The Southern Baptist Convention, the largest organization of the largest denomination of Protestants in America, just elected a new president. Frank S. Page is a minister of Taylor's First Baptist, a megachurch in South Carolina. His election was apparently a surprise to many, but his worldview should be a surprise to none.
The Southern Baptist Convention, the largest organization of the largest denomination of Protestants in America, just elected a new president. Frank S. Page is a minister of Taylor's First Baptist, a megachurch in South Carolina. His election was apparently a surprise to many, but his worldview should be a surprise to none.
The SBC has long been used as a political instrument by the GOP and in the recent decades the organization's move toward fundamentalism has paralleled the Republican Party's lurch to the right. The Convention has organized such absurd boycotts of places like Disneyworld for being too pro-gay. In 2000, Jimmy Carter, a life-long born-again Baptist, left the denomination because he believed it was becoming "increasingly rigid."
Taylors' First Baptist has grown from 1000 member to 2300+ since 2000. A friend calls Page a "conservative Bible-believing inerrantist" and "a strong leader" who is "calling for adding passion, revival, soul-winning and missions to the convention's 30-year concentration on doctrinal purity."
"Doctrinal purity" being a nice euphemism for "fundamentalism."
In an interesting press release from late May, Page wrote:
There is a serious disconnect between the leaders of our Southern Baptist Convention and the rank and file lay person and pastor. Some perceive that there is a well oiled machine, filled with power hungry politicians, running the show while the vast majority of loyal, supportive people are left without any voice and/or influence. While this observation may or may not be true, there is a serious perception of disconnect and distrust.
That makes him sound like he was elected as a reformer, but following his appointment he told the conference "I do not want anyone to think I am out to undo a conservative movement," adding that "godly, conservative men and women in our convention," will guide the church, according to the New York Times.
Dr. Page can apparently, at times, be distracted by the trivial. According to archives of "Taylor's Family," the church's newsletter, officials at the church called the book and film version of The Da Vinci Code as "at its very heart, anti-Christian. We are not encouraging believers to read this book or to see the movie unless you feel specifically led by the Lord to do so [emphasis added]."
No mixed messages there...
He also devoted a month's worth of sermons to debunking the fictional story.
I wonder if he underestimates the intelligence of his parishioners...?
But when his theological priorities are not askew, Page starts looking a bit scary. Cursory glances at his other sermons give a little more insight into his mindset. One of the more disturbing is that Page speaks the language of a "spiritual warfare" espouser, frequently scatters military language or war anecdotes into his messages to his parishioners, and gives advice to the "prayer warriors" of his congregation.
But the big theme he's been pounding home again and again of late is that "families are under attack." Generally speaking, he discusses this assault on the family in a rather vaguely constructed context dealing with the husband and the wife, but his words have this wink-wink-nudge-nudge feeling to them that suggests he's speaking in code (read: gay marriage).
But what is really worrying is that Page will even meld the two themes, as he did on April 30th:
We must recognize that the home is one of the prime spots for spiritual warfare. Multitudes over the years have experienced the sting of spiritual warfare in the home. I do not need to shower you with statistics. You know well how Satan has been able to invade the home. He has been able to stir up the storms to the point that many lives lay shipwrecked on the shore never to sail again. We have a generation of "walking wounded" who bear the scars of the storms which are a direct result of Satan's warfare.
[emphasis added]
(The sad thing is that appears to be a recent development. In the earlier sermons posted on the site, ones from the summer and fall of 2005, Page discusses a variety of issues and quotes people like Kierkegaard and William James. Now he's quoting Gen. MacArthur. It could be that his reading habits have just changed recently, but the trajectory of his sermons suggests that he is careening toward a more militant form of evangelical Christianity.)
I know it's too much to expect that the SBC adopt more moderate stances on social issues -- its recent history on gay rights has been particularly mind-blowingly loathsome -- but the acceleration of the "war against the family" or "war for civilization" rhetoric is frightening, and just looking at Page's sermons from the last year alone shows how the force of this apocalyptic language is sweeping the major players within the Christian right. More and more it sounds like preachers have forsaken ministering to the souls of their congregants and are now just barking orders to the their platoons of their personal Tribulation Forces.
The most annoying part about it is that it makes apocalypticians out of people (like me) who don't normally keep an eye on the Rapture clock. Take this for example:
Consider [former] House Majority Leader Tom DeLay. At church one day he listened as the pastor, urging his flock to support the administration, declared that "the war between America and Iraq is the gateway to the Apocalypse." DeLay rose to speak, not only to the congregation but to 225 Christian TV and radio stations. "Ladies and gentlemen," he said, "what has been spoken here tonight is the truth of God."
I don't know if Page is the kind of pastor that is going to stand at the pulpit and announce a call-to-arms to all the member churches of the SBC to eliminate the heathen and thereby pave the way for God to create the Kingdom of Heaven on Earth, but his recent writings demonstrate just how influential the Reconstructionist postmilleniumist thought is in evangelical circles. It almost has the feeling that it's sweeping the seminaries the way deconstructionism swept grad schools in the latter part of the 20th century.
The SBC's recent vehemence towards gays should give everyone pause for concern and the fact that Page says he's not planning on changing course worries me even more. In an article that was published in Harper's last year, Chris Hedges wrote:
I can't help but recall the words of my ethics professor at Harvard Divinity School, Dr. James Luther Adams, who told us that when we were his age, and he was then close to eighty, we would all be fighting the "Christian fascists."
...[F]ascism, Adams warned, would not return wearing swastikas and brown shirts. Its ideological inheritors would cloak themselves in the language of the Bible; they would come carrying crosses and chanting the Pledge of Allegiance.
[...]
Adams told us to watch closely the Christian right's persecution of homosexuals and lesbians. Hitler, he reminded us, promised to restore moral values not long after he took power in 1933, then imposed a ban on all homosexual and lesbian organizations and publications. Then came raids on the places where homosexuals gathered, culminating on May 6, 1933, with the ransacking of the Institute for Sexual Science in Berlin. Twelve thousand volumes from the institute's library were tossed into a public bonfire. Homosexuals and lesbians, Adams said, would be the first "deviants" singled out by the Christian right. We would be the next.