Mainstream Goes Meanstream    

                                                                                                                Vol. XVI, No. 5, May/June 2003

[This article is reprinted from the The Conservative Record, the newsletter of Conservative Carolina Baptists, Inc. You may visit their website at www.ncbaptist.com or write them at P.O. Box 3001, Boone, NC 28607. Donations are tax deductible.]

At the Mainstream Baptist Network meeting in Charlotte, leaders of the various Mainstream/Cooperative Baptist Fellowship (CBF) groups called Baptists, among other things, "wolves," "gutless idiots," "tacky," "Pharisees," and SBC leaders were compared to "Islamic terrorists." The "special surprise guest" for the gathering of about 200 people from across Mainstream/CBF life was David Flick. Flick, a former Director of Missions in Oklahoma who called his fellow DOMs "bootlickers" because of their support for the Baptist Faith and Message, delivered a speech that questioned the need for the virgin birth, the resurrection of Jesus, and the deity of Jesus in salvation. Flick went on to compare conservative Baptists to Muslims.

There appears to be a strategy by Mainstream/CBF leaders to label conservatives as fundamentalists. The term was used almost exclusively by speakers to refer to any of the 90% of Baptists who do not agree with their thoughts. The strategy aims to change the labels of those whom they are attacking to "fundamentalists" so as to justify the meanspirited attacks by the Mainstream/CBF leadership. The strategy allows Mainstream/ CBF leaders to claim that the SBC embraces a "perversion of the gospel," as David Currie did in his letter sent to NC Baptists (see TCR page 2), and still hope to attract conservatives to their dissident alliance.

Mainstream/CBF leaders did not limit their attacks on conservative Baptists to their national meeting. One Mainstream/CBF leader wrote that "hard" words are needed in dealing with "pagans and hypocrites." "We have made the mistake of not seeing these people for what they are," wrote Bill L. Little, pastor of Christ Memorial Baptist Church in the MAINSTREAM BAPTIST NETWORK JOURNAL, March-April edition. "We have tried to call them brothers and sisters. They are not!" says Little. "Recognize them! They are those who piously smile and even applaud while God's children weep at churches being ousted from their fellowship. Like their predecessors, the Pharisees of old, they would disenfranchise any who do not agree with their creeds or "statements of faith." ...

The most recognized leader of Mainstream/CBF, the liberal dissident group that formed with anti-SBC policies and is now seeking to take over and control state Baptist conventions, has been an outspoken critic of all things SBC. David Currie ... has no kind words for the IMB. At the 2000 CBF convention in Florida, Currie told a Mainstream group he was optimistic about moderate-led state conventions diverting money from the IMB to other groups since "conservatives don't care about missions... They're fighting a culture war."

In an interesting twist on an old enemy, the six SBC seminaries, Phil Lineberger, pastor of Williams Trace Baptist Church and co-chair of the Mainstream Network, shared several thoughts. "Fundamentalists have more in common with each other than with their respective religious roots," Lineberger said of conservative Baptists and Islamic extremists. "It doesn't matter their god or their holy book. Fundamentalists are always oppressive and destructive in their behavior."

Lineberger then compared the confessional commitments of the SBC's six seminaries to extremist Islamic training schools in the middle east. "That's why we're creating new seminaries and this is why these seminaries are flourishing while (the SBC's) seminaries are dying," Lineberger said. (Enrollment at the SBC's seminaries, however, has moved from 12,914 for the 1998-99 academic year to 13,591 for 1999-2000 and 14,185 for 2000-2001, using non-duplicating headcount statistics.)

"Those are no longer Baptist seminaries... They are renegade seminaries tied to the 2000 Baptist Faith and Message," Bob Campbell said during a June 28 breakfast sponsored by Texas Baptists Committed and held as an auxiliary meeting of the Cooperative Baptist Fellowship's General Assembly. "A lot of our seminaries are hiring people who are graduates of Princeton. They are stacking Princeton graduates up at Southern in a big way. Many of them do not have degrees from Baptist schools, but schools like Liberty University, Bob Jones University, Luther Rice Seminary, Mid-America Seminary. These are not Baptist schools. They are owned and operated by private groups who call themselves Baptists, but are accountable to no one," he said.

Although urging students to opt for the CBF's 12 partner schools, Campbell voiced no comment on the Baptist heritage of those schools, such as Brite Divinity School (one of four seminaries of the Christian Church, Disciples of Christ), Candler School of Theology (one of 13 official seminaries of the United Methodist Church), and Duke Divinity School (also supported by the Methodist Church).

Also, while condemning the Princeton education of some SBC professors, Campbell did not comment on exploratory talks between Harvard Divinity School and Baylor's Truett Seminary that may lead to exchanges of faculty and students.

During the Mainstream meeting, Becky Matheny, executive director of the Baptist Heritage Council of Georgia, said "In 1978, two people had a dream to change what we knew as the Southern Baptist Convention," in an apparent reference to conservative resurgence leaders Paige Patterson and Paul Pressler. "And in 2001, a group of people had a dream to destroy the United States of America," apparently a reference to the terrorists who drove hijacked planes into the World Trade Center towers and the Pentagon.

In the January issue of Mainstream, the editor, Robert O'Brien writes, "Do Baptists have our own Taliban?" "Many Afghan women threw off their veils and Afghan men shaved their beards when the Islamic Taliban fled from cities in Afghanistan, with no more power to enforce their oppressive rules," O'Brien writes. "When will Baptist women be able to throw off the veils that enshroud their hearts, minds, and freedom of expression as they explore what God wants them to do?" O'Brien was reacting to Georgia Baptists not allowing a "Baptist Women in Ministry" group to worship in the name of the goddess Sophia.

From Cooperative Baptist to Cruel Baptist, Mainstream to Meanstream, the name may change but the message remains the same.