Tim Tebow, FBC Dallas, and Evangelical Extremism

As longtime readers know (and hopefully appreciate), Save OBU is completely uninterested in secular politics and "culture wars."  This is a bit of a challenge for me personally because I essentially work in the culture war and politics business.  I'm writing a doctoral dissertation on evangelicals' contraception attitudes. Though at Save OBU my interest in Southern Baptist institutional life is primarily centered on higher education, I am constantly exposed to SBC/evangelical elites and other thought leaders who appear at least as interested in worldly politics as in the Kingdom God sent Jesus to proclaim.  It's true that most Save OBU supporters are culturally and theologically conservative, but I've learned that we have a lot of moderates and maybe even a few liberals in our ranks.  For the sake of unity, I've tried to steer clear of politics and culture wars.

Given all that, it would seem that New York Jets backup quarterback Tim Tebow's announcement Thursday that he will not speak as scheduled at First Baptist Church of Dallas in April is irrelevant to our cause.  But on reflection, I do think the episode is indicative of something we talk about here all the time: SBC elites' ever-increasing fundamentalism and extremism.

As the story unfolded Thursday, three things struck me.  First, FBC's response to Tebow's cancellation was tacky, passive-aggressive, and reflected poorly on the church.  Second, the whole affair says a lot more about FBC's pastor, the Rev. Dr. Robert Jeffress, than it does about Tim Tebow.  Jeffress has a long history of controversial statements.  Tebow, on the other hand, has a long history of living his faith joyfully and publicly under intense scrutiny.  But what struck me most was seeing not one but several news headlines proclaiming that Tebow had cancelled an appearance at the "controversial First Baptist Church of Dallas."

For those who missed the story, you can find Tebow's announcement here, the church's press release here, and a partial compendium of Dr. Jeffress's statements here.

Given his record of provocative public statements, most notably about both major party presidential candidates in 2012 but apparently also about Catholicism, it's unsurprising and unremarkable that Dr. Jeffress would be labeled controversial. But FBC Dallas itself?  Isn't that a little unfair?  It got me thinking.

First of all, I thought Tebow was very classy to phone Dr. Jeffress in advance of announcing his decision publicly and to acknowledge "the faithful members of the historic First Baptist Church of Dallas."  Culturally, institutionally, and politically, it's undeniable that the congregation has moved somewhat to the right along with its pastors, the alternative Baptist state convention in Texas, and the entire Southern Baptist Convention's leadership.  Of course, the disappearance of moderates and others who rejected having their religion conflated with a political party has also pushed the median member further to the right.

But let's face the facts.  The people of FBC have always been conservative.  Before and after the Takeover, FBC Dallas was a (if not the) flagship church of the SBC.  Its longtime pastor, the Rev. Dr. W. A. Criswell, was a typical fundamentalist who preached inerrancy and premillennial dispensationalism.  (He was also lukewarm at best toward racial integration until it was no longer socially palatable to be racist.)  But just as no one could have called FBC controversial, few would have considered Dr. Criswell to be a controversial preacher.

So what has changed?

The legion of SBC elites who unleashed a storm of criticism on Tebow would have you believe that the media are at fault --- that they have forced Christians out of the public square, intimidated Tebow into bowing out, and labeled every conservative "controversial" or worse.  Even the Rev. Rick Warren, who should know better, joined the whine-fest.  But this is total and complete nonsense.  I remain utterly baffled that the majority religion in the freest nation on earth can sustain an imaginary persecution complex.

The First Baptist Church of Dallas wasn't controversial 50 years ago because its pastor wasn't controversial.  Southern Baptists weren't controversial because their seminary presidents and agency heads didn't double as political party operatives.  Baptists pretty much abided by the centuries-old consensus on what it meant to be Baptist.  And the evangelical impulse to engage the culture (contrasted with fundamentalists' separatism and obnoxiousness) was generally in line with that historic consensus.

If FBC Dallas is controversial today, it's because Dr. Jeffress is controversial -- not because the congregation or the media or anything else has changed.

