The following letter
from Rev. Joshua Villines was sent to MBLA Research Director Roger Moran
after the 2001 CBF General Assembly in Atlanta. Rev. Villines has
been active in CBF churches for over eight years, and was in the first class
to attend and graduate from Mercer University's McAfee School of Theology,
one of CBF's 11 partnering schools of theology (CBF's main offices are
housed in the same building). He now serves on the Alumni Board for
McAfee. Rev. Villines was ordained at Parkway Baptist Church in
Duluth, Georgia - a CBF church where several of the CBF national staff are
members. The Mercer publication Theology Update, lists
places where "McAfee students and alumni are making their presence
known." Rev. Villines is listed in his capacity as Coordinator of
Progressive Clergy of Georgia, an explicitly pro-gay, pro-choice
organization. Rev. Villines attended the 2001 CBF General Assembly as
a representative of Virginia-Highland Baptist Church, a CBF church in
Atlanta that openly affirms homosexuality. While there, he was one of
the most outspoken supporters of the narrowly defeated motion to suspend
CBF's new policy of not hiring open homosexuals. He also made the
defeated motion to extend floor debate on the homosexual issue past the
maximum of eight minutes.
This letter raises
serious concern for pro-CBF "moderate" leaders across the SBC who
have claimed that "liberalism has not found a comfortable home
in CBF." According to Rev. Joshua Villines, who is also a
member of the CBF Young Leaders Network, states in this letter: "Having
looked in some detail at the May 2001 issue of Viewpoint I believe
your treatment of liberalism in the Cooperative Baptist Fellowship is
even-handed and fair."
This letter is posted
with permission from its author.
July 23, 2001
Mr. Roger Moran
Missouri Baptist
Laymen’s Association
PO Box 358
Winfield, MO 63389
Dear Roger:
As always, it was a pleasure to hear
from you today. Every time that we
get a chance to talk it reminds me how important it is to put faces and voices
on issues. It’s far too easy to
be vitriolic when attacking “Fundamentalists.”
Talking to “Roger, my friend and brother in Christ” is another story.
As usual, your clarity of thought and the integrity with which you
described your opinions impressed me.
You asked me if I could clarify the ways
in which we agree, but it’s probably wise for me to first outline where I come
from and how you and I disagree. As
you know, I am the quintessential socially active, liberal, seminary-trained
baptist minister. A product of both
First Baptist Atlanta and the McAfee School of Theology; I am committed to the
importance of both personal faith and responsible biblical scholarship.
In addition, I am the coordinator of an interfaith organization which is
committed to progressive values including equality for women and sexual
minorities as well as reproductive freedom.
As a result of my constant exposure to the broader Christian spectrum
(outside of the narrow slice that is baptist) I would argue that many of the
positions that you label “extreme” are actually “mainstream” in the
larger Christian community. In
addition, it is safe to say that we have different definitions of “biblical
Christianity” and that our perspectives on the fundamentalist takeover of the
SBC are likewise different.
With that said, though, there are
certainly areas we agree. Having
looked in some detail at the May 2001 issue of Viewpoint
I believe your treatment of liberalism in the Cooperative Baptist Fellowship is
even-handed and fair. As I
understand it, your central premise is that “not…everybody supportive of CBF
is ‘liberal’” but that “liberalism has most certainly found a
comfortable home in the CBF.” You
then go on to provide several pages describing various people and groups that
have a long history of association with the CBF.
Your point in making these connections (again, as I understand it) is not
that the views of these people are held or endorsed by every member of CBF.
Instead you argue that the broad tent of the CBF has traditionally been
wide enough to include these people and groups.
I returned to baptist life in 1993
because of the emergence of the CBF as an alternative to the SBC.
For the past eight years, up until this last General Assembly, I felt
like the CBF was a denominational home where socially active liberals like me
and old-school conservatives like Keith Parks could both feel at home.
Of course, after the narrow victory of ultra-conservative forces in June,
I’m not certain that is still the case. I
assume that I am still welcome there; but it distresses me that gay and lesbian
Christians, whose churches have supported the CBF from the beginning (as our
church, Virginia-Highland has) cannot serve the CBF on a national level. Whether
this is a passing phase or a genuine shift to the right for the CBF remains to
be seen.
