First some
bona fides, not to suggest that my judgment is superior or my virtues greater, but simply to demonstrate that I do know something about this : HoustonSam is a life-long Southern Baptist, an ordained deacon, and an adult Sunday School teacher of years' standing. I've been on the roll of one Southern Baptist church or another every day of the 56 years of my life, not always active and not always in His will, but always believing.
I don't see any indication in the cited article that the author is a Southern Baptist Minister. Even if there were such indication, Southern Baptist Ministers have no monopoly on truth; isn't that what De La Torre is actually saying? Citing his (real or imagined) credentials as a Southern Baptist Minister seems not only to miss the point, but to reverse it.
"The beauty of the gospel message — of love, of peace and of fraternity — has been murdered by the ambitions of Trumpish flimflammers who have sold their souls for expediency." The gospel message is *
redemption* not love, peace, or fraternity. Even atheists believe in love, peace, and fraternity. We believers are *called to* love, peace, and fraternity, but as an *indicator* that we are redeemed by Christ's blood. Right off the bat De La Torre fails.
"Evangelicals have constructed an exclusive interpretation which fuses and confuses white supremacy with salvation. Only those from the dominant culture, along with their supposed inferiors who with colonized minds embrace assimilation, can be saved." Assertion without evidence. This is pure polemic, not reasoned argumentation. My personal experience is not necessarily representative of Southern Baptists (or evangelicals) generally, but I've never heard anything remotely like this preached from a Southern Baptist pulpit or taught in a Southern Baptist Sunday School class. In fact Southern Baptists operate one of the most extensive Foreign Missions in Christendom, hardly consistent with the charge that our belief limits salvation to whites or others assimilated into white culture. "Pastor" De La Torre has obviously never heard of the Lottie Moon foreign mission offering.
"— their fear of blacks, their fear of the undocumented, their fear of Muslims, their fear of everything queer." In Him we are more than conquerors. We don't fear any of these demographics, in fact we hope to share the love of Christ with all of them. This is just De La Torre indulging his own prejudice.
"A message of hate permeates their pronouncements, evident in sulphurous proclamations like the Nashville Statement, which elevates centuries of sexual dysfunctionalities since the days of Augustine by imposing them upon Holy Writ. They condemn as sin those who express love outside the evangelical anti-body straitjacket." Nothing in the Nashville Statement can fairly be described as hate. Read it here for yourselves :
https://cbmw.org/nashville-statement/. De La Torre roundly condemns those who express faith outside his own ideological straitjacket, and for the most part without evidence.
"Christianity at a profit is an abomination before all that is Holy. From their gilded pedestals erected in white centers of wealth and power, they gaslight all to believe they are the ones being persecuted because of their faith." I'll certainly agree that Christianity is not supposed to be profitable in material terms. However this material distortion of faith is not limited to white practitioners. Again, De La Torre's own prejudice is thrown into sharp relief.
"To ignore the damage caused to God’s creation so the few can profit in raping Mother Earth causes celebrations in the fiery pits of Gehenna." One who invokes God's creation to indulge his own pique will likely pay a ruinous cost for ignoring God's law. And I'm talking about justifying homosexual behavior here. Furthermore, HoustonSam also holds a PhD in Chemistry, and can state with very high confidence that models of atmospheric behavior are *not* science, but have been elevated to scientism.
"Evangelicalism forsakes holding a sexual predator, an adulterer, a liar and a racist accountable, instead serving as a shield against those who question POTUS’ immorality because of some warped reincarnation of Cyrus." I'll agree here that associating Trump with Cyrus is insane, or at best desperate to the point of delusional. I don't think a believer, even in a leadership role, is spiritually obligated to vote for the best Christian. But I do believe a leader in the faith should not endorse or be seen to endorse someone whose conduct has consistently violated Christian standards. Vote for whom you will and answer honestly when asked, but leave it at that. I lost huge respect for Robert Jeffress at First Baptist of Dallas because of his outspoken support for Trump, which he compounded with intellectual dishonesty by emphasizing that he had not endorsed Trump. I would have no problem with Jeffress voting for Trump; my position is that he should not have made any public appearances with or on behalf of Trump.
"Evangelicalism either remained silent or actually supported Charlottesville goose steppers because they protect their white privilege with the doublespeak of preserving heritage, leading them to equate opponents of fascist movements with the purveyors of hatred." Again, cited without evidence that evangelicals have in any sense supported white supremacists. Evangelicals are under no obligation, spiritual, moral, or logical, to voice support for De La Torre's favorite causes. And furthermore some of the opponents of fascist movements *are* purveyors of hatred.
We Southern Baptists don't have a copyright on the brand "Southern Baptist." Anyone can call himself that. We don't have a central authority which can exclude someone from all Southern Baptist congregations, and I doubt there is *any* remaining Southern Baptist congregation which would exclude someone from its roll. I'm not a reader of Baptist News Global, but it appears to be an organ of the Cooperative Baptist Fellowship, which broke away from the Southern Baptist Convention because it felt the SBC was too conservative. Guess what, the SBC isn't that conservative anymore. I wish we were.
