Last month, I was asked to contribute an article to Christ Over All on the theme of confessionalism in the SBC. If you haven’t checked this ministry out, you really should. They are doing great work.

Here’s an excerpt from my article. Click the link to read the whole thing:

This is the purpose of our confession: to set forth and to guard what is “surely held among us.” In this way, every word of the confession is important.

What is the alternative? If only some of the words are important, as some seem to want in the SBC, then these “important words” are the ones that will be the de facto confession that regulates Southern Baptist identity and association. But who will know which ones?

As Carl Trueman has argued, everyone lives by a creed or confession, even those who say they do not. These creeds and confessions are either written down, or they are not. But everyone has one. Even those who want to move the SBC away from non-contradiction with respect to women pastors and the 2000 Baptist Faith and Message are not wanting less confessionalism at this point, they just want a different confessionalism. They want a confessionalism that says, whether written down and voted on or not, the issue of women pastors is one that Southern Baptists can agree to disagree on. Do not be mistaken: this is confessionalism—just of a different stripe than the one millions of Southern Baptists have already approved and agreed to abide by in the Baptist Faith and Message 2000.