I’ve heard it asked to my surprise in Sunday school, but I never dreamed I’d hear the question at a national conference from thoughtful scholars who’ve spent careers dissecting and researching Southern Baptists.
“Are Southern Baptists evangelicals?”
Of all the questions and statements presented at the conference at Union University entitled "Southern Baptists, Evangelicals and the Future of Denominationalism" that is one I did not expect.
Of course Southern Baptists are evangelicals. We believe in sharing the “good news” that God loves us so much He came personally to redeem us and draw us back to Himself. Undergoing great suffering in human form He took the sin of each of us upon His shoulders, and defeated sin and death that we might live abundantly in Him.
We believe it is important to tell, hear and respond to that truth because salvation comes only through knowing Christ.
That’s what evangelicals believe, right? So we are some, right?
Well, yes. And maybe.
Nathan Finn, assistant professor of church history and Baptist studies at Southeastern Baptist Theological Seminary, raised the question at the conference and then talked about why it jjust might be valid to ask it. It may be legitimate to ask not because Baptists have changed our euangelion perspective, but because now so many groups with theologies that make Southern Baptists squirm self-identify as “evangelicals” that the term may have lost its value as a descriptor for Southern Baptists.
As long ago as the 1970s Foy Valentine, executive director of the Southern Baptist Christian Life Commission (now defunct) called evangelicalism a “Yankee word” according to Finn, so he would not have said Southern Baptists were evangelicals.
Finn would distinguish between “evangelical,” commonly associated with a local church and denominational identity which affirms a high view of scripture, piety and gospel inspired activism in evangelism and missions and “evangelicalism” often associated with para-church ministries.
As recently as 2006, Southwestern Seminar professor Malcolm Yarnell, after evaluating two decades of Southern Baptists and evangelicals, said Southern Baptists should “maintain a separate existence from evangelicals and engage evangelicalism,” according to Finn.
“We are evangelicals who must at times swim against some evangelical currents nevertheless always seeking to remain in the evangelical river itself,” Finn said.
As “denominational evangelicals” we are focused on local churches and sometimes will be at odds against American evangelicalism, which often finds its locus in para-church organizations, Finn said. Southern Baptists for the most part would not be comfortable in the same corral with the work and purpose of some organizations which claim the identity “evangelical.”
While evangelical groups are doing good work in many areas such as social justice, peace, hunger and the environment, persons like Finn are concerned that the issues around which those groups rally “are becoming greater priorities than evangelism and missions,” the real root definition of “evangelical.”
If the next generation is to move beyond “appreciation for” to “excitement about” Southern Baptist work, Finn said, it will require an evangelical Convention with the right priorities. He suggested those priorities would include evidence of regeneration in church members; liberty of conscience under the lordship of Christ; congregational polity; freedom of each gospel community; church discipline; the Cooperative Program; “graciously confessional cooperation” that builds consensus around primary issues and zeal for Great Commission priorities.
Because I was encouraged toward faith – even “won” to faith – by Southern Baptist young people reaching out to me while I was in the military, I’ve always understood “reaching out” to be a part of Baptist DNA. Gospel witness is a large part of my definition of what it means to be evangelical, to “tell the good news.”
While anyone studying the words of our theology, doctrines, sermons and hymns would conclude Southern Baptists are evangelical, here are two reasons I’m afraid we may no longer be evangelicals in practice: the definition of evangelical has grown so broad, and we are practical universalists.
As Wheaton College President Duane Litfin said at the conference “the tendency to sprawl is inevitable.”
“The futher out you go, the less uniformity you have in the movement,” he said when explaining how the term “evangelical” has lost its meaning.
When anything becomes popular, others flock to it. After Hurricane Katrina, anyone in New Orleans with a pickup and a magnetic sign on its door was a contractor. No one can control the term, or limit the number of those who claim it for themselves. But everyone who calls himself or herself an “evangelical” while holding theological views distant from those in camp when the term first joined the common lexicon dilutes the definition.
What Litfin called an “unseemly parade of high profile evangelical scandals” and inappropriate evangelical identity with a secular political wing weakens the brand. “If we knew the truth we would understand how our being subsumed by the culture has rendered us as evangelicals ineffective,” Litfin said.
As evangelicals, Baptists seem to have become practical universalists because we talk about evangelism and witness and salvation and baptisms all the time but we leave few footprints in the sand behind that talk. JC Bradley, missiologist and director of missions for Central Triad Baptist Association, estimates that only one percent of our churches are growing from conversion. Other growing churches are simply attracting Christians from other fellowships.
“Practical universalism” simply says that no matter what we say about our conviction of the need to introduce Christ to friends and neighbors so they might be saved, the fact that we don’t do it says we believe all will be saved – or we don’t care.
While I was surprised to hear the question, they might be right. Southern Baptists might not be evangelicals anymore.
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