THE DEEPENING TROUBLES FACING SOUTHERN BAPTIST ARE NO LONGER HIDDEN UNDER LAYERS OF GOOD OLE BOY NETWORKS AND 11TH COMMANDMENTS. HOW DEEP DOES THE DECAY GO?
Rev Thomas Littleton 11/30/2020
Most people get the importance of Southern Baptist in American life given that millions of Christians are members of or have grown up in Southern Baptist Churches. Many powerful and articulate leaders have come from the SBC. In the past conservative biblically convictional voices rang out of Baptist pulpits across the nation. Also some of the most well ordered missionary efforts both nationally and internationally were operated by the SBC and focused on evangelism and discipling and organic church planting.
WHAT HAPPENED? ONE NEED LOOK NO FURTHER THAN CURRENT LEADERSHIP TO TELL THE TALE.
ABOVE -Power hungry Baptist- NAMBs Ezell, ERLC’s Moore and SEBTS Akin in Moore’s ERLC offices joking of their “cooperation” in 2013 as their ascents to power are solidified.
Today the largest protestant denomination in America is slipping away and collapsing into the quagmire of meaninglessness via decent into the age old social gospel, political & theological liberalism, community development, sexual and authoritarian abuse, legal struggles and law suits and the general decay of leadership overall. Of course there are exceptions but these are becoming harder to find and are very isolated.
ACTIVE LAWSUITS AGAINST CENTRALIZING POWER OVER HOME MISSIONS
Individual Baptist churches in the SBC have a status of “cooperation ” within the Convention and work together primarily in their Cooperative Programs and Giving ( CP)
Among these are both the North American Missions Board and International Missions Board programs and these are supported through the giving of local churches and two major offerings annually.
Today efforts to “CENTRALIZE POWER” in the national office have been exposed by a lawsuit from Will McRaney who was Former Executive Missional Strategist at Baptist Convention of Maryland/Delaware. The details are extensive and so is the documentation of NAMB national leaders heavy handed tactics, threats, bullying and intimidation followed by a sweeping refusal to be held accountable or transparent about finances, expenditures and compensations of officers.The lawsuit is not just for bullying, but for alleged illegal behaviors by Ezell and NAMB leadership.
The lawsuit contends the issues are not just a matter of strategic difference but accusations of illegal acts by Ezell that have yet to be spoken to publicly or given an account of by Ezell. To date, Ezell has refused to meet with McRaney and the NAMB Trustees have kept him in leadership without requiring him to do so. The current efforts by NAMB officials to stave off this lawsuit have shown their willingness to violate the SBC bylaws and deny their own Convention rules. Recently the troubled and unethical Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission factored in on the lawsuit to back up NAMB antics of averting and subverting accountability.
After years of effort and determination, the legal battle to force the spot light on NAMB abuses is paying off.
Few Baptist will like what they are about to see and learn as the efforts toward accountability advance.
MORE on the lawsuit can be found at willmcraney.com / open letter
“In June 8, 2015 Sandy and I received the shock of our lives. I was blindsided with termination as the Executive Director of the MD/DE Baptist Convention, and sadly Dr. Kevin Ezell, as the President of the North American Mission Board, influenced this action against me. This was without cause and in the midst of Sandy and I developing many good relationships with pastors and wives, along with our staff and Convention making remarkable progress under my leadership. These webpages reflect an effort to communicate truth with friends and our Southern Baptist family on matters which need to come into the light Eph. 5:6-11, since more direct methods were met with denial and resistance.”
The latest update on the legal action to date can be read here:
Ironic that when the Protestant Baptist ERLC factored in on the lawsuit that they sought a Chicago based Catholic law firm named after famed English anti -Protestant Reformation politician Thomas More.
(From the article update)
” The vote in McRaney’s favor by the federal appeals court was made despite an extraordinary campaign on behalf of NAMB. Three state attorneys general (Texas, Mississippi, Louisiana) weighed in with a friend of the court brief in support of NAMB, as did the First Liberty Institute, a Texas-based religious liberty nonprofit. Of particular note, the Ethics & Religious Liberty Commission of the SBC, which is charged with communicating Southern Baptists’ policies and positions to the public and public officials, joined with the Thomas More Society, a Chicago-based not-for-profit national interest law firm named after the patron saint of lawyers in the Catholic Church, to assert in a friend of the court brief that the SBC, NAMB and state conventions have a hierarchical relationship and that they actually govern Southern Baptist congregations.”
SOME BULLETPOINTS IN AN OVERVIEW OF THE SBC DECLINE AND DECAY:
*SBC SEMINARIES HAVE BECOME BOILING CALDRONS OF SOCIAL JUSTICE, CRITICAL THEORY AND RACIAL/ GAY / ISLAMIC POLITICS.
