As part of its ongoing visits to flyover country in Middle America, the New York Times recently ran a long feature with this epic headline: “The Walls of the Church Couldn’t Keep the Trump Era Out — The young pastor wasn’t sure his congregation would like what he had to say and had no idea where it would lead all of them. He found himself at a crossroads of God, Alabama and Donald Trump.”
Now, that headline is — to be blunt — quite dishonest.
While I acknowledge that the Trump era plays a role in this Baptist drama — rooted in tensions surrounding the ministry of a progressive, the Rev. Chris Thomas — the Times article contains a thesis statement near the end that is much more honest. Here is that summary paragraph:
Racism had driven Mr. Thomas from his first church in Alabama; at Williams it had been gay rights that had caused the division.
In Times-speak, of course, debates about racism and gay rights are one and the same — ideological clashes about politics. The reality is more complex than that, pivoting on two ancient doctrinal questions: Is racism a sin? The orthodox (or Orthodox) answer is, “Yes.” The second question: Is sex outside of traditional marriage a sin? The orthodox answer there, for 2,000 years, has been, “Yes.”
There are other doctrines lurking in the background that may, or may not, have affected the crisis inside this particular Alabama congregation, which the Times piece describes as: “First Baptist Church of Williams, a relatively liberal church with a mostly white congregation.”
That’s a pretty good description of the world of “moderate” Baptists and the Cooperative Baptist Fellowship, a network of like-minded churches that emerged after the Southern Baptist Convention civil war that began in the late 1970s.
There is no way for me to write about this story without saying, candidly, that this subject is directly linked to my life and that of my family, at all levels. My wife and I were married in a “moderate” church next to Baylor University, using a rite from a modernized version of the Episcopal Book of Common Prayer. The last Baptist congregation we attended — in Charlotte, N.C. — was to the theological left of FBC Williams.
A key moment, for me, was a conversation I had with one of the church deacons, a philosophy professor at a Baptist college near Charlotte. This church leader asked what, for me, was the most important doctrine in Christian faith. I said something like: “The resurrection of Jesus — that it was an event in real time and not some kind of myth.” He replied (I wrote the quote down to discuss with family): “How could someone like you believe something as stupid as that.”
Was it dogma, in that congregation, that the resurrection was some kind of myth? Of course not. But it was certainly fair game to question and deny a wide variety of basic Christian doctrines. My wife and I soon departed (becoming evangelical Episcopalians, ironically) when there were complaints that we were exposing young people to the writings of “fundamentalist writers like C.S. Lewis.”
All that happened 40 years ago — a long time before Donald Trump. This was also at the beginning of public (repeat “public”) debates in mainline Protestant flocks about sexuality and marriage.
A decade or two later, the Cooperative Baptist Fellowship began having open debates about the church and LGBTQ issues. Reporters who want to know more about that can click here and see a helpful timeline of those CBF debates, a resource created by members of that flock.
The Rev. Daniel Vestal — the second CBF coordinator — offered this summary of the tensions in 2000:
“We are being defined by our enemies on the right and our friends on the left,” he said. Noting that only a few CBF churches would ordain a gay person or bless a same-sex union, Vestal added, “We have reached a consensus in our congregations about this, but we have not reached a consensus as an organization.”
That is a perfect summary of the conflicts described in this lengthy Times report about FBC Williams, which has long had CBF ties. It’s also interesting to note that this particular pastor is not a graduate of a Southern Baptist Seminary — he attended the ecumenical, alternative Truett Seminary at Baylor University.
These days, Thomas is delivering his final sermons at FBC Williams (see video with this post). It’s symbolic, to me, that he starts this sermon with these words — familiar to Episcopalians and, thus, to many moderate Baptists — “The Lord be with you.” The congregation responds: “And also with you.”
You see, these are not THOSE other Southern Baptists. The Trump era is so toxic that it is even affecting intelligent Baptists in the Bible Belt (note the Times descriptions of members of this congregation).
I have no doubts that the Trump era has played a role in this drama — but the contents of this story reveal that this is actually a story about doctrine, not politics. Here is a key passage, which includes a reference to a sermon linking the Beatitudes to debates about immigration.
What Mr. Thomas, a 35-year-old preacher with cropped sandy hair and a trimmed beard, didn’t know was the degree to which Mr. Trump’s election had already polarized his small church. Nor did he know how the Trump presidency would continue to fracture the congregation for the next three years — a rift that would widen and threaten his own stewardship of Williams Church as the culture wars spilled into its pews in ways he could not control.
A few days after the sermon on the Beatitudes, a group of congregants wanted to talk.
“They more-or-less said, ‘Those are nice, but we don’t have to live by them,’” Mr. Thomas recalls church members saying about the verses, a cornerstone of Christian scripture. “It was like: ‘You’re criticizing our president. You’re clearly doing this.’ From thereon, my words were being measured.”
Interesting statement, there: “Those are nice, but we don’t have to live by them.” Would the relatively conservative members of this congregation agree that this second-hand quotation accurately describes their beliefs about the Bible?
The Times feature does include some interview material with critics of Thomas, but not much. While the headline sells a Trump story, the actual text makes it clear that the crucial debates in this church have been about sexuality and that these tensions have been around for awhile. There is, of course, no need for accurate coverage of these doctrines in the pages of today’s New York Times (click here for background).
Were there other central Christian doctrines in play during these arguments, like biblical authority, the resurrection or questions about heaven and hell? Times readers don’t need to know. You see, the reality here is, “God, Alabama and Donald Trump.” Who needs nuance?
Here’s another interesting dynamic. While stressing that relatively conservative members of the congregation collected information to undercut their pastor, this feature does contain a scene in which it’s clear that the more progressive members — when push came to shove — demanded that the conservatives leave the congregation. Thus, they left.
Let me end with what is, for me, another key passage describing the evolution of Thomas, from his early life as a Baptist to this present day. The Times team notes that:
… academic life at seminary in Texas changed his views, exposing him to debates he’d never encountered in Enterprise. He learned of the differing views on women in the church, and about Gene Robinson, the Kentucky clergyman who became the first openly gay bishop of the Episcopal Church.
“These were the things my Sunday school teacher had never told me,” he said.
By the time he was on the job market, Mr. Thomas could see his politics had changed. …
Wait. His “politics” had changed? Would Thomas agree with that description of his faith?
But wait. Politics is real. Religion is not real.
All that talk about doctrine is, you know, actually the stuff of myths, emotions and prejudices.