Who Is Being Represented?

Today in my area there is an election.  Our ballot will be rather brief - there will be a couple of questions regarding our local fire district, and then an election for two members of a seven-person school board.

What should the main criteria be for voting for one person over another?  Of course, in any given election that will depend on many things - what the office is, what the current issues are, etc.  I actually ran for school board a couple of times, many years ago (I lost, by the way, but that’s a different story).  One of the things that was important for me as a candidate, and is still important to me today in evaluating candidates, is the idea that the parents are ultimately responsible for a child’s education.  That may mean that the parents choose to homeschool the child, but it doesn’t have to.  Being responsible for something doesn’t mean one has to do it all.  There are other options, such as private school, and of course, public school.  But whichever option is chosen, the parents are not giving up their responsibility, but instead are choosing the most appropriate tools to carry out their responsibility.  Whichever choice is made, the parents should still be very aware of what is being taught and learned, should know the child’s strengths and weaknesses, should be ready to advocate for the child.  Too many parents abdicate much of their responsibility in their child’s life.

We choose school board members to represent us in making the major decisions of running a school district.  But who is the “us” they should represent?  Should they represent the children?  Many people think so.  And their opinion is seemingly confirmed by the amount of child neglect and child abuse at the hands of their parents.  Teachers are often frustrated by the unresponsiveness they get when trying to reach out to many children’s parents.  Someone has to advocate for the children.

Others say school board members should represent the community, or perhaps more specifically, the voters.  In both this option and the previous one, you run into the issue of having elected officials who think that they know what is best for the children, over and above the parents.  And we have been seeing that play out.  There have been schools that have distributed contraceptives to students and facilitated abortions for students.  The concern that some schools are indoctrinating students in regard to sexual orientation and gender identity issues has recently led Florida to pass a law that seeks to protect parental rights by prohibiting the teaching of these concepts to young children.

For Christians, the Bible instructs parents that they have a primary duty to teach their children.  These instructions are mostly concerned about teaching them about God and following Him.  But the overall implication of Scripture is that the parents are the assigned stewards of one (or more) of God’s children.  God does not give that assignment to anyone else.  It is not the village’s responsibility, not government’s, only the parents’.

Parents, understand your responsibility in the life of your child, and be involved.  And choose school board members who will best represent your position as steward of your child.

Not Everything Some Would Have It Be

 There is conflict within the Southern Baptist Convention.  For many who are likely to read this, this is probably not new information.  If that statement does come as a surprise to you, you may not be interested enough to read the rest of this.

There are undeniably (at least) two groups within the tent of the Southern Baptist Convention.  Defining these groups, however, seems to be complicated.  Some see it as conservatives versus those drifting toward liberalism.  Others see it as conservatives versus fundamentalists, or at least those who are “more” conservative.  Some say that conservative and liberal are too political to use as terms, while others say that politics is exactly what this is about.

Those who are in the category that some would label “liberal” deny that there is liberalism within the Southern Baptist Convention.  Their contention is that the Baptist Faith and Message, the document that binds Southern Baptists together, does not allow for liberalism, that everyone who adheres to it as their statement of faith is necessarily conservative.  Let me give reasons why I don’t believe that to be true.

The BF&M is not comprehensive in regard to all sins.  In June of 2021, Ed Litton was elected president of the SBC.  Shortly thereafter, it was noticed that many of his sermons were word-for-word copies of other preachers’ sermons.  The discussion of this would occupy another post.  But nothing was ever really done about this.  And one of the reasons offered up as to why nothing was done was that he had not done anything that violated the BF&M.  That seems to be true, but there are multiple things that are not listed within the BF&M.  What if the SBC president were violent? Or a slanderer?  What if he knew about an accusation of sexual impropriety by a staff member and did nothing about it?  Would we really do nothing about any of these things that could be shown to violate Scripture, simply because they weren’t on a list in the BF&M?

The BF&M is not comprehensive in regard to the times.  When the BF&M 1963 came out, the seismic Roe v. Wade Supreme Court decision permitting abortion was still ten years down the road.  When the BF&M was updated in 2000, one of the changes made was the inclusion of defending the unborn.  Any edition of the BF&M will be doing good to cover those issues that we have seen in the past or are dealing with in the present, but will generally not be able to keep up with the twists of the future.  In 2000, it would not have been imaginable that same-sex marriage would be legal, but within 15 years it was.  And now, just six or seven years after that, we are dealing with ethical issues we couldn’t have guessed then.  If one believed that sexual identity and gender identity were two completely different things, and that a person could biologically be a male, but “really” be a woman, they could potentially still affirm the BF&M.

The Bible is easy to twist.  One can sincerely affirm the BF&M, swearing a belief that the Bible is inerrant and infallible, but then point to a Scripture text and say, “That doesn’t mean what you think it means” or “That was for the cultural situation during which it was written, it doesn’t apply to us now.”

The BF&M is easy to twist.  During the Conservative Resurgence, it became evident that the BF&M from 1963 needed to be revised.  One of the main reasons for that was that the way it was worded allowed those who didn’t believe the Bible was the inerrant, infallible Word of God to understand the words of the statement in a way different than most Southern Baptists and affirm the BF&M without alarming their conscience.  So the SBC sought to make it more clear.  But just as Scripture itself can be warped to say what God would never convey, the BF&M is perhaps even more easily manipulated.

The BF&M is easy to ignore.  As an example of this, the BF&M 2000 clearly states “the office of pastor is limited to men as qualified by Scripture.”  Yet we have churches in our convention where one or more women are listed with a title that includes the word “pastor.”  Some try to twist the BF&M by saying that the statement comes from a time when having multiple pastors was more unusual, and that it is specifically referring to the head pastor/teacher of a church.  The problem with that is that while one could make a good Biblical case for having multiple pastors for a single congregation, one couldn’t make a case that the requirements for some pastors were different than others.  They are all pastors, so they all must conform to I Timothy 3.  Meanwhile, nothing has been done about many of these churches with a female pastor on staff.  The issue is just being ignored.

I think the Baptist Faith and Message is a good document, a well-crafted statement of faith.  But it clearly cannot be the only keeper of the gate for who or what should be considered conservative, because it is simply too easy to maneuver around.  An update is likely in order, but even that will not clip all the deviations from Scripture that people will find a way to grasp while still affirming the revision.