How are the mighty fallen in the midst of the battle!
–2 Samuel 1:25 (KJV)–
Where there is no vision, the people perish:
but he that keepeth the law, happy is he.
–Proverbs 29:18 (KJV)–
They officially teach that homosexual behavior is sinful and they publicly oppose same-sex marriage. At the same time, these churches generally welcome people who experience same-sex attraction to attend services, hear the Gospel, and participate in church life. Their flagship college, Baylor University, now admits these perverted homosexual students to their campus and even has a FAQs page about it on their website.
They permit significant diversity on fundamental theological questions: old earth creationism (billions of years in Genesis 1:1), theistic evolution (God made Adam and Eve out of monkeys over millions of years), metaphorical views of Hell like annihilationism and symbolic hell fire are all tolerated. Much of their preaching has become more therapeutic, conversational, optimistic, and seeker-oriented than the old way of confrontational preaching against sin associated with evangelists like Charles Finney. However, they’ll always allow some fringe preachers the permission to continue to preach regularly on sin, judgment, repentance, holiness, and eternal punishment. But they’ll remain on notice and under threat of removal.
Their pastors and professors mostly hold cessationist views about prophecy, tongues, dreams, and visions. Their official doctrine strongly affirms the ongoing work of the Holy Spirit in convicting, guiding, empowering, comforting, and sanctifying believers. But within a deistic and anti-supernatural bias, you’ll still find them pray for healing without expecting answers to prayer, seek God’s guidance without any direct action of the Holy Spirit, and expect the Spirit to work actively in believers’ lives, maybe by helping them to stop looking at pornography on their phones for a while. Listening to the voice of the Holy Spirit and praying for miracles are viewed as “New Age,” while at the same time many of their parents let their kids watch Chronicles of Narnia, Lord of the Rings, and Harry Potter because that’s “just fantasy” and “magic’s not real.” For this reason, C. S. Lewis is considered a great theologian, even though his writings are full of the humanistic, liberal, and metaphorical views of the Bible mentioned before.
While they haven’t officially abandoned conservative Bible doctrine, they do allow for such substantial diversity, that many of their leaders have liberal and secular views on sexuality, Hell, biblical authority, creation, spiritual gifts, worship, and support the typical soft serve preaching style. Critics from evangelical revivalist traditions argue that this broad-mindedness has resulted in a less supernatural, less experiential, less confrontational form of Christianity, than they believe characterized the earlier evangelical movements that brought the organization into being.
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What denomination am I talking about?
Billy Graham’s denomination.
The Southern Baptist Church.
