You've Been Creedalized !
The dictionary says a creed is “an authoritative formal statement” of the chief articles of Christian beliefs. Until recently Southern Baptists refused to issue “official creeds carrying mandatory authority.”
When our Baptist forefathers were revered and respected, we remembered that they had secured our freedom from the coercive force of Christian creeds with their own blood.
Our Baptist forefathers died at the hands of Christians whose creeds sanctioned their executions and consigned them to hell for refusing to baptize their infant children. Those Christians had forgotten that the gospel requires three freedoms: 1) freedom to respond to Christ personally, 2) freedom to receive salvation individually, and 3) freedom from extrabiblical mandates that displaced the Holy Spirit and diverted them from faithfully seeking and following God’s personal guidance in their daily lives.
Until the year 2000, Baptists never issued creeds. Instead, we issued confessions of faith that served only as “information” and “guides in interpretation, having no authority over the conscience.”
Now, however, the liberty of conscience that our forefathers secured by sacrifices sealed in their own blood is being abolished from Southern Baptist life.
Soul freedom in Christ, soul competency under God, liberty of conscience, the priesthood of every believer, and the autonomy of the local church are all being replaced by “an authoritative formal statement” carrying mandatory authority as an “instrument of doctrinal accountability.” We have been creedalized!
This is a seismic shift in Baptist life and thought. The aftershocks of this Baptist earthquake are still rippling through the SBC, as well as through our Baptist state conventions and associations — and the fault line reaches all the way down to your local Baptist church.
At least one Southern Baptist Church in Oklahoma has paraded its entire deacon body before the church to show them signing and swearing allegiance to the 2000 Baptist Faith and Message.
Other churches are requiring Sunday School teachers to sign and swear allegiance to the 2000 BF&M as a condition of service in their church.
What are they signing? What significance should be attached to such signatures? If they understood the fine print, would Baptists be ashamed to sign their names to the 2000 BF&M?
To help you understand the true significance of the 2000 BF&M, we have put together a special issue of the Mainstream Messenger. This issue is written by a Baptist layman, Bob Stephenson, to Baptist lay men and women. There won’t be a lot of technical jargon, so it shouldn’t be hard to grasp or understand.
Once you’ve read it, I think you’ll see the gravity of this shift in Baptist thinking. Creedal mandates and “authoritative formal statements” are written for a purpose. Deacons, teachers and workers in some Oklahoma SBC churches are already finding themselves suddenly viewed as “unfit” and “ineligible” for positions of service within their churches for refusing to affirm the 2000 BF&M.
Many believe that before the aftershocks of this Baptist earthquake subside, every Southern Baptist pastor, every deacon, every Sunday School teacher, and a host of other church workers will all be forced to either affirm the 2000 BF&M or be out of fellowship with the SBC.