To which I could then add a (5): the laity finally work out what’s going on and revolt; either to help form new movements, or as individuals to wander off into church traditions very different to what they have come from, but which don’t have the faults of where they have come from.
In my home context, I used to joke that it was far easier in New Zealand to find a Bible-believing Catholic than to find a Bible-believing Methodist, which as a movement lost its grip precisely in the way you describe.
Oh I don’t disagree. I think it’s very possible each men’s experience might have been different and motives for their firings, respectively, may have been different. But we have to be careful of dismissing one account of this event because of another person’s personal experience.
I do also think the issue of the NDA places a cloud of suspicion on anything said by someone who’s livelihood depends on honoring it. To be honest the statement read much like a prepared statement, but I could be wrong.
It’s sad to see these profs’ loss of their jobs, but as we saw yesterday with Eric Wilson, people are losing their jobs for political reasons all the time in the secular world. I’m wondering if it doesn’t happen in religious schools and non-profits even more frequently? Christian academics are insular and insecure in a way pagans aren’t.
It’s long been clear Al is working to leave behind a kinder and gentler legacy, and this at the expense of the fear of God and humble and sacrificial leadership. We wrote The Grace of Shame largely to demonstrate his betrayal of gays, but also his rhetorical sophistication as he did so. I’m not sure which was more disappointing to me as we wrote. Al is so very-carefully wrong.
I have little patience for those wringing their hands over Al and his proteges. If men tell you they’re the greatest and most important Christian leaders and the future of Christ’s Church depends upon their brilliant witness, they’re probably not and likely it doesn’t.
It really seems like a natural progression from everything you wrote in the Grace of Shame. But I think the moment the wider church became aware was when Phil Johnson confronted Al Mohler at the Shepherds conference on this topic. It’s obvious why Mohler was indignant, he should have read Psalm 51 for his cue.
Indeed! I first “embraced” the Christian faith in a fundamentalist Baptist setting, where all Romans were headed to hell, and most Protestants were going along for the ride.
I’ll die in the tradition of the English Reformation, which most modern evangelicals suppose is just Rome Without A Pope. They think this because they know nothing about the history of the Church nor the theology, worship, and piety of orthodox Prayer Book Christianity.
I’m currently about 3/4 of the way through a history of Scottish influence on the world, from about 1700 until about 1850. (Amazon.com - Ignore the review, it’s a good book.) This pattern is far older than 100 years. John Knox, the Scottish Reformers and the Kirk prepared the soil that the Scottish Enlightenment grew in.
From my experience in the corporate world, the first people let go during a cash crunch are often the most senior and highest-paid folks. A corporation can often retain two junior staff for the cost of a single senior staff member. Especially when you are doing things where headcount is really critical, like teaching classes, that can make a huge difference in your cash flow and in your margins. Even small annual raises add up when someone’s been on staff for 20 years. And a 1% raise for someone making $80k is the same dollar amount as a 2.67% raise for someone making $30k. Compounding isn’t just for interest.
I don’t know a lot about this situation, but my general impression is that the guys who were let go were pretty senior, and a lot of the woke party are younger. I’m not saying this is the whole answer to the story, but at a minimum, it’s a convenient cover.
“Hey, the guy’s Hebrew book costs the same whether he’s on staff or not.”
“Hey, the guy’s Hebrew book costs the same whether he’s on staff or not.”
Like your objective take on this, dear brother.
BTW, the issue isn’t to pope or not. The issue is sacramentalism. The greatest divide in the church has always been between those who believe in circumcised foreskins and those who believe in circumcised hearts. Note the words “believe in.”
So I happened back upon the documentary Battle for the Minds, about the Fundamentalist take over the SBC. I think the documentary definitely takes a hostile view toward the fundamentalists.
But the testimony regarding Al Mohler seems to be presently bearing out in this current shake up. A liberal colleague of Mohler’s said that he never even knew of Mohler’s fundamentalism while they were in school, and that Mohler actively took positions to the contrary. But when he had the opportunity to be President of SBTS suddenly he became a conservative.
He speculated that if the winds of influence changed, so would Mohler. A few years ago I would have dismissed such claims, but I think this is most evident in how Mohler responded after the firing of Page Patterson. Right or wrong, his firing was a demonstration of the trustees power over the career of SBC seminary presidents…I wonder if the trustees over SBTS are equally like minded.
