churches full of folks whose crime is free thinking. You are in very good company. The NC BSC would be surprised to learn how much good work is done daily by Baptists it has deemed unacceptable as working partners. God has evidently not gotten their memo! At 4 a.m., you cry some, but then focus on the great good work that God provides for all of us to do in the name of Christ, and rest in that. --Kelly
It may be no comfort to you, Tony, but if the NC BSC fundamentalists believe they won a skirmish in the culture wars with Baptist moderates, there is broad polling evidence that society-wide, they're wrong. Intolerance is no longer winning the hearts and minds of American "values voters."
"May I join you?" As I attempted to read your comments to my wife I was interrupted by moments of emotion and tears at those points of identification with your loss and your gief. For me it seems not that long ago when reflecting upon the SBC issues that I was proud to say I was more of a NC Baptist than a Southern Baptist. I had read a quote from the 1890's by a NC Baptist Minisiter who said "tolerance is a bad word." I quickly assumed that I knew where this was going, until I read the next sentence. "If you say you tolerate something then you are implying that you are better than what you tolerate." I received his words gratefully and declared myself to be a NC Baptist. I began my journey 57 years ago in my local church with those WMU ladies teaching Sunbeams. It was there I learned "red and yellow black and white they are precious in God's sight." Then when my dad was the RA Director and he brought boys on Wednesday nights to RA's that did not go to our church any other time we learned of Judson, Rice, Moon, Armstrong. Then at Ridgescrest it was Emannuel McCall in the late 60's during Home Missions Week teaching us how to say "neegrow" rather than the racial epithet we all knew too well. It was during that week that my felt call to ministry was to the "spiritual, emotional and physical needs of others." That fall as I began college it was the BSU and people like Joe David Fore and Kay Huggins who gave us the vision of journey, inclusivity and humility. Rather than arrival, exclusivness and arrogance. I am still a NC Baptist, and I am thankful for what NC Baptist have represented to me and many others. It is that heritage that has taught me not to argue but to seek peace in recognizing that we are "all" God's children. It is this heritage, scripture, and my life experience that have taught me we should not control anyone nor should we try. I read recently that the Gethsemane prayer is our example of Jesus demonstrating our freedom as persons to choose and God's freedom to allow us to do so. (There is another of those Baptist tenants we know as "soul competency.") The writer further suggests that "God's will" has been used throughout time to endorse good as well as horrible things, and that God's will is the uniting and healing of all things. It is shalom, well being and peace. So...as I join you... I will move to a place of peace and seek to encourage those who join in this journey by being the presence of Christ to all of God's creation.
Tony,
Why was the CBF started in the first place? Just wondering.
Hi Jamie,
One could give very long answers, but the short answer is that CBF was created as a network/fellowship/place for moderate folks who no longer felt at home -- or even welcome -- in the SBC. While each individual or church may have his or her own reason for affiliating with CBF, I think that was the bottom line when the group was birthed back in 1990/91.
twc
I'm going to go out on a limb here and say that there never should have been a battle/war/ skirmish to begin with. That's where the real sadness lies for me. Baptists were never supposed to be exclusivist in terms of theological ideas and opinions. The cornerstones of Religious Freedom and Autonomy is the biggest reason I have remained Baptist. The different strains of Baptists working together for a common goal (we shall call this the Kingdom of God (KOG)) was what made being a part of the Baptist conversation beautiful, enticing, infectious, and promoted though-provoked growth in both individuals, churches, and conventions.
I left the BSCNC a while back. Yet, like you, this news has made me feel helpless and homeless. I too will continue with other Baptist networks... but each network, if I'm allowed to criticize, suffers from the reactionary complex of being hurt by the SBC. I hope that groups like the CBF will continue to get past their past, although it is a big part of how they became who they are, and take only the good things from that. No more battles and skirmishes about who's right. Instead, an openness towards freedoms for individuals and churches, a new dynamic conversation about who Baptists were historically and who they want to be in this changing culture.
So I mourn the BSCNC. But what I want more is to see this be the end of the us.vs. them mentality in Baptist life (and I know it isn't always on the convention/fellowship level...more-so it is on the church/individual level). Whereas you have just lost your home, there are a lot of us young Baptists who are struggling to be embraced into the other Baptist organizations...we've been homeless for years. We are longing for our ideas to be heard, for a chance to be taken on us...and there are many of us young baptists out there who are not participating Baptists because we aren't welcomed with open arms in any club.
Sorry Tony, I don't mean to rant or complain. It is just my hope that in this great time of tradgedy, that other Baptists will cease this opportunity in their mourning to become something MORE THAN a refuge, rather to become the beacon that is guiding Baptists into the future even in the midst of their pain.
thanks as always!
justin
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