EMERGING CHURCH FORCING SOUTHERN BAPTISTS TO RECONSIDER STAND ON ALCOHOL (Friday Church News Notes, January 7, 2011,
www.wayoflife.org fbns@wayoflife.org, 866-295-4143) - The emerging church, which is growing rapidly within the Southern Baptist Convention, is forcing the denomination to reconsider its traditional stand against drinking. The Associated Baptist Press reports: “Seeking to remain relevant in today’s culture, many Baptists have abandoned former taboos against social activities like dancing and going to movies. Now some are questioning the denomination’s historic position of abstaining from alcohol, prompting others to draw a line. The Baptist State Convention of North Carolina recently passed a motion to ‘study a policy of the social use of alcohol’ related to funding of church plants, employment of personnel and nomination of persons to committees and boards of trustees” (“Baptists Debate Social Drinking,” ABP, Dec. 28, 2010). The denomination has officially spoken against drinking more than 50 times since 1886, and the lines are being drawn between those who want to continue this prohibition and the emerging church crowd, who typically like to drink. On the abstinence side are men like Tim Rogers, pastor of Ebenezer Baptist Church, Indian Trail, NC, who says that Southern Baptists “want the world to know that we promote the King of kings, not the King of Beers.” On the emerging side are those like The Journey in St. Louis, which hosts a “Theology at the Bottleworks” where participants “grab a beer and discuss political or spiritual topics” (“Brewing Battle,” Christianity Today, June 29, 2007). Peter Lumpkins, author of Alcohol Today: Abstinence in an Age of Indulgence, warns against “forfeiting our biblical heritage to the whims of an obsessive pop morality that wildly sniffs the wind but for the faintest scent of pleasure fulfilled” (ABP, Dec. 28, 2010). That’s an important warning, but capitulation to the pop culture has characterized the average SBC church for a half a century and more. It certainly characterized the youth department in the SBC church I grew up in, and we weren’t disciplined or even sharply reproved because of our love for the rock & roll lifestyle. The SBC today simply doesn’t have the moral backbone to stand up to the world, and large numbers of Independent Baptist churches are in the same backslidden condition. Further, the SBC has been losing ground every year, and they know that if they offend the young emerging crowd they will be left with a dwindling group of senior citizens. This is why the SBC in North Carolina voted to “study a policy of the social use of alcohol related to funding of church plants.” What is there to “study”? The denomination had it right in 1886, and if anything there is even greater need today for abstinence as a way of moral protection and as a wise example to a pleasure-mad, besotted society. (See also “The Believer and Drinking” and “Emerging Church Loves to Drink” at the Way of Life web site.)