Another point I find interesting is how important the role of the President of the convention was to the Fundamentalist take over, but now when asked about Beth Moore being President over the convention, Mohler said most of the functions were administrative and could be fulfilled by a woman. This dismissiveness as to the theological importance of the position is astounding. Now Mohler didn’t leave it at that, but I wonder if he is sensing a more brisk change in the winds of southern baptist theology.
It’s important to remember that a good man can end badly. See Joash in 2 Chronicles 24, who “did what was right in the sight of the LORD all the days of Jehoiada the priest” (v. 2), which included zealously restoring the house of the LORD. “But after the death of Jehoiada the officials of Judah came and bowed down to the king, and the king listened to them” (v. 17). Joash ends up murdering Zechariah, the faithful prophet-son of Jehoiada the priest.
I think we often want to put men into simple categories of good guy and bad guy, and we want to be able to say, “Aha! I knew he was bad all along.” But how often do men start the race well and finish badly because of the many stumbling blocks of power, influence, and self-righteousness?
Sometimes, sure. Sadly, though, the warning signs often are glaring for years and decades prior to the point when even the sheep have their eyes opened. That pastors, elders, and boards of trustees refuse to act on those signs years earlier is unconscionable. Doing so might well have brought repentance and prevention of scandal among the sheep.
It always seemed to me that God’s officers think it is pious to avoid criticism of one another until the sheep force us to it, and then we think, “Well, now I guess I have to and no one will blame me.”
I remember one of our elders who had in the past been a season ticket holder to IU basketball responding to Coach Knight’s firing by Brand by saying, “Bobby was always a bully. If they had disciplined him for it years ago, he wouldn’t have had to come to this end.”
The vision behind Evangel Presbytery is our working together to save each man’s dignity by puncturing each man’s pride. Joke from an old CCM song. But seriously, having to defend ourselves—and not just our doctrine, but also our character—is good for us. Think of Calvin’s Company of Pastors telling the dude among them who was attracting all the young men aspiring to the office of pastor to come and hear him that he needed to stop preaching the way he was because it wasn’t simple and direct enough. Now that’s a presbytery. Love,
Absolutely. I think one of the reasons we like to put men into categories of good and bad is because we ourselves want to be able to think that we’re safe and that we don’t require examination.
It’s explicit in Joash’s case that much of his faithfulness was due to the presence of Jehoiada calling him to faithfulness as a king. We are all dependent on God keeping us in His path by using those around us who will question us and call us to faithfulness.
I’m not sure I put anyone into a category of good or back, but I used to think Mohler was generally safe; now I’d say he’s too proud to be safe and very possibly, based on this testimony which is ringing true of his present behavior, I think he may very well be the sort of double minded man that James warns us about.
When I was studying physics at high school, I was introduced to the idea of half-life; which measures how long it takes a radioactive object to lose half its radioactivity, which as a result declines slowly rather than in a straight line.
It’s also a good idea for understanding the effectiveness of religious institutions; they start off strongly, then that effectiveness peters out without ever actually getting to zero. I think that the Conservative Resurgence in the SBC delayed the inevitable, by about thirty years, but it hasn’t prevented it.
At a stab, I wonder if Mohler is seeing what is happening with the younger southern Baptists, and is trying to preserve his influence amongst them, rather than calling them to repentance … and being ignored as “yesterday’s man” as a result.
Seems that some have begun to see a pattern, at least in Southern Baptist institutions. The conclusion from the link below:
Christian institutions have already been accused of intellectual cowardice because of their refusal to stand up and be heard on highly salient public issues that most threaten the integrity of higher education today, and that directly impinge on their Christian identity — namely, today’s radical sexual ideology. It is no accident that most of these firings concern faculty who stand their ground on Christian sexual morality and take a public position on the current controversies. Having first abdicated their own responsibility, the institutions must then purge the faculty who demonstrate the embarrassing integrity to insist on doing their job.
All this casts into serious doubt on the claim of such institutions to be either Christian or academic at all and instead makes them appear as little more than employment schemes for diffident administrators and pliable faculty — or as one critic puts it, hedge funds “with classrooms attached.”
Ironically, this even blocks employees from invoking Matthew 18 as written or even calling attention to its subversion. The aim is not reconciling people who disagree, but eliminating them.
Does anyone know why Dr… Baskerville lost his position at Patrick Henry? My daughter is a sophomore there. I remember reading some of his writings a decade ago when he was writing on men’s rights in divorce proceedings.