Bart Barber epitomizes the problems of pragmatism and virtue signaling in the Southern Baptist Convention.
With the implosion of the Willy Rice for SBC President campaign, speculation grows about possible new Insider and Woke candidates entering the race. SBC 2022 Resolutions Committee Chairman Bart Barber released a video that looked like the opening state of a political campaign, as one group of SBC observers noted.
The video is an Aw-shucks cornpone appeal to unity in the style of George W. Bush. Of course, Barber demands unity when his career is one of division and partisan jockeying for ever higher prestige in the Southern Baptist Convention.
Bart Barber is super nice now! He has changed and wants to the rest of the SBC to do it too. And how does Bart Barber do that? How does Barber lead us to be as nice as he is?
Oh, by comparing the Conservative Baptist Network to Alinsky.
That should bring everyone together.
Perhaps the classic case of Barber’s divisiveness was his transparent attempt to make this year’s SBC Presidential race featuring Calvinist Tom Ascol into a referendum on Calvinism. Barber asserted in one tweet that Calvinists reject biblical sufficiency because the Calvinist holds to Limited Atonement.
Why is Bart Barber and his ilk attempting to divide Christians along soteriological grounds?
Because Tom Ascol has unified Calvinist and non-Calvinist conservatives. This threatens SBC Elites who depend on division between the factions within the SBC—Elites need division to keep their grip on power. When the people unite, the Elites are in trouble.
Bart Barber prefers a Third Way—Virtue signaling over principle even if it might help evil win
Bart Barber showed his true colors during the 2012 Presidential campaign when he threatened to withhold his vote from the GOP candidate to protest action of the Billy Graham Evangelistic Association.
“My politics changed forever that day,” Barber said.
And there is more:
Notice here how Bart Barber sides with Democrats because he wants to avoid associating himself with those “bad” Christian organizations who are too political.
The late Ken Fryer (one of the truly great Southern Baptists) called Barber out at the time. He responded, “So, let me get this straight. You might not vote for MR because of something the BGEA did and allow the antichrist BHO to win?”
Barber responded with virtue signaling—he won’t work with people who aren’t as perfect as he is.
“If the cost to win the election is to stand with BGEA in pretending that Mormonism is the gospel, that’s too much. Count me out,” Barber said.
Barber rejects pragmatism in US politics. He prefers to virtue signal. But, and this is the hilarious part—Barber justified Ed Litton staying on as SBC President despite the proof that Ed Litton plagiarized sermons from Tim Keller and J.D. Greear over a span of a decade on the pragmatic grounds of keeping the Conservative Baptist Network out of office.
And it gets worse.
Of course, SBC Elites rewarded Barber for this blasphemy. Ed Litton named Barber to chair the 2022 Resolutions Committee.
What other rewards will SBC Elites offer their good soldier Bart Barber?
Only time will tell.