In recent years, many Christians have switched theological camps in the wake of a broader cultural shakeup in the church that occurred following Covid. This goes beyond switching churches, which many believers did because of lockdowns, but towards theological exploration, too. Many men are doing the readings in what is a broader trend towards retrieval. Of course, this manifests in various outcomes, with some trending towards Catholic or Orthodox traditions while others took on the Reformed Tradition. All of this coincides with the departure from more recent theological traditions like Dispensationalism, which is a minority position in the youth.
The latest high-profile switch was Professor Matthew Barrett of Midwestern Baptist Theological Seminary, who announced his move to the Anglican Church (ACNA). The ACNA is the more conservative Anglican denomination. Barrett himself is no conservative stalwart as his work with CREDO aligns him with Kevin DeYoung, Carl Truman and Gavin Ortund, all theological or political liberals.
Barrett proceeded to outline his three reasons for departure, which is not without his parting shots. Reason number one: the Nicene Creed.
The first pillar started to crack a year ago when a group of Southern Baptists stood before the SBC asking for the inclusion of the Nicene Creed in the Baptist Faith and Message. I applaud these men. But the responses said everything, from “No creed but the Bible” to “It’s not good timing” to every other excuse in the book. When the resolution was presented before the Executive Committee months later, the committee officially rejected the creed’s inclusion. Regardless the reason, I cannot stay in a denomination where the Nicene Creed has been officially rejected from inclusion and remains blatantly absent.
The SBC’s refusal to include the Nicene Creed in the BFM 2000 was an optical mess, yet the demand for its inclusion was misguided at the onset. For starters, the contents of the Nicene Creed should be within the BFM, making this demand redundant. No Presbyterian would make such a demand for the Westminster Confession of Faith as Chapter 31 establishes reverence and submission for the creeds and the decrees of past synods, provided they are consonant with Scripture. Neither the BFM nor the 1689 London Baptist Confession contains this provision, which would make sense to incorporate into the BFM, but then again, the Baptist Faith and Message is a lousy faith statement by historical standards. To boil it down to the SBC rejects the Nicene Creed is reductionism beneath the intellect of a professor.
The second grievance: sex abuse cover-ups.
The second pillar that started to crack was polity, but more specifically the culture in which it is embedded. My experience after two decades both at the local level and institutional level is this: for Southern Baptists image is everything. There is nothing and no one they will not sacrifice on the altar of their image. But it’s not just a commitment; it’s embedded in the culture itself. When image is everything, a culture of fear follows, so that anyone who does not match up with that image is considered a threat. As we’ve seen in the last couple of years, the SBC has been plagued with covering up sin to protect its image. But this occurs at the local church level as well. When there is sin in the leadership, the impulse is to cover it up to protect the image rather than being transparent with the church. Southern Baptist pastors often tell their congregations, “Just trust us,” and “Don’t gossip,” which results in a church incapable of acting when they suspect sin in the leadership. Moreover, they have little recourse to an external ecclesiastical authority to hold the leadership accountable.
There is a sense that Southern Baptists are “obsessed” with their self-image. This gives way to the so-called 11th Commandment that thou shalt not speak ill of a fellow Southern Baptist. Hardly is this a problem for the SBC exclusively, but rather for institutions as a whole. In Barrett’s case, he is alluding to a culture of sex abuse cover-ups that does not exist in the SBC despite the desires of certain factions. Neither the FBI nor Guidepost Solutions found swaths of evidence of cover-ups. Instead, they merely documented decades of cases that were publicly known, with a few revelations surrounding Johnny Hunt and David Sills.
Within his first two reasons, Barrett reveals a desire for a higher, more historically rooted church, which leads to his third reason being Infant Baptism:
God took a sledgehammer to the third pillar: baptism. When forced to account for the whole of ecclesiology in the book of Acts, I simultaneously could not escape the apostle Peter’s stalwart promise at Pentecost. At the end of an evangelistic message, Peter calls on the crowd to repent and be baptized for the forgiveness of sins and to receive the Spirit. But that’s not all. Peter adds, “For the promise is for you and for your children” (Acts 2:39)…
But the scales fell off my eyes when I saw for the first time that the Baptist hermeneutic is truly individualistic—it’s modern to the bone. After noticing it could not account for the whole canon, I also had to ask myself, “Was the entire church wrong to baptize the children of believers for a millennium and a half? Was believer’s baptism taught by the apostles only to disappear under the supervision of the greatest theologians of the church, and then reappear for the first time in sixteenth century?”
