Please read this by Michael Spencer (Internet Monk) on Who Let the Theologians in Here? (The SBC, that is.) What do you think? You need to read the whole post to get his point, but here's a blurb...
The growing "theologian class" in the SBC has very few places to go. They must make their own mischief. Once the seminaries and colleges are in conservative hands, then we can expect the theological battles to move "in-house." Watch for more doctrinal contention about matters less than crucial to the mission of church. Watch for "theological renewal" to take on more and more the cast of predictable "theological battles" between various teams in evangelicalism. Watch for the conservative resurgence to increasingly sound like a lot of young preacher boys arguing about Calvinism. (Around Louisville, it already does. With a liberal Presbyterian Seminary across the road, it's SBTS that is turning out preachers of TULIP.)
Watch for one strange turn. The new SBC theologians are culture warriors. They want to "engage" the culture, but what they mean is to assert conservative Christianity in the cultural battleground issues. These issues motivate many pastors and churches because they are "red meat" issues. Backed up by Dobson and the new evangelical media, the theological class is writing less about Baptist views of the church and more about fundamentalist views of the culture war.
Many of these theologians work hard to function as pundits of political and social concerns. These theologians will lead the church full speed into the culture wars....with little interest in how this will affect the overall mission of the church. And there is no denying that it is difficult to fight the culture war on one hand, and be focused on missional vision at the same time. Theology and mission are interwoven, but the negative, "fighting mode" vision of the culture warriors grows churches by bringing in the like-minded: White, suburban, Republican families.
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