Regardless, I think it unlikely that the
Cooperative Baptist Fellowship will deny that committed Christians like Kirby
Godsey, Paul Simmons, Alan Neely, and Paul Duke have been an integral part of
CBF and its identity. Certainly,
their involvement in CBF was a major factor in my willingness to attend a
CBF-supported seminary and my willingness to endorse the CBF to my congregation
while I was a pastor. Again,
although I personally believe that their theology (along with the scholarship
and beliefs of others whom you criticize) is normative in the larger Christian
community, I do not believe it is endorsed by everyone in the CBF.
Nevertheless they, and I, have always been fully participating members in
the organization.
Of course, now that the CBF has started
making theological pronouncements based on what is currently a small majority of
the membership, the climate may change. What
was once a welcoming atmosphere for the whole breadth of Christian tradition may
very well become another tool for right-wing orthodoxy.
It is still too early to tell, and I believe that many of the “young
leaders” of the CBF – who do not share their elders’ visceral aversion to
homosexuality – are willing to stick it out.
We shall see.
I would like to add one final note that
I hope you will take seriously. I
studied under several of the CBF leaders whom you criticize. Included
in those studies were several preaching classes with Paul Duke whose position on
homosexuality you attack in some detail. Nowhere
in baptist life have I encountered the profound respect for the Bible that I
experienced at the McAfee School of Theology.
While there, it was abundantly clear that everything we did in worship,
in the classroom, and (in particular) while preaching should be centered
exclusively in the Bible. Like the
leaders whom you criticize, my own theological liberalism does not come from
even the tiniest rejection of the Bible’s timeless truth.
In fact, it is the direct result of a lifetime of serious Bible study.
Perhaps it is because you and I share that commitment that we get along
so well.
I hope we will get the chance to talk
again soon. Please do not hesitate
to call me if you need anything at all.
Warm Regards,
The Rev. C. Joshua Villines
Mainstream Missouri Baptist Leader Responds
In a letter to Joshua Villines from
Mainstream Missouri Baptists coordinator Rob Marus, posted on the e-mail
group of the CBF Young Leaders Network, Marus states: “…you may be
interested to know that you and your letter to Roger Moran were/are
being touted highly by the Fundy group here in Missouri -- Roger
featured it prominently in his speech at their statewide [Project 1000]
meeting on Tuesday here in Jefferson City and has had the text of the
letter up on his website for about a week. They’re using it as their
‘smoking gun’ to prove that ‘honest’ CBFers will ‘admit’
that the organization by and large approves of homosexuality -- just FYI
-- thought you might be interested in the way your communications with
Roger are being used.”
In a letter back to Rob Marus, who serves on the
board of the CBF Young Leaders Network, Joshua Villines writes:
Rob,
I just looked to verify that they did print the
entirety of my letter. That's a relief. My point isn't and
has not been that the majority of the organization approves of
homosexuality. My point is that historically (for the big,
whopping ten years we've been around) the CBF tent has been large enough
to include those who unashamedly endorse homosexuality. Likewise,
people and congregations who are welcoming and affirming are not the
"fringe" of the CBF. As Roger accurately points out
(who'd believe I'm endorsing the research of a fundamentalist???)
pro-gay clergy have served on the Coordinating Council since the
organization's inception.
I think that the current leadership of the CBF has
been rather disingenuous on this issue in an attempt to paint the
organization in a more conservative light. Now that there's more
money and power in being conservative, it seems to me that the
leadership is trying to distance the organization from people
and churches that have been a part of the CBF from the
beginning. I am particularly distressed that Charles Wade, in his
fit of euphoria over the narrow vote to perpetuate the new hiring
policy, failed to point out that - unlike in the BGCT - pro-gay churches
are still fully participating members of the CBF.
I hope I haven't caused you folks in Missouri any
difficulty. I am simply tired of the culture of theological deceit
that seems to have permeated baptist life since before the
fundamentalist coup. So many of my peers talk about how they agree
with my theology, but they're afraid that if their churches knew
what they believed they'd be fired. Likewise, I've heard people
complain over and over again that they wish they could really tell their
congregations everything they learned in seminary. That distresses
me. If we were all more honest about what we believed, the rest of
the world would not think we were as irrelevant as we are rapidly
becoming.
Regards,
Joshua
P.S. I'm posting this to the group in case any of the
rest of you want to know why the mythical-place-of-torment I'd have
written that letter.
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