Seth Udinski, FISM News
As the Southern Baptist Convention looks to move forward under the cloud of a murky sexual abuse scandal, SBC president Ed Litton is looking to uncover what he believes are the main problems in the denomination.
Litton, voted into the presidency this past June, has been tasked with navigating the denomination away from the abuse scandal. He spoke on Monday to the Southern Baptist Convention Executive Committee and highlighted the “stains” on the denomination’s reputation in recent years, mainly in regards to abuse and legalism.
Litton said,
We must repent and seek to confront and remove every stain of racism that remains and seek with all our strength to be the kind of churches of which Jesus would be proud – the kind of churches that will look like the Marriage Supper of the Lamb.
He called the denomination to account, saying that the SBC has looked less like a loving church and more like the Pharisees whom Jesus contended with during his earthly ministry.
Litton said,
In my time as your president, I’ve heard a lot of things said about the SBC… But the one thing that I never hear anyone say is this: ‘O how they love one another.’ The danger we face is that of being pharisees. Right now some may think I am addressing a particular group in the SBC. I am not. I’m talking about all of us. Because we are conservative in our theology and hold fast to the Word of God, we can become legalistic overnight. The Pharisees started as a conservative resurgence, but they ended up in a bad place where Jesus called them out as hypocrites. They looked very religious, but Jesus said they neglected the weightier matters of the law like justice, mercy and faithfulness.
Though some will praise the president’s words, others see the potential for danger in the president’s connection with holding fast to the Word of God and legalism. Certainly Christians must never be legalistic, but neither must we back down on defending the truth of the gospel, even if some are offended by its words.
At this point, the investigation into the sexual abuse allegations within the denomination is still ongoing.