Being Baptists in the 21st Century

After several weeks of teaching a course on Baptist history at First Baptist Cornelia, I'm concluding my conversation with three weeks of "Being Baptists in the 21st Century."  I started this conversation last night with  a powerpoint lecture on the changes in the Southern Baptist Convention since 1979.  One of the key learnings I made as I worked on my presentation was the move within the convention from "orthopraxy" to "orthodoxy."  I gain this insight from a docuement I found in one of my files by Pastor Al, Wright, Jr.  He wrote it when he was pastor of FBC, Fitzgerald, GA.  I'm sure my father passed it along to me some time in the 1990's.

Framing the Grand Controversy of the 1980's as a fight over orthopraxy (big tent to gather the most people to work together) and orthodoxy  (purer and more narrow doctrine which defines who gets to work together and who gets left out) all of sudden made a lot of sense to me.

I'm attempting to embed my powerpoint from the class in my blog.  Let's see if it works.

Also - I know I am biased when it comes to trying to outline this struggle.  I have friends on both sides of this history.   I would be interested in hearing feedback from friends who are still SBC or now CBF to their take on this framing.  Thanks.