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Florida Southern Baptists Go Head to Head Over Booze
Orginally published on Monday, November 26, 2007 at 7:26 AM
by Todd Rhoades
Baptist critics are calling the Florida Baptist Convention’s move to require alcohol abstinence from members of its boards and committees misguided. The new measure was easily approved by the 1,258 messengers attending the annual meeting, held Nov. 12-13 in Daytona Beach. It requires all trustee nominees to “abstain from drinking alcoholic beverages and using any other recreational drugs.” Popular Southern Baptist blogger Jerry Grace of Clinton, Miss., called the decision “foolish.” The position that many Southern Baptists take against any alcohol consumption doesn’t come from Scripture, he said. Instead, it is a product of the women’s temperance movement of the late 19th and early 20th centuries, which resulted in Prohibition. “I am not too pleased with our alcohol position, not because I am a champion for serving beer at Wednesday-night dinner … but rather because of the convoluted way in which we reached this much-beloved stance,” Grace, who attends New Prospect Baptist Church in Clinton, wrote on the blog SBCOuthouse.blogspot.com. “Our position on alcohol is one of recent historic origin, not scriptural.
“There are destructive behaviors quite acceptable and far more deadly than alcohol, which we not only ignore but quite willingly permit. When someone dies young from a heart attack because they are obese, the family he leaves behind to struggle for themselves is just as abandoned and struggling as that of the drunk who was killed in a car wreck.”
Timmy Brister, a student at Southern Baptist Theological Seminary in Louisville, Ky., said before the vote that alcohol should not be a defining issue in Florida Baptist life.
“We are not looking for consensus over non-essential matters such as alcohol, but the gospel,” he wrote on his blog, timmybrister.com. “The issue here is not alcohol but the Baptist belief of the sufficiency of Scripture as well as future cooperation among those with whom we differ on non-essential matters.
“To have men like [former pastor of First Baptist Church in Jacksonville, Fla.] Jerry Vines say that differing on non-essential matters such as alcohol shows that we are on ‘the road to apostasy’ reveals just how badly we need new leadership with a new vision for the future,” Brister continued.
He added that the defining mark of Southern Baptists should not be whether or not they are “abstentionist” on the issue of alcohol use.
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Hi... I'm Todd Rhoades. I'm a Christ-follower, husband, father and I love to connect leaders with other leaders. Hopefully you'll find something here at MMI you like and will return often. If you want, you can find out more about me or follow my every step on Twitter.
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Monday, November 26, 2007 at 9:31 AM
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Post Your Comments:How ridiculous that state conventions are wasting time voting to make a statement that is not mandated by Scripture. Its funny that they could not find more productive activities for their time together.
This is just more evidence of the fact that we are way too bored. Do we not have better things to do? I understand stances on the Gospel and all things that flow from the Gospel...but this...this is just a bunch of splashing in the silly pool for lack of anything better to do.
Let me get this right-on November 12 and 13 a more then likely-majority of overweight men are making “law” that to be a trustee one needs to refrain from alcohol. How about “you” refraining and learn to say no to the second helping....."Man Law"-No man who is deemed to be overweight shall be nominated for Trustee
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Shane, I love your comments on the weight issue
I also agree with the last line of the article about being known as abstentionists. Do we in our churches want to be known for what we don’t do as opposed to being known for what we do--namely loving people and winning the lost?
Hmmm. The way I read it ... the vast majority of the messengers were in favor of having those in leadership to abstain from both alcohol and drugs. Most of the criticism is over alcohol - which is mentioned in the Bible as wine and strong drink. Drugs… we seem to accept as unacceptable even though there is very little direct mention about drugs in the Bible. If the vast majority of the messengers desire this in their trustees, where’s the beef? We are talking about those serving in leadership positions. Do you want leaders effected by alcohol or drugs? No. What about Paul’s instructions concerning eating meat if it offended others? If I believed my drinking alcohol would offend my brothers or even tempt a recovering brother from alcoholism to drink again, then I should have no problem as a leader to abstain. I don’t believe that this is an attempt to diminish the importance of the Gospel in favor of following rules. The number 1 and 2 qualifications should be: Saved and witnessing. And those serving in positions of servant leadership do need to be persons of higher character and Christian witness. If these Florida Baptists voted by an overwhelming majority, who are we to criticize their choice?
I was at the convention and was present during that vote. I personally don’t care either way. can the trustees still drink nyquil to stop coughing? Can they eat things cooked in wine? i wish baptust would worry about the important issues like evangelism and church planting
Does this include NyQuil?
i do not drink wine or ect. but the bible says you can , but you get a bunch of people together and it might get out of hand.
I think it’s misguided and we are SB.
And the “committees” are pastors from churches in the state. My husband is on our state convention head committee.
Since every church is autonomous, I wonder how they can justify this. According to SBC policy, they should leave it up to individual churches to decide this stuff.
Just dumb in my opinion.
I’ll abstain from alcohol if they’ll abstain from adultery. But since they won’t, I won’t.
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