We’re getting very close to a need for a moratorium on Presbyterians addressing Southern Baptist dynamics, at least until our capital-R Reformed brethren actually encounter a real-life Southern Baptist.

Doug Wilson, a man I link to on this blog and read often (and not just his blog; my bookshelves feature numerous Canon Press titles authored by his hand), has taken up keyboard to sally forth against the great moral failure of running late.

Wilson writes,

If they wanted to denounce old school racism, then they should have done it in the fifties, when it would have done some actual good. But now, just when the secular elites have decided we must abandon all biological givens for the sake of those who want to self-identify as whatever in tarnation they want, we have the Southern Baptists solemnly denouncing the sins of their great grandfathers. There is a time and place for that (Ps. 78:7-8), of course, but people in the middle of a hot grease fire ought not to be lamenting the cold iron of the frying pan in the cupboard.

Somehow, it seems, Wilson would have us to believe that if you have never acted in the past you should, therefore, never act at all.

Wilson makes use of a housefire analogy in his piece and I’ll borrow it from him now: The argument above proffered by Mr. Wilson works out to “If you didn’t have enough sense to turn off the stove before the grease caught fire you darn well better not try to put out the fire now that you realize the sitting room is going up.”

To say it another way, the burden of argument is on Wilson to demonstrate how a lack of timeliness necessitates never taking appropriate action.

Does the chronological remove diminish the weight of the SBC’s move in encouraging brother to consider if he’s offending his brother with the Confederate flag? Sure.

However, is it better to stay silent on the issue than address it at the earliest point you can? Surely not.

I once heard Doug say from the stage at an Association of Classical Christian Schools annual conference that anything worth doing was worth doing poorly, the idea being that some needs are so pressing that you take whatever shot you can at addressing them. That Southern Baptists have taking this action may very well be poorly done but it was nonetheless worth doing.

Now, as for how Doug manages to conflate the Confederate flag with transgenderism… well, you can explain that to me because those are clearly separate issues (and, on transgenderism, I’m glad the SBC has been so clear on the danger that ideology represents to the individual and broader culture).

Wison carries on,

You can’t really confess the sins of your fathers while stoutly clinging to your own. If Southern Baptists get all their kids out of the government indoctrination centers in the fall of 2016, then they might have something valuable to say about what their fathers should have done back in the day. Until then, excuse me for not getting choked up over meaningless displays.

Here I would harken back to the beginning of this post; it would be exceedingly wonderful if Wilson was working from an understanding of just what Southern Baptists are on the record about in regards to this issue (I respect Wilson and so choose to believe he is merely ignorant as opposed to intentionally engaging in misrepresentation):

Southern Baptist Convention, 2005: “RESOLVED, That we urge Christian parents to fully embrace their responsibility to make prayerful and informed decisions regarding where and how they educate their children, whether they choose public, private, or home schooling, to ensure their physical, moral, emotional, and spiritual well-being, with a goal of raising godly men and women who are thoroughly equipped to live as fully devoted followers of Christ.”

Albert Mohler, Southern Baptist Theological Seminary President, also in 2005:

“I believe that now is the time for responsible Southern Baptists to develop an exit strategy from the public schools. This strategy would affirm the basic and ultimate responsibility of Christian parents to take charge of the education of their own children. The strategy would also affirm the responsibility of churches to equip parents, support families, and offer alternatives. ”

While Wilson’s point on the subject of government education is ultimately a red herring it is nonetheless a red herring in which he demonstrates a stunning lack of knowing what he’s talking about.

…we are talking about Baptists here, and so we should recognize that they are not very good at the semiotics of ritual. They are clueless about where they actually are, and have no real sense of timing. They are buying their first pair of bell bottoms in 1992. They just now purchased their lava lamps. The unbelieving world is running headlong after the gold medal of incoherence, and they are competing with a will. And professing evangelicals are running after them, our plumb little thighs churning. “Wait up, guys!” They have lapped us three times now, but because we are in the same section of the track periodically, we can call it relevance.

To be honest, this one gets under my skin. If you’ve read this far I won’t restate the pointlessness of saying no action is superior to late action.

I would ask Wilson a question: Just how well did the captial R-Reformed tradition understand “where they actually were” on January 5th of 1527 when it stood on the banks of the icy Limmat and drowned Felix Manz for daring to suggest that the word baptism should only refer to converts being immersed and that the church shouldn’t use the state to persecute Christians? Is that an example of an admirable “sense of timing?”

What about when, in 1759, Timothy Dwight and Timothy Edwards, executing the will of Jonathan Edwards “sold, conveyed and in open market delivered two negro slaves, viz.: the one a negro man name Joseph, the other a negro woman named Sue, and is wife to the said Jo, which slaves were lately the proper goods of said Jonathan Edwards.” Or when, earlier, Edwards wrote, “If [the critics of slave owners] continue to cry out against those who keep Negro slaves,” they would show themselves to be hypocrites, because they too benefited from the slave trade. “Let them also fully and thoroughly vindicate themselves and their own practice in partaking of negroes’ slavery,” he charged, “or confess that there is no hurt in partaking in it,” otherwise “let ’em own that their objections are not conscientious.”

Or in when Robert Lewis Dabney, after leaving the seminary’s employment, become first a chaplain and then in 1862, adjutant, or chief of staff, to Confederate general Stonewall Jackson?

Please, for sake of your own glass house tradition, stop casting stones about the Southern Baptist sense of timing.

I point out these historical data points not to attempt a denunciation of the Reformed tradition but to point out that no one is immune to missing the moral issue of their day. To criticize, in such condescending imagery, those who acted but acted too late for maximum impact is something like the pot laughing at the kettle for being so darn ebony.

To conclude, were Southern Baptists late? Sure. However, the PCA is still trying to catch up to Southern Baptists on appropriate responses to past racism. The United Methodist Church lags behind the SBC (first in 1971, for the record, and virtually every year since)in moving away from the pro-abortion sentiment benighting our culture.

Should Southern Baptists scoff at these Johnny-come-lately efforts? Or should we say “Wonderful!” and celebrate the good, whenever it shows up? Wilson is, from a deeply compromised position, scoffing out a “Too little, too late” in a most unhelpful fashion.

Finally, on Wilson’s own final word,

…doing what the liberals demanded fifty years ago should make you wonder what your great grandchildren will be apologizing for fifty years from now.

Interestingly enough, I’ve taken a look at The Amazing Dr. Ransom’s Bestiary of Adorable Fallacies and, as a result, can identify a slippery slope when I see one.

As I’ve said elsewhere, I was saddened to read such a deeply uninformed and unthoughtful piece from a man I hold in high regard. I’m choosing, however, in the name of grace, to file this dark excursus of Wilson’s under No One Gets It Right All the Time.

I’m also thankful for a polity in Southern Baptist life that allows for self-criticism and a chance to do what you can to make it right.

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