You see, Dr. Criswell may not have supported George Romney for the 1968 Republican presidential nomination, but he didn't publicly call him an unchristian, Hell-bound cult member, as Jeffress did when speaking about Mitt Romney.  And Criswell certainly didn't suggest that George Romney's religion disqualified him from public office.  Criswell did not like LBJ or Jimmy Carter, but he didn't say that they were paving the way for the antichrist, as Jeffress said about President Obama.  Like so many of today's SBC leaders, Dr. Jeffress wants to retain evangelicals' cultural engagement but has embraced the worst aspects of fundamentalism: anti-intellectualism, a completely delusional persecution complex, and a tone that seems to be deliberately as offensive and obnoxious as possible.

Even more obnoxious than FBC's angry and rude press release was Jeffress's pathetic attempt to force Tebow into his crazy camp:

"There doesn't seem to be any daylight between what we believe," Jeffress said, noting that Tebow is a member of First Baptist Church in Jacksonville, Fla.  "He simply attributed it to needing to stay away from controversy."

Tell you what, Dr. Jeffress.  Let's let Tebow speak for himself regarding whether he believes, like you, that homosexuality leads to pedophilia or that the president is paving the way for the reign of the antichrist.

Personally, I'm ambivalent about Tim Tebow.  It occurs to me that people who flaunt their religiosity "have received their reward in full" (Matthew 6).  But I can't possibly know Tebow's heart and whether or not his motivation is "to be seen of men."  Either way, I admire his faithfulness, work ethic, and apparent humility of spirit.  One of my first dates with my bride, Cara, was a Florida Gators game in 2008, Tebow's junior season.  My brother and sister-in-law saw some of Tebow's (or God's, depending on how you look at it) spectacular performances in Denver late in the 2011 season.

After being hastily and harshly criticized by evangelicals who had for years been his strongest supporters, Tebow now knows how today's evangelical extremists operate.  When you're useful to them, they praise and respect you.  But when you exercise some independent thought that does not follow their theology or politics to the letter, they throw you out like yesterday's trash.

These are not the people we need running our conventions, our churches, or our universities.  For now, we're stuck with too many of them.  But in the truest Baptist spirit, let's remind the world that they do not speak for us as they wreck the reputations of our once-proud institutions.

OBU's Peers: Texas Baptist Schools?

OBU's Peers Series:
Intro: Who's In the Same Boat?
OBU's Peers: Nondenominational Colleges?
OBU's Peers: Nearby Baptist Colleges (Ouachita and Southwest Baptist)?
OBU's Peers: Texas Baptist Colleges?
OBU's Peers: Union University?


**Please circulate widely among faculty/students at BGCT schools, OBU alumni in TX, and TX Baptist friends in general.**

This week, we're looking at how OBU's peer institutions are faring with respect to academic freedom.  To review, we already know that formerly Baptist schools like Stetson and Furman, to say nothing of Wake Forest and Baylor, broke free of convention control before the fundamentalists could undermine them.  A more relevant ex-Baptist peer institution is William Jewell College, which continues to raise its profile as a leader in Christian liberal arts education without having to kowtow to the Missouri Baptist Convention.  On the other hand, OBU is in no serious danger of becoming as thoroughly fundamentalist as Brewton-Parker or Truett-McConnell, two Georgia Baptist colleges that do not even pretend to be legitimate academic institutions anymore.

We've been looking a little closer home in our search for schools in the same boat we're in: trying to preserve academic freedom, rigor, and integrity while having to satisfy an increasingly fundamentalist state convention.  Nondenominational Christian colleges (and seminaries) have flourished since the Fundamentalist Takeover of the SBC ushered in the slow, painful degradation of Baptist higher education.  And these institutions have maintained their Christian character, something fundamentalist sympathizers claim Baptist schools would lose without being "doctrinally accountable" to state conventions.  Nearby SBC schools such as Ouachita Baptist Univ. and Southwest Baptist Univ. have held their own, with "the other" OBU doing a better job protecting academic freedom and SBU surviving with a more conservative ethos, but no Georgia Baptist Convention-style assault on the institution.

