LOUISVILLE, Ky. (BP)–Are Georgia Baptists out of the “mainstream” because they don’t want groups worshiping goddesses at state convention sites? In recent months, Georgia Baptists have been forced to address the question of “mother god” and other aspects of feminist theology promoted by groups on the Baptist left. Having taken a stand against such foolishness, Georgia Baptists are now being labeled out of the “mainstream” by the national network of moderate Baptists.
When the Georgia Baptist Women in Ministry chapter petitioned to hold a meeting at a Georgia Baptist Convention (GBC) conference center this fall, GBC Executive Director Robert White, a Baptist statesman respected across the country, gave the group a list of written expectations for the use of the convention venue. Among other things, White stated, Georgia Baptists would not appreciate BWIM using “strange communication” in the meeting by worshiping “mother god” or “Goddess Sophia.”
At issue is the ongoing controversy over “mother god” worship advocated by Baptist feminists aligned with the Southern Baptist breakaway group, the Cooperative Baptist Fellowship (CBF). The question of “mother god” came to Baptists’ attention this summer, when a meeting of the national Baptist Women in Ministry (BWIM) group sang songs and recited litanies to her at the CBF General Assembly meeting in Atlanta. Similarly, the latest issue of the Review & Expositor, the journal related to CBF-partnered divinity schools, was filled with several articles calling for the worship of “mother god,” with one even suggesting in shockingly graphic detail that God reveals him/herself in the feelings and functions of male and female sex organs.
The Georgia BWIM group subsequently moved the meeting to an alternate site, the First Baptist Church of Morrow, Ga. They met Oct. 26-27, with a keynote address delivered by feminist theologian Molly Truman Marshall, a lightning rod in evangelical circles for her use of feminine language for God as well as for her views on the salvation of those who never come to explicit faith in Christ.
Robert White probably expected to face a flurry of criticism for this decision, especially from liberal Baptists associated with the state’s nominally Baptist institution, Mercer University. His doctrinal backbone, however, has been castigated in the January issue of Mainstream, the national magazine of the “mainstream networks” in Alabama, Arkansas, Georgia, Illinois, Kentucky, Louisiana, Missouri, North Carolina, Tennessee, Texas and Virginia.
The magazine’s editor, Robert O’Brien, speaks of the incident as representative of the SBC’s mistreatment of women. “How long will women have to live in a world of hushed tones — so some man won’t overhear, take offense and seek to ‘protect’ us from them?” he asked. Furthermore, O’Brien went on to say that the action of Georgia Baptists has raised the question, “Do Baptists have our own Taliban?”
“Many Afghan women threw off their veils and Afghan men shaved their beards when the Islamic Taliban fled from cities in Afghanistan, with no more power to enforce their oppressive rules,” O’Brien writes. “When will Baptist women be able to throw off the veils that enshroud their hearts, minds, and freedom of expression as they explore what God wants them to do?”
The “mainstream” group, however, fails to mention what really is at stake here. This also is reflected by the silence emanating from the CBF over the Review & Expositor issue. So far, the silence has been broken formally only by Baylor University’s Truett Seminary which cut off funding to the journal after Baptist Press revealed its contents.
The bizarre sexuality involved in this issue was only one problem in an issue that repeatedly called for the worship of God as “mother” and for a “feminist, liberationist” re-reading of Scripture. If Baptist moderates want to claim what goes on in the Baptist Women in Ministry meetings as “mainstream,” then they should say so honestly to the Baptist churches whose hearts and pocketbooks they seek to woo.
Referring to God as “mother” instead of “Father” is not an unimportant matter. It is not, as one CBF leader wrote to me in defense of last summer’s BWIM worship service, simply the choice of one “metaphor” over another. Nor is “Jesus” interchangeable with “Sophia,” as another liberal Baptist speaker once suggested. At stake here is God’s naming of himself as Father, Son and Spirit. At stake is the self-revelation of God as the Father of the Lord Jesus Christ, through whom he adopts us as his children. At stake is whether we will worship the God of the Bible, as he has revealed himself in Scripture, or a sexualized deity who more closely resembles a Canaanite fertility idol than the God of Abraham, Isaac, Jacob and Jesus.
Joshua implored the children of Israel to “choose for yourselves whom you will serve: whether the gods which your fathers served which were beyond the river, or the gods of the Amorites in whose land you are living” (Joshua 24:15). “But as for me and my house,” Joshua declared, “We will serve the Lord.” That’s not the Taliban; it’s the Scripture.
Joshua made the right choice. So have Georgia Baptists.
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Russell D. Moore teaches Christian theology at Southern Baptist Theological Seminary. He also serves as executive director of the Carl F. H. Henry Institute for Evangelical Engagement.
