On Three Congregations Departing the SBC and ACNA

Addition by subtraction

Two prominent congregations departing the Southern Baptist Convention (SBC) and one departing the Anglican Church in North America (ACNA) have gotten attention this summer.  Some awful people (COUGHlikemeCOUGH) have rejoiced at their departure while others have been appalled at the rejoicing.  Certainly such disunity and division in the church is far from the ideal. We should always prefer unity based on truth.   But not all departures and splits are alike.  So let’s review the departures I have in mind.

The most prominent is that of Rick Warren’s Saddleback Church.  Their departure from the SBC was not entirely voluntary. It was more they asked for it, and they got it. Saddleback insisted on having women as teaching and campus pastors, so the SBC Executive Committee expelled them.  Warren fought that expulsion and pushed for reinstatement and for women pastors at the annual Southern Baptist Convention in June, but his effort was voted down overwhelmingly.

In addition to open defiance against the SBC policy against women pastors, Warren has been a Regime Evangelical since before the term was invented.  He gave the invocation at Obama’s first inauguration.  His prayer included the assertion that “a great cloud of witnesses are shouting in heaven” rejoicing in the inauguration of Obama.  He also used the Muslim name for Jesus, “Isa.”

As for his church being Baptist, it has been noted that many were surprised that his church was in the SBC in the first place.  He wore his SBC affiliation very lightly yet then tried to bully the convention on a hobby horse of his.

More could be said.  But it is fair to say the Southern Baptist Convention is better off without Rick Warren.

The second departure from the SBC was much quieter and with more class, that of Steven Furtick’s Elevation Church.  Their leaving, likely over the issue of women pastors, was voluntary and not public at first.  To their credit, they decided not to make a big fuss but simply to send a letter in and leave.

At the same time, Furtick’s teaching is sloppy and tests the bounds of orthodoxy to put it nicely.  His preaching that Jesus’ power could be “trapped by [the] unbelief” of others is only one example.  Worse, he has at least seemed to endorse and teach Modalist and Word of Faith heresies.  The SBC is surely better off without that.  (This Anglican cannot resist adding here that a good bishop intervening and correcting would be better.  But Baptists don’t do bishops, so . . . )

The departure from ACNA is not nearly as large, but then Anglican megachurches do not exist in the U. S.  But it got much attention in Anglican circles nonetheless.  I write, of course, of the departure of Resurrection South Austin or “Rez Austin” from the Diocese of Churches for Sake of Others (C4SO) in ACNA with the intention of joining The Episcopal Church.  Being Anglican and more aware of the situation, I will dwell a bit longer on this one.

I have been critical of Rez Austin Rector Shawn McCain Tirres, particularly of his endorsements of Liberation Theology.  So I have to give him credit for doing the honest thing and realizing ACNA was not the place for him.  Less ethical people would rather work, as many have, to bring down an orthodox denomination from within to their level of heterodoxy.  He has now chosen not to do that, to his credit.

Nor do I find fault with him taking the parish with him.  80% voting wanted to go with him.  So the parish as a whole is hardly a good fit within ACNA.  I pray for those in that parish who will not go to The Episcopal Church.  That is often a sad issue with a parish leaving a relatively orthodox denomination — there are faithful people who cannot go along and are left behind.  (By the way, if anyone in this or a similar situation desires assistance in finding a good Anglican church, feel free to contact me, and I will do my best.)

The only reference to reasons for leaving ACNA in McCain Tirres’ open letter is the following:

Those who have long been with this faith community will be the first to tell you that we have always aspired to be the kind of place that could welcome everyone in our neighborhood to encounter the love of God, or as we say it, “Life Together in the Goodness of God.” Today our community deepened its commitment to that vision.

It has become clear recently (confirmed by multiple sources), that McCain Tirres desires to take the parish in an “affirming” direction.  ACNA has been flexible in a number of areas but not in that one.  That is surely a significant reason the parish is leaving though not the only reason.

Before I proceed to some bigger picture observations mainly about ACNA but also about other church bodies, some caveats.

Again, it is always preferable that churches stay unified in truth and love.  Nor should churches split over personalities or over matters that have nothing to do with the basics of the faith.

But church disunity has occurred since . . .  I was about to say since 1054.  But read the New Testament carefully, and church disunity is in there, too. (I Corinthians 1:10ff, I John 2:19 and more) And sometimes there needs to be divisions as St. Paul wrote. (I Corinthians 11: 18, 19)  St. Athanasius was certainly right to disregard the authority of the Arians who dominated much of the church in his day.

Jesus will unite his church again one day.  But that may not be until his Second Advent.  If the organized church somehow gets united before then, that probably will not be Christ’s church, but the church of someone else.  Let the reader understand.

