“THE HISTORIC SHIFT IN AMERICA’S LARGEST DENOMINATION” is the title of a long article in Christianity Today (8/5/83). The denomination referred to is. the Southern Baptist Convention which has 14 million members, 36,000 congregations, 6,630 career home and foreign missionaries and baptized almost half a million people last year. It has six seminaries and 52 colleges. Its Publishing House and Sunday School Board has 1,500 employees. These are only some statistics among many given in the article.
The Church has also grown from its original limits in the old South and become nation-wide, even into Canada. As in all denominations liberalism has made imoads, especially in the schools. But in the case of the SBC, efforts to turn the tide and put conservatives in key positions are increasingly successful. The article details the history of the past few years. Although in many ways a very democratic organization, the SBC gives much authority to the Convention President. Largely as the results of a prominent lay member’s work, efforts to elect conservative presidents have been successful and these are slowly swinging the denomination back to its original confessional stand. An interesting statement of the author made parenthetically is, “It is a fact, however, that Southern Baptist churches, as all Protestant churches, tend to grow if they are conservative in doctrine, and tend not to grow if they are liberally inclined.”
THE CHURCH IN CHINA is the subject of a news item in Christianity Today (8/5/83). It made me think of the way many good causes have been defeated by the tactic, “If you can’t beat them, join them!” The officially recognized Three Self Patriotic Movement is the liaison between the government and Protestant churches. Its chairman, Bishop Ding Guanxun, has been travelling outside China asking Christians in other countries to recognize this movement as representative of between 2 and 3 million Chinese Christians. Other sources of information, however, put the number of Christians much higher, because many in the so-called “house churches” do not recognize the TSPM leadership. The article lists seven resolutions “aimed at implementing the (Communist) Party’s policy of religious freedom.” These resolutions seem rather designed to curtail the growth of Christianity and compromise its message than encourage it. This is especially apparent from the seventh resolution which reads: “All Christians are called to uphold the basic principles. These are (1) the socialist road, (2) the people’s democratic dictatorship, (3) Marxism, Leninism, and Mao Zedong thought and (4) the leadership of the Communist party.”
MORE ON PREDESTINATION AND REPROBATION. In the Outlook for July, 1983, I called attention to an article in The Reformed Journal for February, 1983, by Thomas Talbott in which he attacked the Reformed doctrine of reprobation. This resulted in an interesting exchange of articles in subsequent issues. In the Journal for July, 1983, Dr. John Piper, pastor of the Bethlehem Baptist Church of Minneapolis, takes issue with Talbott’s universalism in an article entitled “Universalism in Romans 9–11?” He gives a careful exegetical study of Paul’s argument in these chapters and refers to his book The Justification of God, An Exegetical and Theological Study of Romans 9:1–23 (Baker Book House, 1983). It is very encouraging to have such a forthright defense of the position on the interpretation of this passage adopted in our Reformed Confessions advocated today when so many also in our circles question it.
LIBERATION THEOLOGY, AN EVALUATION is the title of a two-part series of articles in The Reformed Journal (June and July, 1983) by C. Rene Padilla, pastor at La Lucia Baptist Church in Buenos Aires, Argentina. In the first article he gives a survey of the movement known as liberation theology, which has become very popular especially in Latin America among both Roman Catholic and Protestant theologians. While he is sympathetic with these men in their concern for the terrible social conditions in these countries and their conviction that the Church has a message for the poor and oppressed, he shows in his second article that Liberation Theology does not have the answer, but rather tends to compromise the truth of the Gospel. His four points of criticism are: “1. Liberation Theology rightly emphasizes the importance of obedience (praxis) for an understanding of the truth, but is in danger of lapsing into mere pragmatism. 2. Liberation Theology rightly emphasizes the importance of the historical situation but it is in danger of succumbing to historical reductionism (i.e . . letting the historical situation determine the message, E.H.O.). 3. Liberation theology has rightly emphasized the importance of the social sciences but it is in danger of becoming exclusively sociological. 4. Liberation theology has rightly emphasized the importance of recognizing the ideological conditioning of theology but it is in danger of reducing the gospel to an ideology.” The danger is that Liberation Theology is unduly influenced by Marxist sociopolitical views.
TAX BENEFITS FOR SCHOOL COSTS RULED CONSTITUTIONAL. The Supreme Court bas ruled in a 5 to 4 decision that a Minnesota law permitting parents to take an income tax deduction for tuition expenses for either public or private schools is constitutional. Justice William H. Rehnquist, writing for the majority, emphasized what he called the “facial neutrality” of the 28 year old law, that is, the fact that it does not distinguish between private and public or religious and secular schools. Supporters of the Reagan Administration’s proposal for income tax credits on Federal taxes for private school tuition, now before Congress, said this decision helped their cause, but admitted there remain unsolved problems (Evangelical Newsletter 7/22/83).