Southern Baptist Elites claim abortion now a secondary issue

Voting for Murder is now option for Southern Baptists; SBC Elites rush to justify voting Democrat; Falsely declare the Bible does not provide definite guidance on complex voting issues.

Southern Baptist Elites declared racism and injustice a Gospel Issue but then said Southern Baptists must excuse unjust voting behavior. The Baptist 21 panel highlighted everything wrong with today’s Evangelical Elites. They want to cater to the culture (attack real and imagined racism) while excusing tangible acts of racism and injustice like abortion.

Reminder: How many millions of black babies have been murdered since Roe v. Wade? Want to end racism and injustice? Start with saving the lives of these innocent children.

For example, Kevin Smith is a major SBC leader as the Executive Director of the Baptist Convention of Maryland/Delaware and a Southern Seminary faculty member and he fails basic moral reasoning. He says there are not various levels of sins—which is contradicted by the teachings of Christ, biblical theology and basic philosophy.

According to the liberal Baptist Press, “It is fine to say the most important [political issue] for me is the life of an unborn baby, but it’s also biblically fine for me to say the most important for me is politicians who don’t call me the n-word, and don’t think I’m the n-word,” said Smith, who is African American. “You can’t say, ‘Well, one is more image of God than the other,’ so we need a little bit of liberty in how we come into these discussions of politics because they don’t have exegetical definites and we need to act like that’s the case.”

No definite? Scripture is clear that murder is evil. Other things can be evil too and still be less evil than the murder of babies—millions of them black! There are more black babies murdered in New York City than born!

This is the same nonsense spouted by Southern Baptist Theological Seminary (SBTS) President Albert Mohler. Mohler said of voting in the 2020 Presidential Election, “I will extend grace and respect to Southern Baptist brothers and sisters who make a different decision than I,” Mohler said. “I don’t think it’s too much to ask the same in return. Let’s pray for each other and with each other as we make these decisions.”

Note the moral equivalency taught by Mohler, Smith and the Southern Baptist Elite: Voting Democrat is no different than voting Republican. We all just have to get along.

This is false.

It is dangerous.

It is immoral.

Since this false teaching is prevalent among Southern Baptists and entrenched within our seminaries and other entities, it must be refuted.

Some commandments are more important than others. This is affirmed by the explicit teachings of Jesus while He was personally present on earth: Matthew 23:23, Matthew 5:19, Matthew 22:36, Mark 3:29, John 19:11 and John 15:13. Other New Testament verses support a graded view of sins: I Corinthians 13:13, Romans 2:6, I Corinthians 11:30.

Geisler notes in Christian Ethics, that Evangelicals have a “widespread distaste” for a “hierarchy of sins and virtues” the biblical data supports such a claim. This is a good thing. We are able to navigate a fallen world where sometimes we face what appears to be choices between bad and bad.

According to Geisler, “Graded absolutism holds that our responsibility is to obey the greater commandment, and we are not guilty for not following the lesser conflicting commandment.”

Geisler put this in a slightly different view for the 2016 Presidential Election. He wrote, “Actually, we are never really faced with a situation where all the alternatives are evil. One alternative is always the greater good. The doctor who amputates to save the patient’s life is not doing an evil by cutting off his leg. He is doing a greater good. We never have a moral duty to do a moral evil. So our choice in the presidential race is never between two evils, but it is of which one is the better candidate, the greater good.”  https://normangeisler.com/seven-reasons-for-trump/

Another important philosopher and theologian contributing applying Christian Ethics to Voting is William Lane Craig. In late 2016, Dr. Craig explained how picking a lesser bad is often the only avenue open to the Christian voter in a Fallen World.

According to Dr. Craig, “I think there is a kind of immaturity among some people about moral decision-making where they think that moral decision-making is a matter of choosing between the good alternative and the bad alternative. That is a very naïve, almost childish, view of moral decision-making. We are frequently confronted with moral choices in which we have no good alternatives or, alternatively, we have two good alternatives to choose from and you have to then choose between two goods. But sometimes you have to choose between two bads…Similarly, in a case like this, we didn’t have two good candidates to choose from. Both were flawed in multiple ways, and the outcomes were flawed in multiple ways. Yet, that doesn’t exempt you from having to make a decision in a case like this. You choose the lesser of two evils – which outcome would be better for the United States of America than the other?”

One last important Christian thinker to consider is the great New Testament Scholar C.E.B. Cranfield. Cranfield’s excellent essay on Christian Political Responsibility According to the New Testament wrote, “Often the only choice open to the Christian in a particular situation will be a choice between evils; but he will realize that it is not a matter of indifference whether the greatest possible, or the least possible evil comes to pass, and that that to help to bring about the greatest evil by refusing, out of a mistaken perfectionism, to choose the least is surely to be guilty of dereliction of duty.”

Al Mohler, SBC Elites adopt failed SBC Liberalism to defend Christians who vote Democrat

The SBC has surrendered its stand for biblical authority. By asserting the Bible does not have specific application to politics and thus our 2020 Presidential Vote must be viewed as a Christian liberty issue—these SBC Elites invalidate the clear teaching of the Bible regarding government.

It elevates personal Feelings over Biblical Authority.

It elevates Feels over Facts.

The Bible is clear. The key purpose of government is the protection of Innocent life and property. When some politicians support abortion—which is the killing of innocent babies—then to claim the Bible provides no definite guide is wrong.

The Bible is clear.

These pastors and SBC Elites are not.

This is a return to the discredited SBC Liberal (Moderate) claims of soul liberty and the priesthood of the believer.

It is a move to weaken biblical authority and elevate the individual’s feelings over the explicit teachings of the biblical text.

Follow the Numbers

So, why are Southern Baptist Elites focused on not offending those who vote Democrat?

SBC President J.D. Greear provided the helpful answer—Numbers.

The SBC is worried by a decline of its numbers.

Of course, declining numbers means a decline in dollars. That’s really what has the SBC Elite spooked. Their wokeness is killing the church and instead of admitting it, repenting and being faithful to the Bible—these Elites double down on appealing to the wicked culture.

However, this will fail.

When churches go Woke, they inevitably go broke.

And going Woke is the strategic plan of the Southern Baptist Convention since 2010. According to someone present at a church planting discussion at the 2010 SBC Annual Meeting:

“Way back in 2010 at the Southern Baptist Convention at the Rosen Center Hotel, where I was part of, and picked up the check for a dinner of prominent Southern Baptist men was where I had first heard of the strategy being hatched that would cooperate with the new Open Border Policies of the Barack Obama Administration,” Michael O’Fallon recalled. “The culture was changing and we the church must be relevant in the coming age if we hoped to exist…More importantly illegal migration was happening in unprecedented numbers and it was only going to increase. There was nothing we could do about it….so we might as well participate.”

So, do you understand it now?