If you’ve been paying attention, you’re aware by now that this week’s Southern Baptist Convention Annual Meeting resulted in a blow to conservatives in a roughly 60-40 vote for the presidential office for Bart Barber against his conservative opponent, Tom Ascol. As we’ve been documenting, the Southern Baptist Convention has experienced severe liberal drift over the past decade which the liberals, themselves, have completely denied.
One prominent Southern Baptist pastor and former president proclaimed that “there is NO DRIFT. NONE.”
Of course, this comes from the same pastor who resigned from his post at Southeastern Seminary after backlash stemming from his promotion of his openly homosexual son’s “sermon” as “faithful to the gospel.” To be sure, there is no liberal drift. None. Right. Men like James Merritt are exactly who Jude warns about in Jude 1:4:
For certain people have crept in unnoticed who long ago were designated for this condemnation, ungodly people, who pervert the grace of our God into sensuality and deny our only Master and Lord, Jesus Christ.
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The Southern Baptist Convention today looks absolutely nothing like the Southern Baptist Convention of 10, 15, 20 years ago. The drift has been so slow that nobody, not even James Merritt—who is one of the primogenitors of the drift—has noticed.
To pretty much sum up the entire problem with the Southern Baptist Convention in one tweet, Nate Brooks, a professor at Reformed Theological Seminary, says he voted for Bart Barber not because of his commitment to Scripture, but because of his “winsomeness.”
What exactly is winsome? Google dictionary defines it as “attractive or appealing in appearance or character.” Do you know who else fits that definition of winsome? Satan. That’s right. Satan is winsome—his attractive and appealing character deceived Adam and Eve into disobeying God.
Winsome is not a biblical virtue, it is a tool of Satan.
So who exactly is this “winsome” Bart Barber?
Well, he is the perfect establishment marionette—he had all the SBC money-changers behind him. Our last SBC president, who is a serial plagiarist and has relentlessly insisted that he’s done nothing wrong, was relentlessly defended by Bart Barber.
The SBC has a public policy arm, the Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission, that calls for lax abortion laws and decriminalizing mothers seeking abortions while arguing that she isn’t guilty of killing her child—Bart Barber agrees with them.
And he’s a fierce and implacable defender of one of the most apostate pastors to ever masquerade as a shepherd of God’s people in the Southern Baptist Convention, Dwight McKissic. McKissic has been divisive, race-baiting, and a promoter of pro-homosexual, pro-abortion political and judicial candidates around the nation for years while vilifying pro-life conservatives. McKissic, a pastor, even recently called for some abortions to remain legal in the wake of the expected Supreme Court Roe decision.
Bart Barber is primarily interested in “unity”—and right now, the Southern Baptist Convention has a superficial unity like never before seen.
Barber isn’t serious about doing what it takes to bring the Southern Baptist Convention back into a right relationship with God or honoring the covenant that Christ has with the Church. He isn’t interested in following the Apostle Paul’s commands to purge the unrepentant sinners, heretics, and false teachers from among us. He isn’t interested in defending the sheep from the insatiable appetites of the wolves seeking to devour us all. He’s only interested in maintaining that superficial unity at whatever cost—including the gospel itself.