baptist and southern baptist

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In our area, the liberal Baptist church is part of the American Baptist Association. It has regular interfaith services and pulpit exchanges with the Reform Jewish temple, a Jungian Sunday school class, performs holy union ceremonies for gay couples, has a gay/lesbian fellowship, welcomes interfaith couples, holds a Halloween celebration (and calls it that), sponsors weekends with theologians and scholars such as Elaine Pagels, Marcus Borg, etc. It happens to be a very “high” church, liturgically, including things like celebrating Advent, Trinity Sunday, etc.
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That is pretty radically different from the practices and actions of the Southern Baptist churches in our area.
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A good friend of mine who is a Baptist Bible teacher would fall dead if he goes to a Baptist Church like that.
 
Rightlydivide said:
Well

every SINGLE thing you listed, right down to the Halloween (Baptists round here say fall festival).
All of it.
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You may want to check whether those Baptists in your area are Southern Baptists. They are indeed two very different groups. As to whether one or the other holds the right to decide who is “really” Baptist, that I have to leave up to them. Southern Baptists seem overall to be a lot more concerned with denouncing others for being different.
 
The doctrinal statement of the Southern Baptist Convention used to be called the Baptist Faith and Message. I do not know if that term is still in vogue. Back in the eighties it had only five points. (and, not, they don’t form T U L I P)😉
 
KarenNC said:
You may want to check whether those Baptists in your area are Southern Baptists. They are indeed two very different groups. As to whether one or the other holds the right to decide who is “really” Baptist, that I have to leave up to them. Southern Baptists seem overall to be a lot more concerned with denouncing others for being different.
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I used to be a Southern Baptist and I can attest to the fact that SBC churches range in approach from what you described to Fundamentalists. As long as they pay into the co-operative program they’re good. However, I do know that two congregations in the Carolinas were excommunicated (no longer able to benefit from the co-operative program and the local and national conventions) a few years ago for ordaining Homosexual pastors. But that is pretty extreme for the SBC. Usually the local congregation is sacrosanct.
 
KarenNC said:
You may want to check whether those Baptists in your area are Southern Baptists. They are indeed two very different groups. As to whether one or the other holds the right to decide who is “really” Baptist, that I have to leave up to them. Southern Baptists seem overall to be a lot more concerned with denouncing others for being different.
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I can tell you that of the 30 plus Baptist denominations within 3 hours of me, that group does not exist.
Such is life.
 
rtconstant said:
I used to be a Southern Baptist and I can attest to the fact that SBC churches range in approach from what you described to Fundamentalists. As long as they pay into the co-operative program they’re good. However, I do know that two congregations in the Carolinas were excommunicated (no longer able to benefit from the co-operative program and the local and national conventions) a few years ago for ordaining Homosexual pastors. But that is pretty extreme for the SBC. Usually the local congregation is sacrosanct.
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Several congregations in our local area have been dropped from the SBC because of their stand on homosexuality, including performing holy unions. There have also recently been ones dropped from the NC Baptist Convention (different group) over similar issues.
 
pnewton said:
The doctrinal statement of the Southern Baptist Convention used to be called the Baptist Faith and Message. I do not know if that term is still in vogue. Back in the eighties it had only five points. (and, not, they don’t form T U L I P)😉
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It was in the mid eighties that the SBC underwent a fairly substantial shift from control by moderate factions to one by very conservative factions. I had a friend who was in a Baptist seminary at the time of the changeover and it had a great impact.

Here’s the SBC current statement of faith (adopted in 2000)
sbc.net/bfm/

Here’s the American Baptist one (the group that includes the church I described as well as 9 others in our immediate area—some named Missionary Baptist, some predominantly black, some predominantly white, some mixed)
abc-usa.org/resources/10facts.pdf

Here’s a history of the groups
abc-usa.org/Resources/history.pdf

The SBC formed in 1845.
 
Consider the following list of Baptists:
  • Chuck Colson
  • Jesse Jackson
  • Billy Grahan
  • Fred Phelps
  • Jimmy Carter
  • Bill Clinton
  • Bob Jones
  • Tony Campola
The label Baptist really doesn’t tell you much.
 
Rightlydivide said:
Well

every SINGLE thing you listed, right down to the Halloween (Baptists round here say fall festival).
All of it.
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Yes, but who gives the Baptists you know the right to decide what is “Baptist”? Liberal Baptists would argue that “soul liberty” is in fact the essence of what it means to be a Baptist.

