Mennonite Southern Baptists? Not Yet.

Fäaseene fann en Fäauadeel*

James Craig Anderson  (1962 - 2011)

     It is with wry bemusement that after so many years of having to defend Anabaptism against its critics amongst the Fundamentalists and Baptist Evangelicals (the Anglo-Americans), we are now being courted by both the Religious Left and the Fundamentalist Right to coopt that very heritage which only decades ago was too odious and too theologically suspect for true “Christians” to accept.

    Knowing and admitting my subsequent cultural bias against the Southern Baptist model of church governance, their creedal approach to faith, and a compromising history of controversial racial understandings, I am never-the-less attempting to give Rick Warren, for instance, a relatively fair hearing.  What I have found is that Baylor and its former seminary, South West Baptist Seminary (Rick Warren’s alma mater) are not so different in the general composition and make-up of their student bodies from many comparable Mennonite schools – the demographics of both groupings generally reflecting those of the surrounding communities with about 20-year time lag (understandable given the differing needs of different generations of immigrant families for educational resources).  The major difference being in the focus on religious fundamentals in the former and concepts of service and justice in the latter.

    On the other hand, the technically independent Bob Jones University seems to fulfill most of the more negative impressions to which I had ascribed to the wider Southern Baptist conference.  So maybe I have been guilty of judging congregations and conferences more by the company they keep than by their own individual beliefs and actions.  Good enough.  Rick Warren might be legit.  Bob Jones might not speak for the Southern Baptists.

    Warren’s outreach to the Anabaptists brings up a couple of questions – why us?  Why not someone else?  These are not the same questions.  

Southern Evangelicals and Interracial Marriage – Is Race the New Gay?

 ne Kjast

    Forget Same-Sex Marriage, it seems a lot of  Southern USA Evangelicals are still trying to grasp interracial marriage.  With world-wide trends towards marriage indicating that it is a social institution in general decline – no longer seen as essential for raising children or living in a committed relationship – potentially outmoded concepts of marriage might seemingly outlive marriage itself. 

    South Africa and the United States South, two of the world’s most racially controversial societies in the 20^th Century, are again generating racial headlines.  It seems that certain ghosts of the past still haunt feelings of trust and acceptance between racial groups in these two regions.

    Last December (2011), despite decades of civil rights movements and legislation against racial discrimination, the Gulnare Freewill Baptist Church in Kentucky voted 9 to 6 to bar interracial  couples from becoming members or being used in worship services.  After a week of bad press, the church did reverse itself, but the damage was done.

    Huffington Post writer Melanie Coffee sums it up by asking, “So between you and me, how do you really feel about interracial couples? Are you OK with it as long as: A) It's not one of your children? B) It's not in your church C) They're not gay or D) The couple's happy?” (Coffee, see below).