Quote:
Originally Posted by DMcFadden  Actually mainline includes, by general but not unanimous usage, the seven "sisters" of the mainline: ABCUSA, Disciples, ECUSA, ELCA, UMC, PCUSA, and UCC. SBC has always been quite sectarian and considered themselves neither mainline nor evangelical but Babptist (spelling intended). |
I agree that the SBC is not generally considered mainline today. However, leaving aside for the moment the issue of whether babdists are inherently sectarian, I don't think the Southern Baptist Convention was really any more sectarian or separatist in origin than was the old
Southern Presbyterian Church (PCCSA, renamed PCUS after the war) which seceded in 1861 after the Gardiner Spring resolution that mandated allegiance to the Union. (The issue in the formation of the SBC 1845 was whether a slave holder could be a missionary as well as growing controversy over slavery in general). The PCUS finally reunited with the Northern Presbyterian Church (although by that time both churches had congregations on the other side of the Mason-Dixon) in 1983 to form what we now know as the PCUSA after more conservative churches had left the PCUS beginning in 1973 to form what became the PCA. Until the "Conservative Resurgence" that began to take hold in the SBC starting in 1979, overall the denomination, and especially the agency heads and seminary and college faculty were probably no more conservative than what you would have found in the PCUS at that time.
I agree with the SBC not being evangelical, especially if you are referring to the post war watered down version (i.e. "New Evangelicals" or neoevangelicals) that has as much of a tendency to wreak havoc with Baptist distinctives as it does with Presbyterian ones, even though the SBC conservatives leaned heavily on evangelical scholarship during the controversy with the "moderates". I recently listened to some excellent
Russell Moore messages on the relationship of the SBC and evangelicalism.