A few days back the Friends of Justice website had a blog post regarding Al Mohler, president of Southern Baptist Seminary in Louisville, and his inclusion of young earthism (about 6,000 years) in his theology. That blog brought to mind this sermon, which I preached at Kent Baptist Church in Southern Indiana in Spring, 1965. I was surprised to find a full manuscript of that sermon. I would be less cerebral and less dogmatic about some of this than when I was a young Elihu challenging Job and his friends. I would also seek to be more specific regarding Greek thought, rather than painting all Greek thought with a Platonic brush. This sermon, while dated in details, is still timely. My mind has changed very little on this topic in the intervening 48 years. 

To all who studied with him, the influence of Eric Rust will be apparent in this sermon.

Charles Kiker

The God of the Gaps

There was a disturbing article in the Louisville Times this past week. It was entitled “Evolution Revolution” and concerned a group of Warren County, Ky. Citizens who are protesting the use of text books teaching the evolutionary theory. The spokesman for the group, a Warren County farmer, put it this way, “You take a child and teach him one doctrine at home to believe in the Bible and that God created man. You send him to school and he’s taught the evolutionary theory.” The farmer concluded, “Man was either created by God or else it all happened through a series of strange happenings. . . .”

There was a disturbing editorial in the Texas Baptist paper, The Baptist Standard, a few weeks ago. In this editorial the editor criticizes E. C. Rust, the capable scientist, biblical scholar, theologian and Philosophy professor of Southern Seminary. Dr. Rust is criticized by the Texas editor because he told a group of college students that science is on the brink of making a living cell, and that Christians should not be disturbed if this fact does happen.

I find it disturbing that there are movements led by Christians underway in Texas and New Mexico to keep textbooks containing certain scientific theories out of the public schools.

I find these facts disturbing because they seem to point to the fact that a group of sincere, dedicated, though misinformed, Christians are seeking to put Christianity over against modern science. (more…)

Alan Bean

Al Mohler, president of The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, is a young earth creationist.  That is, he believes the earth is 6,000 years old (give or take a decade).

When I stumbled across this fact in a Peter Enns column, I was stunned.  Dr. Mohler didn’t pick up his young earth views in school.  My theological education is exactly the same as his.  In fact, we studied under the same professors during roughly the same period.  No one at Southern Seminary was taking issue with the unanimous verdict of science in the 1980s.  The universe we talked about was created by God, to be sure, but when the issue was the age of the earth, we took our cue from the best science available.

Mohler doesn’t actually deny the unanimous verdict of science.  The earth appears to be millions of years old, and biological life appears to have undergone considerable evolution.  But Mohler believes that God created the earth with “apparent age”.  The heavens and the earth had to be created 6,000 years  ago because that’s what the biblical narrative suggests.

God wrote the Bible and God don’t lie.  End of discussion.

This makes me uncomfortable for a number of reasons.  Will people now assume that I am a young-earther because I have two degrees from SBTS?  That’s a distressing thought.

But it goes much deeper than that.  How can an intelligent, well-educated man like R. Albert suddenly decide that, contrary to all appearances, one and one makes three? (more…)

By Alan Bean

When John Kennedy was assassinated years ago, Dallas, Texas, was known as the most far-right city in America.  In the wake of Kennedy’s killing, Dallas pastor William Holmes asked, “In the name of God, what kind of city have we become?”

But interviewed five decades later, Holmes insists that most Dallas residents were moderate conservatives.  The folks who heckled, jeered and threatened Lyndon Johnson in 1960 and Adlai Stevenson just weeks before the Kennedy’s came to town were not representative of the community.

So, has Dallas got a bad rap?

Not really.  Rev. Holmes identifies the key problem.  Dallas was a “business-oriented, family-oriented, church- and synagogue-oriented and adamantly disinclined to engage, to confront, and to challenge anyone who held a more radically conservative point of view.”  (emphasis added). (more…)

Brent Younger was Sr. pastor of Broadway Baptist Church before he went to the McAfee School of Theology in the Atlanta area to teach preaching.  Black preachers make White preachers nervous.  We wonder how they do what they do.  How they memorize all those texts in the KJV.  How they can strong one sentence after another without pausing to breathe.

But deep down, White preachers think we bring the substance even if we’re not so good on the form.  Is that true?  Can Black students learn anything from a white preaching professor, or does the learning move in both directions?

This conversation between Dr. Younger and three of his star pupils, originally published by the Associated Baptist Press, is an eye-opener.  AGB

White preaching professor, black preaching students

George White III, Dihanne Moore and Joshua Scott are three of the best and brightest at the McAfee School of Theology. We sat down recently to talk about seminary, race and what would happen if I preached in their churches.

