Evangelical Pastor Suggests SBC Was 'Played' Into Condemning Alt-Right White Supremacy
Doug Wilson, pastor of Christ Church in Moscow, Idaho, suggested Monday that the Southern Baptist Convention was "played" into condemning the alt-right white supremacy movement at their recently concluded annual meeting, arguing that the politically correct decision will only serve as more fuel for the extremist group.
Messengers at the 2017 annual SBC meeting voted last Wednesday in support of a resolution denouncing the "alt-right," which advocates white nationalism and has been getting increased attention in the last 18 months.
The vote on the resolution which was originally drafted by the Rev. Dwight McKissic of Cornerstone Baptist Church in Arlington, Texas, only came, however, after a diverse coalition of Southern Baptists and other Christians protested the failure of the Resolutions Committee and messengers to bring an "alt-right" resolution to the floor of the convention last Tuesday.
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"I thought it would be a no-brainer, I thought it would be a slam-dunk," McKissic told Roland Martin on One News Now last Friday on the controversy over his original resolution. "I thought they had turned a corner, at least in the sense of being able to intellectually, theoretically, biblically, affirm what the Bible says, that one God created all men equally."
"They never pointed to one line that was incendiary. They never pointed to one line that was poorly written. They have never pointed to one line that proves that resolution did not deserve to pass. They have just thrown these molotov cocktails to the audience that I found highly offensive."
After the uproar on Tuesday, a revised version of the resolution was passed that decried "every form of racism, including alt-right white supremacy, as antithetical to the Gospel of Jesus Christ." It also listed "white supremacy and every form of racial and ethnic hatred as of the devil."
While explaining that he believes the alt-right deserves to be condemned, Wilson explained in a blog post that the SBC's resolution didn't go far enough.
"The SBC statement admirably denounces every form of racism in general, but specifically denounces only one kind of racism, the kind that has recently come bubbling to the surface in the alt-right movement. What this does is almost completely ignore where the alt-right movement is deriving its energy. So that pot is coming to a boil. What is the burner underneath that pot? How is it that they are attracting recruits?" Wilson asked.
He then asked his readers to consider what would have happened if resolutions to condemn the Nation of Islam or Black Lives Matter were introduced.
"The same sin is rejected, and for the same reason — because of the denial of what the blood of Jesus Christ was intended to do. God intended to make one new man out of the two. Right?" suggested the Idaho pastor.
"Does anyone believe that such a resolution would sail through? I am afraid that it would not. There would be an uproar because, while the theology was righteous, there would be legitimate suspicion that there was a surreptitious (political) agenda in the selectivity of the identified villains. And so there would be," he explained.
Wilson suggested that the SBC resolution condemning the alt-right was too one-sided and mimicked the political correctness of the world that breeds nothing but hypocrisy and groups like the alt-right.
"When representatives of Jesus Christ are denouncing hateful bigotries, and they take it upon themselves to repudiate what star-bellied sneetches have done to the non-star-bellied sneetches, they must also take care to address any problems that have run the other way. This must all be done at the same time. Otherwise, the church is being played," Wilson wrote.
"In the New Testament, the Jews have to love and accept the Gentiles, and the Gentiles also have to love and accept the Jews. Everybody does this, and all at the same time. True communion at the Table of Christ must run in every direction. No one is permitted to come with any grievances in hand. All of us must set all of them down," he added.
"I found it hard to summon up any sorrow over denunciations of the alt-right. But I think it is only fair to say that I believe that one-sided denunciations of one sort of racial animosity is not something that will in any way dismay members of the alt-right. They will welcome it. That kind of thing is their food, their nourishment. And if you don't want weeds in your garden, then stop fertilizing and watering them," he further noted.