Today we look south to Texas.  As with the past couple days, my aim here is not really to provide in-depth reporting about the state of academic freedom at other Baptist schools.  Rather, I want to invite constituents of those schools into our conversation so that we can learn more about how they protect academic freedom, the degree to which it has been preserved or undermined, and how these schools relate to their state conventions.  As our readers have done the past few days, forwarding this page to friends at Wheaton, Gordon, Biola, Ouachita, SBU, etc., I encourage you to help get the word out to the BGCT schools.

The Baptist General Convention of Texas
One of the few holdouts in Southern Baptist life, the BGCT resisted repeated and determined attempts by fundamentalist to take control of the state convention as they did everywhere else (Virginia being the notable exception).  Thankfully, Texas Baptists did not have the appetite for fundamentalist politics or tactics.  Many of our friends at Texas Baptists Committed were actively involved in the effort to preserve historic Baptist freedoms from fundamentalist encroachment.

In 1998, hard-liners formed their own state convention, the Southern Baptists of Texas, as a fundamentalist alternative to the still-conservative BGCT.  Most major players in SBC life from Texas are from fundamentalist SBTC churches (including, for those keeping score at home, OBU's favorite token black chapel preacher, Rev. Dr. Voddie Baucham).  Even as fundamentalists continue to try to destroy the BGCT using deceptive tactics such as infiltrating churches, the BGCT continues to coordinate the collective ministry of Texas Baptists. Though not without problems of its own, the BGCO embodies missional engagement and ecumenical spirit.

Baptist Colleges in Texas

The SBC website lists a dozen Baptist colleges in Texas.  Let's divide them into categories based on affiliation:

The College at Southwestern
This one doesn't really count, since it's not affiliated with a state convention.  But after the Takeover, all six SBC seminaries decided to start undergraduate programs, supposedly to make a boatload of cash to subsidize the seminaries provide a sufficiently fundamentalist education because convention-controlled colleges could no longer be trusted to do so.  Apparently, degrading graduate education wasn't enough for them, so they opened fire on undergraduate education as well.   Operating under the auspices of the seminaries made accreditation -- which certain seminaries almost lost and these undergraduate programs surely could not attain on their own -- a non-issue.  The College at Southwestern has a distinguished professor of homemaking (I swear I am not making this up), along with 11 other (male) professors.

Southern Baptists of Texas Convention Schools
The SBTC controls Criswell College and Jacksonville College.  Criswell College, as I understand it, started off under the auspices of the First Baptist Church of Dallas.  After several problems with the Southern Association of Colleges and Schools, Criswell barely managed to get its accreditation renewed.  Its trustees include SBC celebrities such as Paul Pressler and Richard Land.  Criswell's president, who left the school in 2008 but returned in 2010 after it separated from FBC Dallas, is a past trustee of Southern Seminary where he was an accomplice in young President Al Mohler's "reforms."  So clearly this place really doesn't care about academic freedom.

The SBTC's other institution is Jacksonville College, a two-year school.

Baptist General Convention of Texas Schools
The BGCT is affiliated with Baptist University of the Americas, Baylor, Dallas Baptist, East Texas Baptist, Hardin-Simmons, Howard Payne, the University of Mary Hardin-Baylor, and Wayland Baptist.

Houston Baptist, which is considering a name change, is a BGCT affiliate but is also "fraternally related" to the SBTC.  I'm not sure exactly what that means, but hopefully someone will clarify.

All but BUA and Wayland are CCCU members.  (Notably, Criswell and Jacksonville are not.  Maybe the CCCU is too liberal for them.)

Now, most OBU people will recognize some of these schools as our competitors in NAIA athletics.  But since a number of OBU students and alumni are from Texas, my hunch is that some of you will have considerable knowledge about each of these BGCT institutions.  I regret that I don't have time to investigate these schools as rigorously as I researched the Georgia schools for our Downward Spiral Series a few weeks ago.  But if it becomes relevant, we will dig as deeply as we need to in order to learn what we can from these schools' experiences.  My hunch is that they have not had problems recently, but please chime in to set the record straight where I am missing important nuances or even facts.