By Brett Younger

Brett: Our student body is 48 percent African-American and 13 of the 15 faculty members are white. Have you wondered if this is a good place for an African-American minister?

Dihanne: What really shocked me was the first time I went to chapel. I thought, “Oh no! I can’t do this. They’re singing hymns out of a hymnal. Nobody’s saying ‘Amen!’ Nobody’s shouting, ‘Hallelujah!’” I made myself go and ended up embracing a new way to worship God. It’s just different.

Brett: Are you glad you are at a racially diverse seminary?

George: I wouldn’t have it any other way, because that’s the real world. You have to learn how to deal with people that are different from you, and you might as well learn that here.

Joshua: My breakthrough came in preaching. Now I feel comfortable saying, “It doesn’t matter who’s out there. I can reach them with the word of God.” That’s when I said, “McAfee was not a mistake.”

Brett: What do you wish African-American churches knew about seminary?

Joshua: That it’s not the devil. That you can go to a multi-cultural seminary and not lose your African-Americanness.

George: My church is concerned that you’re going to lose what they’ve taught you. They’re afraid that the professors are going to teach you what to believe and not just how to better interpret the word of God. (more…)

By Alan Bean

We live in a post-denominational world.  This does not mean the distinction between a Presbyterian and a Methodist, or between a Roman Catholic and a Protestant, has become meaningless.  But, especially among the young, denominational distinctions are strictly secondary.  I am not a Roman Catholic, but I see Pope Francis as a spiritual leader, my spiritual leader, not because he holds a particular office, but because he is a man of wisdom and spiritual discernment.

Does this mean that Pope Francis, or any other religious leader, is always right?  Perhaps we should let the Holy Father answer that question himself.  This brief excerpt is taken from the latter part of the full interview with Pope Francis recently published in the National Catholic Review.

Certitude and Mistakes

I ask, “So if the encounter with God is not an ‘empirical eureka,’ and if it is a journey that sees with the eyes of history, then we can also make mistakes?”

The pope replies: “Yes, in this quest to seek and find God in all things there is still an area of uncertainty. There must be. If a person says that he met God with total certainty and is not touched by a margin of uncertainty, then this is not good. For me, this is an important key. If one has the answers to all the questions—that is the proof that God is not with him. It means that he is a false prophet using religion for himself. The great leaders of the people of God, like Moses, have always left room for doubt. You must leave room for the Lord, not for our certainties; we must be humble. Uncertainty is in every true discernment that is open to finding confirmation in spiritual consolation. (more…)

By Alan Bean

When I introduced Fred Clark’s last post on the relation between American evangelical theology and opposition to the abolition and civil rights movements, I noted that it is possible to read the Bible literally without supporting either slavery or racial segregation.  I know this because I have encountered dozens of evangelical African American pastors (and a few White evangelicals as well) who interpret the Bible literally while embracing Dr. King’s vision of the Beloved Community.  A couple of days later, as if anticipating this line of argument, Fred Clark wrote a follow-up post in which he argues that evangelicals who desire what Jesus called the Kingdom of God are forced to “move on from biblical literalism because biblical literalism, when honestly pursued, falls apart.

The problem, Clark says, is that on issues like slavery the Bible says many things which cannot all be true.  The Bible says that slaves should obey their masters and that slavery must be rejected and deplored.  A true literalist, however, cannot admit that the Bible speaks with more than one voice on anything.  Therefore, if you want to use the Scriptures to defend the practice of slavery you must pretend that the only message to be found in Scripture is a pro-slavery message.  If the Bible is God’s Word, the argument goes, how can an omniscient God contradict himself? (more…)

By Alan Bean

Carolyn DuPont’s Mississippi Praying: Southern White Evangelicals and the Civil Rights Movement, 1945-1975 can’t be purchased in any format for under $35, but it is a book I will definitely buy when my ship comes in.  If her reviewers are anything to go by, DuPont covers much the same historical terrain I explored while doing my doctoral dissertation on southern white theologian W.O. Carver and, more recently, while researching the historical background of the Curtis Flowers case in Mississippi (for instance.)

Since I don’t have time to lay out my personal thesis, I will share Fred Clark’s excellent analysis of the issues.  Comparing DuPont’s treatment of civil rights era Mississippi with Mark Noll’s examination of the interplay between slavery and theological evolution in the South prior to the Civil War, Clark asserts that we are dealing with a second-verse-same-as-the-first phenomenon.

A crude biblical literalism was employed to justify slavery in the mid-19th century, and the identical hermeneutic was used to shore up segregation in the mid-20th century.

Now, Clark observes, the same theology is being employed to negate the equality of women.

Three strikes and you’re out.

I have one slight quibble.   (more…)