SBC Prez. Bart Barber Slanders Conservatives and The Abolitionist Movement
Following criticism from conservatives in the Southern Baptist Convention for the permanent appointment of Brent Leatherwood as the head of the ERLC by the SBC institutionalist establishment, SBC President Bart Barber, hell-bent on spreading disunity and misrepresenting the pastors he’s supposed to be leading, took to Twitter with some spicy criticism for conservatives and abolitionists in the SBC. Barber focused his vitriol on SBC pastor Dusty Deevers, the abolitionist producer of the documentary A Storm Comes Rolling Down The Plain.
Institutionalists in the SBC who continue to support the incrementalist position, despite the overturning of Roe v. Wade, pretend that Deevers and the abolitionist movement attacked the incrementalists first. In reality, the real battle between the two positions began when incrementalist pro-life organizations, including the ERLC, threatened primary pro-life legislators who promoted any incrementalist legislation and funded campaigns to defeat any abolitionist legislation.
The scenario of ERLC-supported incrementalists fighting against abolitionist bills played out in Louisiana just prior to this year’s SBC national convention. ERLC leaders, including Brent Leatherwood, rejected abolitionist overtures at the SBC annual meeting and refused to honestly answer for their actions that led to the defeat of Louisiana’s abolitionist bill.
Ironically, Barber accuses Deevers of “selling out to the crass tone of secular politics instead of following the way of Christ”, an act that most accurately describes what the ERLC did in Louisiana and other states. Deevers is merely calling out the SBC for celebrating the promotion of a man who, as interim head of the ERLC, led the opposition to abolition in the state of Louisiana.
Barber claims that the SBC’s position on abortion has been solidly conservative for the past 40 years, a pretty sketchy claim. Consider that the slogan for the pro-life movement and Southern Baptists was “Abortion is Murder” during the 1992 pro-life Summer of Mercy Campaign. The recently announced “Make Abortion Unnecessary” slogan of the 2022 ERLC illustrates how the incrementalist pro-life movement and the ERLC have moved away from the proclamation of the Gospel as the ultimate goal of their anti-abortion efforts.
The incrementalist position teaches that women who choose to murder their children are victims. In reality, women who choose abortion overwhelmingly do so for personal convenience, knowing that they are snuffing out the life of a person in their womb. Many are unashamed of celebrating or “shouting their abortion.”
Barber claims that incrementalism is the only strategy that has ever saved any babies. Of course, the Louisiana abolitionist bill, if enacted in May, would have abolished all abortion in that state upon the overturning of Roe V. Wade, saving thousands more babies than existing laws in the state. In reality, the only thing that keeps abolitionist efforts from being effective is the constant sabotage of abolitionist bills by organizations like the ERLC.
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Why did you give Bart barber the last word in your article
It is indeed ironic. I’m fairly sure I recall the initial resolution was full of scripture references substantiating every point, yet the one that replaced it, which was endorsed by the ERLC, had only one or two references to scripture, which were in introductory paragraphs, and were not used to for any purposes of substantiation.
Exactly who is selling out to secular politics instead of following the way of Christ?
Where is the scripture that substantiates the ERLC’s position?