Example of the funding and agenda invading SBC flagship Seminary SBTS and efforts to cover up reality by scrubbing websites can be investigated in the link below. This is just one example of agenda driven funding and ongoing efforts to cover up the compromise and sources of it.
*CHRISTIAN EDUCATION FROM K-12 TO HIGHER EDUCATION IS BEING UNDERMINED AT SWBTS UMBRELLA ORGANIZATION.
Baptist Seminary SWBTS in Forth Worth was not part of the Baptist Cabal of Neo Reformed theology cloaking social Justice and dirty funding until it was taken over in recent years by SBTS/ Mohler leaders. Now SWBTS has launched a new organization to serve as gathering place for the influences now corrupting Christian Education with critical theories and the false justice gospel starting in pre K and running through Christian colleges and universities. The Seminaries are already being overrun.
https://thirtypiecesofsilver.org/2020/08/06/laying-siege-to-christian-education/
*FAR LEFT POLITICS ARE BEING SERVED ON A PLATTER TO YOUNG PEOPLE IN BAPTIST AND OTHER CHRISTIAN INSTITUTIONS.
ERLC had a professor from liberal Jesuit Georgetown University, with help from a new age think tank, draft a “civility guide for political engagement” going into the 2020 election cycle.
https://thirtypiecesofsilver.org/2019/10/01/erlc-deep-state-manual-for-2020-political-engagement/
*BAPTIST LEADERS LIKE ED STETZER AND EZELL ARE PROMOTING LAUSANNE MOVEMENT AND UNITED NATIONS GLOBAL GOALS HERETICAL SPIRITUALITY
https://thirtypiecesofsilver.org/2020/03/30/globalist-false-prophets-the-real-danger-ahead/
*WIDESPREAD SEXUAL ABUSE AND ONGOING COLLUSION TO COVER IT UP SURFACED IN 2018 WHEN THE #METOO MOVEMENT CAME HOME TO SETTLE ON SBC LEADERS.
Yet Baptist leaders like Mohler and Moore joined in what seemed nothing less than opportunistic public theater to point fingers away from their own and toward those they wished to see targeted like SWBTS /Conservative Resurgence leader Paige Patterson. Some inside the Baptist machine animated secular media efforts to portray Patterson as an abuser or collaborator in the coverup. The feeding frenzy during this carefully coordinated effort exposed just how far some leaders the SBC would go to secure their take over of it’s institutions.
https://www.baptistpress.com/resource-library/news/mohler-confronts-sbcs-horrifying-metoo-momen
ERLCS RUSSELL MOORE TURNED THE SEXUAL ABUSE EXPOSURE INTO A PLATFORM FOR MORE OVERREACH WITH A “REPURPOSED CREDENTIALS COMMITTEE” TO SEARH AND DESTROY AND STRIP CHURCHES AND MINISTERS OF SBC CREDENTIALS.
*SBC SEEKS TO REDEFINE FAMILY AS THE CHURCH CALLING “NUCLEAR FAMILY AN IDOL”.
Moore had also used similar CRISIS to sell his latest book on The Storm Tossed Family and push an ERLC conference to feature his book while highlighting the Church -redefined as family in the same 1990’s narrative of lesbian feminist theology from Drew University Divinity School. This was quiet an achievement which likely took more lead time than he would have had after finding out about the looming storm in the Houston Chronicle.
https://thirtypiecesofsilver.org/2019/03/04/russell-moore-erlc-revoice-family/
*SBC LEADERS FOR NAMB ARE MOVING THE DENOMINATION INTO DEEP PARTNERSHIPS FOR ISLAMIC IMMIGRATION/RACIAL RECONCILIATION AKING TO BLM/ FEMA COMMUNITY DEVELOPMENT AND MISGUIDED LGBTQ POLICY.
ISLAMIC IMMIGRATION WITH NAMB
ERLC and other Baptist leaders have joined in pro Islamic campus based and student led movement called “Neighborly Faith” to promote social change in Christian attitudes toward Islam. Christian/ Muslim dialog is being directly promoted on Christian School campuses. SBC current President J D Greear even joined in one of these events. The Wheaton conference was sponsored and held at the Billy Graham Center for Evangelism while the entire program is admittedly NOT to evangelize or treat Muslims as projects for conversion. Measures and metrics are employed before and after the meetings to gauge the success of the social change in attitudes.
https://thirtypiecesofsilver.org/2019/11/07/erlcs-daniel-darling-in-interfaith-movement-leadership/
NAMB has created welcome centers and a not so secret undergound railroad for importing more Islamic Refugees for resettlement in American Communities.
