Accommodation to Culture: Liberalism in the Southern Baptist Convention

"Heresy is basically intellectual; but it results in evil conduct just as orthodox belief produces sanctification. The reason deserves emphasis wherever people propose a non-doctrinal Christianity. What a man does is controlled by what he thinks. Lewd conduct is always the result of wrong ideas. Similarly orthodox theology inevitably produces good works."  -- Dr. Gordon H. Clark



First Baptist Church, Greenville, South Carolina to Accept Unrepentant Homosexuals into Membership.


I didn't take the time to research and verify that the story in the above link is accurate in associating First Baptist Church of Greenville, South Carolina with the Southern Baptist Convention.  However, taking the following story at face value, it would appear that some Baptists think that liberty of conscience means that Christians have no obligation to obey God's moral law.  Nothing could be further from the truth.  (Ezekiel 36:26-27).  Liberty of conscience has traditionally been interpreted to mean that no Christian is obligated to believe anything that cannot be demostrated or proved from Scripture.  It has never meant that the Bible means whatever you want it to mean.  Just as the prophets were moved by God to speak the very words of God and their words were not their own private interpretation of the revelation, so we as individuals cannot make the objective and propositional statements in Scripture say something we privately want it to say.  The word of God is perspicuous and clear and plain.  (2 Peter 1:18-21).

However, to be clear about the issues, Jim Dant, the senior pastor of First Baptist Church, Greenville, South Carolina is openly rejecting church discipline and the Bible and accepting unrepentant and open homosexuals into membership in his church.  Since the church is under a congregational form of government, it follows that the deacons and elders in the church as well as the congregation are all in full agreement with this outright rejection of God's written Word.  In light of the increasing apostasy of our nation and our Evangelical churches the following remarks of Dr. Gordon H. Clark are indeed prophetic.

Dr. Gordon H. Clark's commentary on 2 Peter 2:2.

2 Peter 2:2 (NKJV)
2 And many will follow their destructive ways, because of whom the way of truth will be blasphemed.

"For some unimportant verbal parallels see Romans 2:24, Psalm 119:30, and Acts 16:17, 19:9, 23. Heresy is basically intellectual; but it results in evil conduct just as orthodox belief produces sanctification. The reason deserves emphasis wherever people propose a non-doctrinal Christianity. What a man does is controlled by what he thinks. Lewd conduct is always the result of wrong ideas. Similarly orthodox theology inevitably produces good works. When the Jews attacked Paul's doctrine of justification by faith alone, he replied that justification necessarily produces sanctification. There is no such thing as dead orthodoxy. Right thinking is followed perforce by right living."

It is not enough, however, to condemn false doctrine. The evil conduct of heretics is usually more noticeable than their doctrinal divergences because uneducated Christians are often deceived by poor reasoning. Furthermore, immorality is an immediately pressing problem, and Peter in his situation must deal with it energetically. The verse says that the false teachers will make many disciples and the disciples will bring the Christian community into disrepute. So they did."

Dr. Gordon H. Clark. New Heavens, New Earth: A Commentary on First and Second Peter. 1967. 1972. Second Edition. (Jefferson: Trinity Foundation, 1993). P. 202-203.

Addendum:  Apparently this church and one other Baptist church in South Carolina have been disaffiliated from their association with the SBC over their position on gay marriage:  After Same Sex Wedding, Baptists Sever Ties with Greenville Church.