Karen, I don’t think you meant “American Baptist Association” surely–I thought they were quite fundamentalist (they hold to the “Landmark Baptist” view, which is pretty much confined to fundamentalists) and they surely wouldn’t tolerate a church like this. Are you sure you don’t mean the “American Baptist Churches”? I am surprised that they are found in NC, actually–the SB’s have been setting up churches in the North for years, but I hadn’t heard that the AB’s were retaliating. I thought that generally the liberals who left the SBC were forming their own groups, but it makes sense that they’d seek affiliation with the AB’s.

In New Jersey, one encountered AB churches that had dual affiliation–one very liberal church near us was AB and UCC simultaneously.

And by and large, liberal Baptists tend to be more high church and vice versa. This is true among the Methodists as well, though I’d like to hope it’s changing (i.e., that more conservative Methodists are also coming to see the value of liturgy and tradition).

Edwin
 
Contarini said:
Yes, but who gives the Baptists you know the right to decide what is “Baptist”? Liberal Baptists would argue that “soul liberty” is in fact the essence of what it means to be a Baptist.

Karen, I don’t think you meant “American Baptist Association” surely–I thought they were quite fundamentalist (they hold to the “Landmark Baptist” view, which is pretty much confined to fundamentalists) and they surely wouldn’t tolerate a church like this. Are you sure you don’t mean the “American Baptist Churches”? I am surprised that they are found in NC, actually–the SB’s have been setting up churches in the North for years, but I hadn’t heard that the AB’s were retaliating. I thought that generally the liberals who left the SBC were forming their own groups, but it makes sense that they’d seek affiliation with the AB’s.

In New Jersey, one encountered AB churches that had dual affiliation–one very liberal church near us was AB and UCC simultaneously.

And by and large, liberal Baptists tend to be more high church and vice versa. This is true among the Methodists as well, though I’d like to hope it’s changing (i.e., that more conservative Methodists are also coming to see the value of liturgy and tradition).

Edwin
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You are right, Edwin, in looking at the website I linked it is indeed the American Baptist Churches. There are 11 of them in our general area of NC, 51 in the state as a whole. Not surprisingly, they tend to be clustered around the larger population centers.

I have been to at least three of them (two here and one in another part of the state) and they were all huge churches (membership in the multiple hundreds), extremely active in social ministries. I know some of the churches are smaller, I just don’t happen to have visited them. Two of them were definitely much more liturgical than most of the Baptist churches I knew that are part of the SBC. I am not sure how liturgical the third one is on a regular basis, as I have only been there for a couple of interfaith Thanksgiving services. It is also a historically and predominantly African American church that identifies as Missionary Baptist, so I don’t know if that tends to make a difference in the expression of liturgy or not.

For many of them, I believe it is more a matter of churches that decided they no longer fit with the change in direction of the SBC choosing to change their affiliation to American Baptist (or those who the SBC decided no longer fit with their change in direction).

South Carolina has 2 churches that are part of this, Georgia has 20, Tennessee 10, Kentucky 5, Alabama 6, Mississippi and Arkansas 1 each, Louisiana 7, Virginia 108, Florida 32, Texas 16.
 
Contarini said:
Are you sure you don’t mean the “American Baptist Churches”? I am surprised that they are found in NC, actually–the SB’s have been setting up churches in the North for years, but I hadn’t heard that the AB’s were retaliating. I thought that generally the liberals who left the SBC were forming their own groups, but it makes sense that they’d seek affiliation with the AB’s.
Edwin
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Hmm. I’m quite familiar with the American Baptists through my grandparents (may they rest in peace). I have never thought of them as particularly liberal myself.

My grandparent’s church was solidly evangelical though not fundamentalist (they split once over King James Only as I recall),

And there is a pastor friend of mine who pastors an American Baptist Church way up in Richford. We would probably be going there if it weren’t for our current church. I’m no flaming liberal and my friend is solidly evangelical.

I do admit that both of these churches are not rabid fundamentalist either. Probably Billy Graham Baptist as opposed to Bob Jones Baptist if you know what I mean.
 
mozart-250 said:
Hmm. I’m quite familiar with the American Baptists through my grandparents (may they rest in peace). I have never thought of them as particularly liberal myself.
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There are some that are Biblical, but there are some that can be very liberal.
 
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