One of the more cringeworthy, and quite frankly blasphemous, things to occur at the 2024 Southern Baptist Convention was a prayer made by Connie Saffle at the close of Session 2 on day 1 in which she invoked John Hagee levels of dispensationalism while invoking, in a most pretentious fashion, various different names for the LORD. It was not so much a prayer as it was a sermonette on why the Jews are more important than the Church. In a convention where the primary issue was the egalitarian drift, having a woman give a heretical “prayer” was one of several instances where the platform opposed the failed Mike Law Amendment.
But who is Connie Saffle? Saffle is the wife of Rabbi Michael Saffle who heads Sabbath Peace Fellowship in Eagle River, AK. Per their largely inactive Facebook page, she is titled as Rabbanit, which while it could be defined as a female teacher of the Torah, primarily means the “wife of a rabbi.” Sabbath Peace Fellowship is a Messianic Jewish congregation that is a member of the Southern Baptist Convention. The lack of an online footprint indicates that this is a small congregation, which would not be surprising given how secular Alaska is. One interesting note is that they are located next to First Baptist Church of Eagle River, which is also listed as an SBC church. Their proximity would indicate an association. However, it’s worth noting that their inactive Facebook page lists a completely different address.
There is an aesthetically outdated Southern Baptist Messianic Fellowship website consisting of churches that adhere to the BFM and/or Lausanne Covenant. It lists Sabbath Peace Fellowship as a member. Most of the churches they list either are not members of the SBC or have nonfunctional links. The SBMF is not affiliated with the SBC in an official capacity but according to the SBMF, they partook in a booth set up by the SBC Executive Committee at SBC24.
Messianic Judaism is not Baptist theology. They are distinct in their beliefs, practice, and polity. As the name would suggest, Messianic Jews could be characterized as modern Judaizers who observe various elements of the Old Testament law including sabbath day adherence, dietary restrictions, and the use of Hebrew to identify the names of God and Christ. Their emphasis on the so-called “Star of David” is strange since it does not favorably exist in the Tenach (The complete Old Testament). Because of these distinctions, and without getting too deep into the criticisms of this camp, one would never presume a congregation of Messianic Jews to be Southern Baptist, just as one would not assume a Pentecostal church to be in the SBC just because they adhere to credobaptism.
It is not a surprise that the Southern Baptist Convention has non-Baptist churches in its directory or that most NAMB plants are not functionally or doctrinally Southern Baptist. The greater question is why they would let a representative from a Messianic Jewish congregation give a sermonette-prayer at their annual convention. Yet given the bias of the platform towards egalitarianism and dispensationalism, the answer seems increasingly obvious.
