A Southern Baptist seminary president questions the sincerity of Jimmy Carter's Christian faith.

[lees1975]

https://signalpress.blogspot.com/2024/12/a-southern-baptist-seminary-president.html

Warning--this will make you angry!

It's been over a week since I first read the linked article from Baptist News Global about Al Mohler's doubts as to whether Carter was really "born again" or not. I was too angry and too disturbed to even think about writing about it.

Mohler is President of the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary in Louisville, Kentucky, which is known as the "flagship" school of the six theological seminaries operated by the Southern Baptist Convention, for the purpose of training its ministers. Southern is the oldest one, and the only one which has a Calvinist theological perspective, not unusual among Baptists, but not the majority view.

And why would he take the risk of stepping away from the clear Biblical instruction, words given directly by Jesus Christ, not to judge others and risk being judged by the same standard?

Well, Carter was one of the most visible Southern Baptists in the country at the time he became President. He and Rosalyn helped start a church in Plains, Maranatha Baptist, that welcomed blacks as members, something their previous church, and in fact something most Southern Baptist churches in the 1970's, did not do. Then, in 1979, a war between fundamentalists and more moderate theological elements erupted in the Southern Baptist Convention, as both sides sought to control the all-important trustee boards of the seminaries, to control the theology and doctrinal content taught in classrooms.

Mohler, like most Fundamentalists, believe their conservativism is a mark of their truthfulness. They claim to be the true practitioners of Christian faith, because they get the doctrine right as far as they are concerned, and they generally consider any other Christians who do not agree with them as wrong, going so far as to question whether they are even sincere in their conversion experience. And so, since Carter has aligned himself with the more moderate Baptist group that has integrated congregations and women in leadership, Mohler thinks that gives him the right to publicly question his faith.

And when he questioned whether or not Carter was "born again," he didn't mention any Biblical standard or definition of the term. The standard he used to judge Carter was the fact that he didn't support the "Conservative resurgence" in the Southern Baptist Convention, that war that I referred to earlier. That's their bottom line for judging all other Christians, whether they agree with their "conservativism" or not.

Mohler couldn't be more wrong. And he couldn't be further away from Biblical truth.

Initially, back in 2016, Mohler, along with the executive director of the Southern Baptist Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission, Dr Russell Moore, made news by being two of the most prominent Evangelicals to state their opposition to Trump's candidacy for President. Moore stuck to his convictions, unable to reconcile his Christian convictions with even an inkling of support for such a corrupt, worldly individual whose lifestyle defies every principle of Christian faith. Mohler, typical of past behavior he has exhibited, stuck his finger up to see which way the wind was blowing, realized that if he continued to be publicly opposed to Trump it could cost him his job, and switched his position, embracing Trump and becoming one of his most prolific supporters.