His criticisms of Baptist theology are not wrong, though his criticisms might not apply to Reformed Baptist thought. Many churches do make baptism individualistic and even consumeristic, with custom t-shirts, spontaneous baptism, and even second baptisms. These things are part of the seeker-sensitive church, amongst other baptism-related practices.
He proceeds to detail the rest of his article on his affections for the Anglican tradition. While the ACNA might have nice aesthetics, rich liturgy, and a deeper reverence for the sacraments, the number one issue is that of women’s ordination, the same as the SBC. Switching denominations does not mean escaping the problems.
Analysis
Though two of his parting shots at the SBC reek of poor understanding on Barrett’s part, the overall theme in his departure is a desire for something historically rooted and transcendental. Having personally undergone a denominational switch from Baptist to Presbyterian with several peers, the trend towards historic revival is real and happening at the local church level.
If Southern Baptists want to maintain fortitude amidst the culture, they need to appeal to a historically rooted faith. If the Church is to worship a God who transcends time, then the worship practice should reflect the eternal nature of God rather than modern consumeristic culture.
2 Responses
“Was the entire church wrong to baptize the children of believers for a millennium and a half? Was believer’s baptism taught by the apostles only to disappear under the supervision of the greatest theologians of the church, and then reappear for the first time in sixteenth century?”
This fellow leaves out that most of that millennium and a half was under the auspices of the Roman Catholic and Orthodox churches. He is probably an Evangelicals and Catholics Together sort who will not unconditionally declare Catholicism to be wrong and acknowledge that during this millennium and a half, only a faithful and oft persecuted remnant preserved by God existed as true Christianity.
And this is so hilarious that you do not seem to recognize the irony. “If Southern Baptists want to maintain fortitude amidst the culture, they need to appeal to a historically rooted faith.” We Baptists DO appeal to a historically rooted faith with … believer’s baptism taught by the apostles. Those of us who believe in both believer’s baptism AND historic premillennialism. So, it is people such as George Eldon Ladd and Charles Spurgeon who appeal to the historically rooted faith of, for example, Papias, Justin Martyr and Irenaeus that predate what began with Constantine and Eusebius. And yes, people are leaving premillennial dispensationalism, but some of them are joining the historic premillenialism camp. The only reason why there aren’t more is because the only historic premil with a large media platform is Al Mohler, who recently switched from dispensationalism to historic premil himself, and Mohler, in addition to not being anywhere near as influential as he was during his 1990s and 2000s heyday, doesn’t talk about eschatology much.
Finally, liberal drift is at present an even bigger problem with the ACNA – where Beth Moore fled to after John MacArthur rightfully told this purveyor of false teachings to sit down, and yes Barrett is citing many of the same excuses that Moore did – and the PCA than it is with the SBC. Also, please note that the PCA and ACNA membership is simply wealthier than the SBC, whose membership is more rural, southern, midwestern and working class. Of course, I am not a socialist who claims that the poor and working class are inherently better, but it does explain why the Sandy Creek Baptists in particular have the “problems” that Barrett speaks of. Please note that the Charleston Baptists, which the Founders, G3 and Al Mohler types aspire to, do not exhibit these problems nearly to this extent and nor have they been as associated with abuse and cover up scandals. Barrett could have gotten everything that he wanted simply by leaving his current seminary and taking a position at either Grace Bible Theological Seminary or the Founders Seminary, but the truth is that both are far more theologically conservative than he is comfortable with.
Now I am not here to criticize paedobaptism, mind you. I advocate the R.C. Sproul/John MacArthur model of irenic collaboration between both camps whenever possible. I am just pointing out that lending credence to Barrett’s sham excuses for following Beth Moore shouldn’t be done.
The Southern Baptist Convention should change their name to the judaism-worshipping miscegenation-promoting open borders convention.
That name would more accurately reflect their motives and mission these days.