Whereas No Longer Innocent

(3)WHEREAS, The Baptist Faith and Message states that human beings. “fell from his original innocence whereby his posterity inherited a nature and an environment inclined toward sin.” (Article 3); and

As those who would rest in the theological concept of total depravity would lead us to believe, we all have the capacity to entertain the more heinous aspects of our nature. 

Leading up to the 2021 annual meeting, there has been much talk about how CRT and intersectionality are the clear and present dangers to the SBC. This talk has been at the expense of focusing on other serious concerns within the SBC.

Those who have the singular focus of CRT-I as the threat to the SBC engage in a “grace for me, but not for thee” mentality. Their silence in the face of the SBC Sexual Abuse scandal, the scandals related to Paige and Dorothy Patterson, and the treatment of Russell Moore and the ERLC is deafening. The focus on CRT-I provides obfuscation of the more significant threats to the denomination. 

One needs to look no further than the Catholic Church on how obfuscating a sexual abuse scandal has a lasting and far-reaching effect on the Church. We also have seen how the strategy of divert, distract, diminish, and dismiss has been employed to ‘flood the zone’ with information and outrage while ignoring the sins that have been laid bare before the world. 

It is in the interest of the messengers of the 2021 messengers to reaffirm that our sinful nature causes us to focus on the sins of others rather than our own sins or the sins of our allies. Let us grant the premise for a moment that the threat of CRT-I is at the doorstep of the SBC. Those who would focus on CRT-I while ignoring the other genuine and dire threats that have already entered into the house do so at their peril. A weary world watches us ignore planks and spend entirely too much time on specks.

*Contributed by Phillip Larsen