NAMB has even built a welcome Center partnering with the Federal Government and Open Society organizations like the one of Clarkston Georgia.
RACIAL RECONCILIATION IN THE DAYS OF BLM
Resolution 9 at SBC 2019 was submitted to condemn CRT and Intersectionality but was converted in the Resolutions Committee by SBTS and other leaders into an affirmation of it .
Glaring racial hypocrisy exist in the efforts to “Rid the SBC of Racism”
Baptist leaders like current SBC President J D Greer , former IMB head David Platt and long time Lifeway Researcher Ed Stetzer jumped in to the BLM fray marching with and endorsing the movement even after violence and burning of American cities erupted.
FEMA PARTNERSHIPS SET UP SHOP IN PUERTO RICO AND ELSEWHERE.
The NAMB Send Relief of the SBC has now positioned itself as the go-to partner of FEMA even constructing a central response center in Puerto Rico for the current Hurricane damage island and beyond .
There are at present NINE such centers for differing uses with Government partnerships with plans to develop twenty to twenty five in all.
LGBTQ POLICY
Recently both SBTS President Albert Mohler ERLC head/ Mohler disciple Russell Moore’s offices lamented over the coming advance of the LGBTQ agenda against religious liberty , churches and Christian education.
YET – it was both of these key Baptist who called for an end to standing against the agenda in 2013 and held a 2014 ERLC Conference on The Gospel , Homosexuality, and the Future of Marriage at which Moore and Mohler welcomed Human Rights Campaign and dozens of LGBTQ activist leaders to “Break Bread Together with Baptist” as one headline read. They even held for back room- closed door meetings with HRC and others like Matthew Vines and the radical pro homosexual lobby. SBTS President joined in the 2014 Conference as opening speaker and APOLOGIZED for being wrong about and denying (the APA contrived notion of ) Sexual Orientation. Mohler apologized for all Baptist while underling Russell Moore did a blanket condemnation of all so called “ex gay therapies” a high priority on the HRC agenda at the time.
Later by 2015 no significant fight for Biblical or traditional marriage was mounted by any key SBC official including Moore or Mohler. The echo chamber of SBC leadership blamed the sexual revolution and the divorce rate in the church.
By 2018 SBTS New Testament teacher and Mohler disciple of almost 15 years Nate Collins introduced Revoice LGBTQ Thriving in Historic Christian Tradition Conference and it was endorsed and participated in by multiple ERLC fellows and leaders.
HRC HAS HAD A WARM BAPTIST WELCOME SINCE SBC CEO JINED HRC IN 2009 IN THE WHITE HOUSE FAITH BASED /OBAMA PROGRAMS FOR FAITH BASED GRANTS
HERE IS WHAT HRC WANTS TODAY-
“The HRC Blueprint for LGBTQ Equality Under Biden”
- Ensure consistent administrative implementation of Bostock v. Clayton County across all agencies enforcing civil rights statutes and provisions;
- Revise restrictions on transgender individuals to return to an inclusive policy of military service;
- Establish an interagency working group to address anti-transgender violence;
- Appoint openly-LGBTQ justices, judges, executive officials and ambassadors;
- Establish uniform data collection standards incorporation sexual orientation and gender identity into federal surveys;
- Establish an interagency working group to protect and support LGBTQ rights globally;
- End discrimination against gay and bisexual blood donors;
- Prohibit the practice of conversion therapy as a fraudulent business practice;
- Rescind and replace regulations restricting coverage of Section 1557 of the Affordable Care Act; and
- Eliminate discrimination against beneficiaries in charitable choice and faith-based initiatives.
RELIGIOUS LIBERTY AS WELL AS THE GOSPEL MISSION OF THE BAPTIST ARE BEING REDEFINED THROUGH FORCES WHICH CAN ONLY CORRUPT IT AND ARE ANTITHETICAL TO BIBLICAL FAITH.
CONCLUSION
WHILE BAPTIST LEADERS APPEAR TO JOKE ABOUT THEIR SOLIDARITY IN COOPERATIVE CORRUPTION–THE SBC IS SLIPPING DEEP INTO APOSTASY AND IN STEEP DECLINE.
Will millions of Christians follow the path Baptist leaders have chosen for their movement? Or will they wise up and Repent and return to the Word of God and true Gospel Mission? Will they continue to leave their churches and even entire congregations leave the SBC altogether or will they stand and undertake to regain their movement and “throw the bums out” who have corrupted it ? Time will tell but it will not take long for these deadly corruptions to fully leaven and to play out .WHILE IN TIME IS IN FACT RUNNING OUT. Then the only option which exist will be to leave the SBC to it’s own rot and decline. Even now that time may have already come.
thirtypiecesofsilverdotorg 