Dear Conservative Baptist Network,
I was a supporter of your movement from day one, prior to your creation even. I both believed that the Second Conservative Resurgence was needed and worth fighting for before the Conservative Baptist Network was a thing. I say this while not being a Southern Baptist. But before you resent my lack of membership in a SBC church, remember that the Conservative Resurgence 2.0 was a movement that attracted much needed auxiliary support for the cause. Certainly, you have not begrudged the support of noted atheist James Lindsay, and it would be unbefitting for you to treat a brother in Christ worse than a nonbeliever. Yet I certainly cared more about saving the Southern Baptist Convention, a denomination that I grew up in, more than the overwhelming majority of Southern Baptists pastors.
What happened at the Southern Baptist Convention of 2021 was the second best result. The best result would be a collective repentance of the denomination. The second best result is the undeniable destruction of the convention. Yet the CBN dare deny God’s answered prayer with regards to the SBC. The liberals had already taken over. And with two years of effort and outreach, the high water mark of the Second Conservative Resurgence was met and the convention slid deeper into apostasy.
Your response to these events has been to celebrate moral victories in the face of a massive rout. The analogy I’ve seen you all use is that a football team lost the Superbowl by a field goal. And you use this to suggest pending improvement upon the last year’s performance is inevitable or even probable. But that’s not how sports work most of the time. The team that loses the big game more often than not misses their window for greatness and does not improve. They may even struggle to make the playoffs next season. At best the CBN will be the Buffalo Bills in losing four consecutive Superbowls.
The mistake from the post-SBC21 analysis I’ve seen you make is to not admit your mistakes. This is spiritual warfare. This was not the Battle of Pharsalus where Pompey Magnus made no blunder against Julius Caesar and was decisively defeated. This was much closer to France in World War 2 whereby they saw the Germans bottlenecked trying to cross into the Ardennes and chose not to act accordingly.
The blunders made were abundant, mostly stemming from your adherence to the 11th Commandment, Thou shalt not speak ill of another Southern Baptist. For starters, the messaging that there are no liberals in the presidential race is inconsistent with the idea that a Second Conservative Resurgence is needed. Failing to call Ed Litton a heretic or even a liberal was a major strategic blunder. Not going after Al Mohler for firing conservatives and replacing them with liberals is a strategic blunder. In doing these blunders, you failed to distinguish yourselves and you failed to present the urgency of the matter.
On a parliamentary level you got crushed. With the goal to rescind Resolution 9, how many of your own supporters fell for Resolution 2 and voted to affirm it. Sure you got you 1 Vice President position. And yes the SBC passed its strongest resolution abortion yet, but do you really want to fellowship with people who you need to fight against to take a strong stance against abortion? The whole Cooperative Program actively campaigned against you. Why would you want to fellowship with them?
The goal is to protect the church, to shepherd souls, not to save a parachurch organization corrupt to the core with the likes of Kevin Ezell and Al Mohler, two more men you failed to name as enemies within the church. Having lost in pitched battle, the only choice for conservatives in the Southern Baptist Convention is to adopt the Fabian Strategy. Leave the convention, divest from the Cooperative Program, thus severing your contribution to the corruption and false gospel they proliferate. Starve them of cash and overtake them community by community by preaching the gospel. Otherwise, it would take perhaps a decade to undo the corruption of the convention and that is of you can win at every convention which the odds are unfavorable next year. Until then the Great Commission will be neglected because the Cooperative Program will not be safe to fund until the rot is cut out.
The Great Commission is too important to spend years trying to salvage the Cooperative Program. The Southern Baptist Convention does not want to be saved and conservative leadership within the convention did not execute a strategy that could save the convention. The local church is preeminent to the national, in Baptist church polity. So the time has come to act upon this heritage and exit the convention. The ship is helmed by enemies within the church. Therefore, we must rescue Christians from these wolves and torpedo the vessel.
Deus Vult,
Ray Fava
Evangelical Dark Web
