An Example of Liberal “Inclusiveness”

by T. C. Pinckney                                                                                        Vol. X, No. 6, June/July 1997

There is a good-sized Baptist church in Virginia which is hosting a series of speakers at the suggestion of their Denominational Relations Committee “to inform the church,” as it says on their schedule of speakers. I do not name the church because it is not my purpose to embarrass any one or any group. It is my purpose to illustrate how there may be a pretense of being fair, balanced, and inclusive while actually being none of these.

The church’s schedule lists nine speakers coming on Sunday evenings over an eight month period. There are two elements of equity in it: Morris Chapman, President of the SBC Executive Committee, and Cecil Sherman, recently retired National Coordinator of the “Cooperative Baptist Fellowship” balance each other, as do Doyle Chauncey, Executive Director of the Southern Baptist Conservatives of Virginia, and Reginald McDonough, who holds the same post in the Baptist General Association of Virginia.

One of the speakers, Denton Lotz, who heads the Baptist World Alliance, is not a player in SBC affairs.

The remaining four speakers are all of the liberal persuasion: Stan Hastey, head of the very liberal Alliance of Baptists; Earlene Jessee, who heads the Virginia state WMU; James Dunn, director of the Baptist Joint Committee on Public Affairs; and Tom Graves, president of the Baptist Theological Seminary at Richmond.

The issue is not whether a church has the right to invite whom they wish. Of course they do. The question is the legitimacy of arranging such a lop-sided propaganda barrage and billing it, either explicitly or implicitly, as balanced information. Each reader can decide for himself. A second lesson from this line-up is the need for discernment before one accepts things at face value. Very often there is an agenda behind the hype. Clearly there is at the above church. We are commanded in Scripture not only to be as innocent as doves but also as wise as serpents.