Academic freedom should be well protected at BGCT schools, because the schools do not have a fundamentalist state convention to appease.  The Baylor situation is a bit more complicated, as it is now a world-class research university.  The liberal arts colleges, however, may indeed be relevant peers to OBU because of their Christian character and relationship to a Baptist state convention, even though none appear in the Forbes rankings of 600+ colleges.  While I'm sure that, like OBU, each of these universities has a conservative ethos and a proven commitment to Christianity, I would not assume they have had problems with academic freedom in the past 10 or 15 years.

It's interesting to imagine what problems OBU might have avoided if it were affiliated with a convention like the BGCT.  For one thing, our current provost never would have set foot on campus, on the basis of convention affiliation alone.  SBC climbers and power brokers absolutely detest the BGCT (but they can't live without the BGCT's sizable contribution to the SBC's coffers in Nashville).  OBU wouldn't have to pander to SBC fundamentalists out of a desire for self-preservation (or to appease the BGCO).  The Class of 1959's statue of James Ralph Scales, a true champion of pre-Takeover Baptist higher education, wouldn't seem like such an ironically cruel joke.  Heck, you might even be able to buy a non-fundamentalist classic book on campus!

In closing, I want to thank our BGCT-affiliated friends for taking the time to read this post and learn about our movement.  You are invited to join us on Facebook and Twitter.  We welcome your support in our fight to preserve academic freedom, integrity, rigor, and relevance -- just as we would gladly stand in solidarity with you if you ever face fundamentalist encroachment.  Our readers have kept this page alive in Wheaton, Arkadelphia, and Bolivar this week.  Let's light up the state of Texas and let the world know that authentically Baptist Christian liberal arts education is our heritage and one we will fight to protect!

SaveOBU@gmail.com

OBU Chapel: Compulsory, Sexist, and Fundamentalist as Ever

It's really beyond the scope of Save OBU to say much about OBU chapel services, especially since many of our supporters have not attended them in years.  But insofar as chapel services reinforce OBU's descent into fundamentalism, we will make note of them.  This especially important because we are trying to make the case that OBU's troubling trend is systemic and organized, and not just a result of one or two powerful men's personal preferences.

Until today, I had not heard the name Voddie Baucham in over a decade.  But I am absolutely certain he spoke at chapel when I was at OBU.  (Who could forget a name like Voddie?)  Actually, as I've perused lists of recent and upcoming chapel speakers, it's amazing how much recycling goes on.

Now, I have always believed that making religious worship compulsory was bizarre and counter-productive.  But as I experienced OBU as a student and then as an alum, I have come to realize that OBU is surprisingly authoritarian and somehow gets near-universal conformity with minimal questioning.

Why the fuss about today's chapel speaker, then?  Because Voddie Baucham is not your typical Baptist minister.  Instead of partnering with the mainstream Baptist General Convention of Texas, Baucham's congregation is part of the Southern Baptists of Texas Convention.  Whereas fundamentalists succeeded in taking control of the BGCO and most other state conventions, they failed to take control of the BGCT.  So they formed an alternative state convention, putting politics and fundamentalist dogma ahead of mission and ministry cooperation.  Even now, the SBTC encourages "stealth" fundamentalist pastors to remake churches from within and endorses ethically dubious tactics to lure unsuspecting congregations away from the BGCT.

Thus OBU has given a platform to someone who openly loathes Southern Baptists' long history of mission and ministry cooperation in Texas and felt so strongly that the conservative BGCT was not conservative enough that he aligned with a controversial splinter group.

Here is Rev. Baucham on CNN in 2008 lamenting the fact that Sarah Palin left the kitchen to pursue a career of public service.  You have to watch this (it starts about 1 minute into the video).  It's pretty breathtaking.  The anchor (who knows her Bible better than most) is truly taken aback.

Apologies to all if Rev. Baucham has miraculously moderated his extreme views in recent years and preached an inspiring sermon in Raley Chapel today.  But somehow I doubt that's the case.  It's just a shame that the Raley Chapel pulpit continues to be a platform for extremism, sexism, and fundamentalism.