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Title: Speaking in Tongues Resurfaces as Southern Baptist Controversy
Source:
Religion News Service
URL Source: http://www.beliefnet.com/story/200/story_20007_1.html
Published: Sep 21, 2006
Author: Adelle M. Banks
Post Date: 2006-09-21 23:40:21 by Brian S
Keywords: None
Views: 256
Comments: 8
Sept. 21 - The practice of speaking in tongues is again brewing controversy in the Southern Baptist Convention. Last year, the denomination's International Mission Board adopted a policy that forbids considering missionary candidates who use a "private prayer language." Now, an Arlington, Texas, pastor and trustee of Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary has written to Southern Baptist President Frank Page to request that the issues of "spiritual gifts, private prayer language and speaking in tongues" be addressed in the denomination's statement of faith. The Rev. Dwight McKissic previously discussed the issue in a chapel sermon at the seminary in Fort Worth, Texas, and criticized the mission board policy. "I pray in tongues in my private prayer life and I'm not ashamed of that," he said on Aug. 29. "I'm thankful for that." Traditionally, Southern Baptists have opposed Pentecostal practices, including speaking in tongues, but some pastors and churches have embraced a more charismatic worship style. Seminary officials opted not to post the sermon on its Web site. "While Southwestern does not instruct its chapel speakers about what they can or cannot say, neither do we feel that there is wisdom in posting materials online which could place us in a position of appearing to be critical of actions of the Board of Trustees of a sister agency," they wrote. McKissic, the co-founder of "Not on My Watch," a group of African-American clergy who oppose same-sex marriage, said in his Sept. 15 letter to Page and the Southern Baptist Executive Committee that he thinks there's a "lack of consensus and clarity" in the denomination about speaking in tongues. "I believe that we could unify our convention by acknowledging in the context of the Baptist Faith and Message that Baptist scholars and lay people have diverse viewpoints and they are all within the boundaries of acceptable evangelical scholarship," he wrote. Kenyn Cureton, a spokesman for the Southern Baptist Executive Committee, said Page could either request a committee study or leave it to McKissic, or others, to propose a resolution at next June's denominational meeting.
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#1. To: Brian S (#0)
What about snake handling? It seems that would come in handy for missionaries going to Africa or the Amazon.
LMAO! Three Stooges bit with them in "darkest Africa" shooting a movie...they meet a witch doctor [played by a gentleman who also played a tribal chief in a Johnny Weismuller Tarzan movie!] who welcomes them into his hut. "Bwana welcome! Bwana welcome! Have nice suppa!" [What's cookin' doc?] "Nice fat missionary!"
Last year, the denomination's International Mission Board adopted a policy that forbids considering missionary candidates who use a "private prayer language."
#2. To: Minerva (#1)
What about snake handling? It seems that would come in handy for missionaries going to Africa or the Amazon.
***LEAP***
"I tell you, freedom and human rights in America are doomed. The U.S. Government will lead the American people, and the West in general, into an unbearable hell and choking life.
-- Osama bin Laden
"A prohibition law strikes at the very principles upon which our govt was founded."
- Lincoln
All our liberties are due to men who, when their conscience has compelled them, have broken the laws of the land.
--William K Clifford
#3. To: Brian S (#0)
How about trying to reconcile the Baptists' pro-life position with the church's support of the bloodbath in the Middle East? ...and I would KILL for just ONE sermon from the pulpit on gluttony.
Remember...G-d saved more animals than people on the ark. www.siameserescue.org
#4. To: who knows what evil (#3)
http://"hosted.ap.org: Indonesia will execute three Christians this week for helping lead attacks that killed 70 Muslims six years ago, ignoring a papal clemency plea and claims by rights groups that their trials were unfair, authorities said Tuesday." They got shot today. The Pope is pleading for mercy for Christians who slaughtered Muslims, while calling Muslims evil and violent. Anyone else notice a slight whiff of hypocrisy, dishonesty, and insanity here? Every religion should be a religion of one. As soon as you get enough of them together, they start killing people who don't believe the exact way they do. When you call Catholics violent and evil, you get called a hatemonger. Somehow it's OK when the Popenfuhrer calls others evil and violent, though.
This cracks me up
#5. To: Brian S (#0)
Would offering up prayers in Ebonics be considered 'speaking in tongues'?
McKissic, the co-founder of "Not on My Watch," a group of African-American clergy ... thinks there's a "lack of consensus and clarity" in the denomination about speaking in tongues.
#6. To: Brian S (#0)
Yeah - it seems they want to shed the more embarassing paganistic relics of their backwoods past and become more respectable. Sorry Baptists- you will always be revival tent heretics rolling around in the mud with snakes while spewing childish gibberish. Christ- African animists have more conservative rites and ceremonies than do these rapture monkies.
#7. To: Brian S (#0)
Can you say oxy-moron?
Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary
How many observe Christ's birthday! How few, his precepts! O! 'tis easier to keep Holidays than Commandments. Benjamin Franklin
#8. To: Brian S (#0)
Corinthian Confusion (the title of one book on this subject) is more important to Baptists than the torture and murder of innocent human beings in the Mid-East. Their pathetic search for legalism and the rapture has led them down an evil path of death and destruction for many; not realizing that their turn is just around the bend.
"If there’s another 9/11 or a major war in the Middle-East involving a U.S. attack on Iran, I have no doubt that there will be, the day after or within days an equivalent of a Reichstag fire decree that will involve massive detentions in this country." - Daniel Ellsberg Author, Pentagon Papers
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