And churches leaving a denomination certainly can be bad both in cause and effect for that denomination.  That a great many orthodox parishes fled The Episcopal Church from roughly 1975 to 2010 both indicated how apostate that denomination had become and also sped is descent into apostasy. About the same could be said of the denomination of my youth, the mainline Presbyterian Church.

Up to this point, I’ve offended a little.  Now I will offend a lot.

There are times when one or more leaving congregations are both a positive indicator of the health of the denomination being fled and also are helpful to the denomination being fled.  I think this the case with Saddleback and Elevation leaving the SBC.  I am more confident that is the case with the departure of Rez Austin from ACNA.

Yes, I know that sounds mean, but hear me out.  Every healthy church insists on a high degree of conformity on basic matters such as the creeds, the authority of Scripture, the historic death and resurrection of Christ, etc.  Along with the basics, every healthy church has limits on what they will tolerate.  ACNA and later GAFCON have made clear from their beginnings that affirmation of practicing homosexuality is not acceptable.  The ACNA House of Bishops buttressed this opposition with their “Sexuality and Identity” pastoral statement of January 2021.

The House of Bishops has not yet denounced Critical Theory aka “wokeness.” Yes, I think healthy churches should proscribe CT.  But ACNA has made progress against it. Matt Kennedy discussed this progress some in the latest Preventing Grace podcast after about 30 minutes in.  To condense some recent history, the woke became more active in trying to use and change ACNA after the election of Trump.  (Sound familiar?) This activism became noxious.

But in 2021 the tide turned.  That January, the House of Bishops released the aforementioned “Sexuality and Identity” pastoral letter which stated that identifying as a “Gay Christian” was inappropriate given that our identity should be in Christ, not in our temptations to sin.  There was soon pushback against that in the form of a “Dear Gay Anglicans” open letter.  But that effort was slapped down, most notably by Archbishop Foley Beach himself — well, at least as much as Anglicans slap down things.  Most Anglicans are nicer than yours truly, and the Archbishop certainly is.

In any case, the episode sent a message to those who wished to make ACNA more affirming.  That message was more or less “NO.”

To more broadly address Critical Theory, the Presiding Bishop of the Reformed Episcopal Church (a sub-jurisdiction of ACNA), Ray Sutton, in his address to the REC General Council, spoke gently but firmly in opposition to Critical Race Theory and other aspects of Critical Theory.  Not long after, Archbishop Foley Beach endorsed that address.

More quietly, at some point in 2021, it was becoming clear that the efforts of a Working Group on Race, Racism, and Racial Reconciliation were over with no public statement of note forthcoming.  If any woke were hoping for ACNA to issue a statement in line with Critical Race Theory, the quiet end of the Working Group along with Bishops Sutton’s and Beach’s public statements surely dashed their hopes.

Since then, the woke have been quieter in ACNA.  Some of them seem to have given up on us.  And the very woke Table Indy parish, which once gave up Whiteness for Lent (I’m not kidding.), left in 2022 for The Episcopal Church to be followed by Rez Austin this year.

So what does 2021 and these departures, along with the departures of certain woke individuals, say about ACNA now?  ACNA is not perfect.  I still contend, as I have for years, that ACNA needs to be more forceful against Critical Theory — I think the ideologies of Critical Theory are that evil and dangerous as you may have noticed.

But unlike too many churches and organizations, ACNA has for the most part said no to CT.  It has done so gently but also repeatedly.  And quite a number in ACNA have added their no’s and perhaps been not so gentle about it.  That speaks very well of ACNA and its health and faithfulness.  We were infiltrated, but we did not give in.  That is more than most sizable churches can say.

And the result of our resistance is several of the woke are discouraged with some going to more hospitable targets and fields.  That only makes us in ACNA better.   Yes, there is a such thing as addition by subtraction.

And really if a church’s standing firm on truth repels no one, the question has to be asked if that church is really standing firm on truth at all.  As Jesus said, he was hated; those who stand with him will be hated, too. (John 15: 18-25)  St. John took for granted that one result of faithfulness will be that some of the unfaithful will leave.  (1 John 2:19)

Now ACNA still has embedded woke, and Satan always has additional stratagems to try.  But our faithfulness, our spiritual backbone, seems to be repelling wokeness.  That woke are fleeing ACNA both speaks well of us and benefits us.

I’ve covered a lot of ground quickly.  So perhaps I should revisit some of this.  But I am more encouraged about ACNA than I have been in years.  Yes, we all would rather grow in numbers than lose people.  But being rooted and growing in faithfulness is more important, far more.  That can be costly, in people, donations, buildings . . . .   It should be costly.