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MAINSTREAM MESSENGER Vol. 1, No. 1 April 1998SBC Asserts Connectionalism According to a February 26, 1998 Baptist Messenger article, the SBC Executive Committee "pledges that historic ties between the states and the SBC will be maintained." The action occurred at the Committee's February 16-18 meeting. For the SBC, the travesty of Baptist ecclesiology comes when groups like Mainstream Oklahoma Baptists assert traditional Baptist values of local church autonomy. According to long-standing Baptist understandings of polity, every Baptist church and organization is independent, and cooperation is voluntary. Each church freely chooses whether to join an association, state convention, or the SBC (or other national body). Similarly, each association and state convention voluntarily chooses to associate with any more comprehensive group. This means that the SBC Executive Committee vote flies in the face of Baptist tradition. It rightly has no authority whether any state convention chooses to participate in the Cooperative Program or any other program of the SBC. Organizations like Mainstream Oklahoma Baptists must fight a corrective action, against this fundamentalism and efforts at authoritarian control by the new SBC and state conventions that follow the so-called "conservative resurgence." The leadership of the Baptist General Convention of Oklahoma and most Associations in the state have fallen in line with the officials of the new SBC. This means that SBC actions -- like refusing to receive funds from the Cooperative Baptist Fellowship -- produce lock-step action by the BGCO. Many Oklahoma Baptist churches blindly follow the dictates of their Associations and the BGCO -- abdicating their autonomy and the leadership of the Holy Spirit. Significantly, most of the leadership of Mainstream Oklahoma Baptists are laypersons. Their careers cannot be manipulated by the new BGCO leadership, as can that of professional ministerial staffs. Individual Oklahoma Baptists (lay and clergy) must take the leadership in reasserting the autonomy of individual believers and congregations. Mainstream Oklahoma Baptists provides a forum for cooperating in the restoration of this and other Bible-based beliefs and traditions. Richard D. Kahoe |
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