A Fresh Perspective - 04/18/08
I recently met with a group of twenty Christian leaders, male and female, from ten different denominations with whom I will be spending two weeks on a Holy Land pilgrimage. It is sponsored by the CF Foundation and led by two members of the faculty at Louisville Presbyterian Seminary. The purpose of our retreat was to get to know each other and prepare for our pilgrimage together. I found it interesting that so few of them new anything about the Cooperative Baptist Fellowship, with whom our church mainly affiliates.
The CBF officially began in 1991 as a break away group from the Southern Baptist Convention. Why did we need to break away? Two experiences help provide understanding.
It was the fall of 1992 and I was in my final doctrinal seminar at the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary. Dr. Paul Simmons, a brilliant and highly controversial professor (among Southern Baptists) was to be one of the leaders. I was looking forward to picking his brain, but he never made it to class. The seminary was increasingly coming under the control of the conservative/fundamentalist leadership that had taken control of the SBC. Between the fall of 1992 and June 1996 forty-two full-time faculty members either resigned, retired, or were fired.
Cecil Sherman (elected national coordinator of the CBF early in 1992) was previously on the Peace Committee of the SBC, formed in 1985 to investigate the growing conflict in the denomination and to make recommendations for conflict resolution. In one meeting Sherman said: "Why don’t you (the conservatives) take four of the seminaries and do theological education your way, and give us (the moderates) two of the seminaries and let us do theological education our way." Adrian Rogers, former president of the SBC and one of the leaders of the takeover, said: "We don’t want four of the seminaries; we want all six of the seminaries." As far as the fundamentalist SBC leadership was concerned "peace" meant complete control of the SBC agencies and schools.
Fundamentalist control of the six SBC seminaries resulted in having six seminaries almost identical in their conservative approach to theological education. In my judgment the result has been six glorified conservative Bible institutes.
The positive offshoot of all of this has been a fresh, new approach to a very old way of being Baptist that emphasizes the freedom of individuals, churches, and theological institutions. The Alliance of Baptists and the Cooperative Baptist Fellowship were formed as a result. New seminaries have sprung up. Our church supports the Baptist Seminary of Kentucky which shares campus space with Lexington Theological Seminary (Disciples of Christ). A new Baptist press (Smith and Helwys, with whom I recently signed a book contract) began operation in 1990 to publish books and Sunday School resources for those uncomfortable with the conservative-dominated Southern Baptist Sunday School Board. Many of us who came out of the conflict have formed new relationships and partnerships in which to do ministry together and carry out the mission of Christ. We have no desire to go back.
Chuck Queen is Pastor of Immanuel Baptist Church, Frankfort (CBF affiliated). You can access his sermons and past articles at www.ibcfrankfort.com. He welcomes your comments at cqueen@fewpb.net