Now Southern Baptist leaders are purging each other.

madfloridian

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Sat Jan-21-06 03:43 PM
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Now Southern Baptist leaders are purging each other.

Maybe they will purge each other out of existence, and let the people have their church back. This is an interesting article, with a new voice of moderation I had not heard yet. I miss the church as it used to be, but the Al Mohler bunch (shades of Larry King the other night) grabbed it and just took it over. They were ruthless, and it was so quick few realized it until too late.

My dad was still alive when some of it was happening in a church he helped found, and it just devastated him to see the bigotry.

Baptists take aim at themselves

Leaders accused of starting a "war" for the future of the Southern Convention.

By RACHEL ZOLL
The Associated Press

After purging liberals from their ranks, Southern Baptist conservatives who won control of their denomination are now taking aim at each other.

The Rev. Wade Burleson, a Baptist leader from Oklahoma, says fellow conservatives who crusaded to elect only leaders who believe the Bible is literally true are carrying their campaign too far, targeting Southern Baptists who disagree with them on other issues.

These leaders, he wrote on his blog, are "following the same battle plan conservatives used to defeat liberalism," and have started a "war" for the future of the SBC.

Burleson's postings may have already cost him a leadership role in the denomination. Trustees of the Southern Baptist international missionary agency took the first step this month toward ousting him from their board, accusing him of "broken trust" for writing about a meeting on his Web site. The seemingly minor conflict has broader significance.

I like this man, and you need to read this article. He is right. They are just like the conservatives now, they have so much power they can't handle it.

"Conservatives who loved the battles of decades past have fallen victim to a crusading mentality of bloodthirst," Burleson wrote. "Since all the liberals are gone, conservative crusaders are now killing fellow conservatives."

"The Southern Baptist leadership is so ideologically driven that it's almost impossible for them not to continually draw lines and narrow the boundaries," he said. "In the early stages, this was publicly evident with the moderates and liberals. Now, when the convention meets annually in June, you wonder who they're going to throw out this year. There's always somebody."

I did a search on this guy, Burleson, and I found this article from 1998. I was very impressed by a few paragraphs.

Students challenged to love unconditionally

Burleson said that Christians often have very legalistic ideas of how they are supposed to behave. He blames the church for this mentality.

"If you look at the church and listen to its preaching, you'll get worn out hearing all of the rules for how Christians are supposed to act," Burleson said. "You'll find Christianity being defined by the externals. Christians don't drink. We don't wear pants on Sundays. We have to wear our hair in a certain way."'

Burleson argued that Christians should be among the first to accept others because of the love God has given them, and he challenged the OBU audience to love others unconditionally.

"There are people inside this room and outside those doors that are hurting," he said. "There are people that do not live according to the standards God has set for you, but you must love graciously."

Thank you, Rev. Burleson, that is what has been missing in my childhood church for a long long time.