Exiled: Voices of the Southern Baptist Convention Holy War | Eastern NC Now

I met Carl Kell as the book came out. His signature and comment are:    2/25/06,    Gene --- Exiled . . . Is your story.    Read in good health    Carl

    Here is my review. I don't see Steve in there anywhere:

    Matthew R. Kuiper is typical of Conservative resistance to truth. I am the son of a Baptist preacher who witnessed the stupid of naive church members. The ladies of his rural Baptist church near Athens, GA, admonished him to NOT go to Mercer for study "because they will ruin you, Claude." He refused to be threatened by a good theological education and neither was I as I matriculated to Southeastern Seminary in 1967-70. It was the first school to get the chopping ax of Conservatism.

    I was President of the BSU at Emory University when Dr. Thomas J.J. Altizer hit the front cover of Time Magazine over the "God Is Dead" theology of 1967. Fundamentalists raged and had no clue what they were talking about. The theory presented --- simply used the word "dead" to describe how the Transcendent God became Immanent through the presence of Jesus, The Christ. Idiots raged as if God had somehow had his life ended with death. In the same way Jesus faced the cross and rose from a tomb alive, death was merely a transition from one form to another.

    This book is a heart-felt witness of how so many were falsely accused of being "liberals" when they were simply leaders in the Southern Baptist Convention and refused to kiss the feet of Mega Church pastors now wanting to run the show. Most of them led their flocks to leave mission giving behind in favor of building a giant church with a bus ministry, expensive TV time, and a self-centered approach to churchianity with them as the object of worship. Suddenly you had fundamentalist leaders with appointive power to the Committee on Committees. Their agenda of destruction and control of that which used to be joined only through giving to support missionaries, began with a vengeance.

    The voices, so well put together, are full of angst over how many lies were told and how their good leadership was destroyed with stupid hate and self-centeredness. I graduated SEBTS in 1970 and was at Houston when buses pulled up to the doors and disgorged hundreds to people in jeans and T-shirts. They rushed through the registration lines, picked up ballots, and violated every rule for the 10 messenger per church trusted way of having total representation from the churches of the SBC. In this act Adrian Rogers was elected the first of numerous consecutive conservative Presidents who took their meat ax to the Institutions and Agencies of my beloved SBC.

    The new Cooperative Baptist Fellowship was formed and now follows the "old ways" of Southern Baptists. They allow for individual church participation and giving. They do not dictate to any local church an agenda from above in the hierarchy. They minister to all in need, even gays and foreigners. They have female ordination without putting women down. Their Executive Director in Atlanta is a woman. They are growing in a good way. They now have educational institutions recognized for academic excellence over a clone factor for unthinking conservative leaders.