MAINSTREAM MESSENGER
Vol. 2, No. 4 September 1999
MOB to Defend Baptist Faith & Message
at Baptist Convention
Mainstream Oklahoma Baptists (MOB) intend to present a resolution asking messengers at the Baptist General Convention of Oklahoma to oppose any revision of the BFM.
In 1925 a confession of faith written by a committee chaired by E.Y. Mullins, then President of Southern Seminary, was adopted by the SBC. That Baptist Faith and Message statement was written at a time when the doctrinal integrity of Southern Baptists was being challenged by J. Frank Norris, then pastor of First Baptist Church of Fort Worth. Norris eventually left the SBC and formed a denomination of Independent Fundamental Baptists.
In 1962 a committee chaired by Hershel Hobbs, then pastor of First Baptist of OK City, reviewed the BFM, made minor alterations, and added a preamble designed to prevent it from becoming a binding creed. It was adopted by the SBC in 1963. The 1962 review was prompted by Fundamentalists within the SBC who did not believe that the confession’s article on biblical authority was strong enough.
For years after the 1963 BFM was adopted SBC Fundamentalists informally discussed their dissatisfaction with the work of Hershel Hobbs and his committee. In 1972 they formally organized into a group they called “The Baptist Faith and Message Fellowship.” By 1979 the group was involved in a plan to takeover the SBC by electing ten consecutive Fundamentalist Presidents of the SBC. Their first nominee for President was Adrian Rogers, pastor of Bellevue Baptist Church in Memphis, TN. Rogers served three years as President of the SBC. He now chairs the committee that will review the Baptist Faith and Message.
No credible source believes that a committee led by Adrian Rogers will review the BFM without making major alterations. Those alterations will impact on every Southern Baptist church and church member.
For 75 years the thoughtful and careful work of men like E.Y. Mullins and Hershel Hobbs have defined Baptist beliefs. The articles in the Mullins’ and Hobbs’ BFM’s were carefully crafted to give broad room for divergences of interpretation and understanding while being faithful to the basic beliefs of evangelical Christianity.
Avoiding the shoals of liberal theology and the sandbars on the banks of Fundamentalism, Mullins and Hobbs charted a course that kept Baptists in the depths of mainstream Christianity.
It is time for Baptists to rise up and object to the direction that Fundamentalism is steering us. Mainstream Baptists will present a resolution opposing the revision of the BFM at the Convention of Oklahoma Baptists meeting on November 15-16 in OK City.
We encourage all our readers to get their church to elect them to be a messenger to the BGCO convention and then lend their voice to defend the BFM.
Help us pass a resolution that will send a message to Adrian Rogers and his committee — Don’t mess with the Baptist Faith and Message !