Part One

Rick Warren and Saddleback Church

Expelled by the SBC

February 21 of this year (2023) the Southern Baptist Convention expelled Saddleback Church.  Saddleback was the church Rick Warren started and pastored in Southern California.  The SBC ejected Saddleback for having a woman pastor.  Rick Warren decided he was wrong about woman pastors.  The Bible actually did allow it.

Ejection from the SBC is a kind of separation.  No doubt.  Rick Warren, it seems, wants to fight it.  I read an article this week that chronicled a bit of an account in an interview of Warren.

The author of the article learned much from SBC training for a state contracted prison chaplaincy, and he thinks Warren will be back.  Part of the reason, it seems, is that he’s already seen that the SBC has many women pastors.  Warren maybe thinks the SBC will take back Saddleback because of the 6,000 Purpose-Driven churches in the Convention.  He says these churches don’t need the SBC, but he wants to influence the SBC.

Rick Warren in Christianity Today

Former SBC leader and chief editor of Christianity Today, Russell Moore, interviewed Warren March 8, 2023.  Even though I don’t like Warren’s belief and practice,  his answers to Moore reveal inconsistencies for the SBC.  Apparently, the SBC avoided dealing with some abuse of women with a reference to autonomy in churches.  Warren claims the SBC didn’t give Saddleback autonomy in their decision for female pastors.  I too have seen autonomy as a regular tool for disobedience.  It becomes a convenient excuse for pastors doing what they like the most.

I read Rick Warren’s Purpose Driven Church book right when he published it.  I knew nothing of him and started the read with a positive outlook.  That assessment became negative when I started reading his rank pragmatism.  I think Rick Warren has done as much damage to churches as anyone in the history of the church.  Still, his treatment of the SBC brings out a good learning moment about the biblical doctrine of separation.

Ecclesiastical Separation

Assessment of Separation

Ecclesiastical separation means a church separates from another church or even other non-church institutions.  The SBC has no biblical authority to separate.  If many churches in the SBC continue with many varied types of unscriptural belief and behavior, separation from Saddleback looks political in some way.  It also exposes the corruption of an unbiblical Convention system.

I’m taking my analysis mainly from the article by C. D. Cauthorne, Jr. at SharperIron.  Warren as reported by Cauthorne supports some kind of separation without addressing ecclesiastical separation.  He quotes not one of a multitude of separation verses from scripture and yet says this:

We should be able to expel people over sin, racism, sexual abuse, other sexual sins, things like that.

Who is We?

Rightly practiced, I don’t disagree with Warren.  I would start, however, by asking, “Who is “we”?”  We expel.  Who can expel people.  We seems to be members of the SBC.  Warren thinks the SBC should expel other members and other churches over certain wrong behavior.  I would call what Warren says next, a “riff.”  He’s talking from the seat of his pants and making aggressive, false statements.  He is inventing material right on the spot really in a typical manner a postmodern world might do that.

This is the same old battle that’s been going on for 100 years in the SBC between conservative Baptists and fundamental Baptists… . Today, a fundamentalist means you’ve stopped listening… . That’s the number one mark of it… . We have to approach Scripture humbly saying I could be wrong. You’ll never hear a Fundamentalist say, “I could be wrong.” A conservative Baptist believes in the inerrancy of Scripture, a fundamentalist Baptist believes in the inerrancy of their interpretation.

Conservative Baptists and Fundamental Baptists?

Has there been a battle for a 100 years between conservative Baptists and fundamental Baptists?  Who are conservative Baptists?  Warren seems to include himself with conservative Baptists.  Who are fundamental Baptists, and especially in the Southern Baptist Convention?  Warren seems to think he will get some traction with an audience by weaponizing the term “fundamentalist.”  He says it means, “You’ve stopped listening.”

Fundamentalism and Evangelicalism

Warren and Fundamentalism

People who actually will call themselves fundamentalists would not use Rick Warren’s ad hominem definition.  Maybe you’re laughing as you read his definition.  It is funny what someone can say and get away with it in a mainstream interview.  Fundamentalists, Warren says, never say, “I could be wrong.”  “A fundamental Baptist believes in the inerrancy of their (sic) interpretation.”  The latter is just a rhetorical turn of phrase meant as combative.  He’s unhappy, but the female role or female pastor issue isn’t just an interpretational one.  In addition, all doctrinal issues relate to interpretation of scripture.

As coarse as Warren is in his take, he manifests a problem with separation in evangelicalism.  They have almost no established, systematic or biblical doctrine of separation upon which to operate.  Scripture says a lot on separation, but since they never include anything about separation in anything they write, no one knows what to do.

Sounding like a Fundamentalist

Warren himself sounds like a fundamentalist.  I understand fundamentalism.  I was a fundamentalist for at least the first 35 years of my life. Warren advocates for separation, but like all fundamentalists, he argues over the standard used.  The Bible is not the standard.  With some kind of social norm as the standard, the arguments about what standard to use will never cease, like they never did in fundamentalism.  These debates occur and occurred until the now gradual disappearance of fundamentalism as a movement.

A good question might also be, what makes someone conservative?  That isn’t established either, as much as Warren floats the term.  He uses “inerrancy” as an ambiguous standard as well as other terms used in an equally ambiguous way.  Warren is working at excluding the belief in male only in the office of pastor.  He says scripture convinced him.  He thinks the SBC should, as it has done in other areas, allow this diversity of “interpretation.”  It’s just a different interpretation, perhaps like the “sons of God” in Genesis 6 and the like.  Who separates over interpretations?

Biblical Separation

Like a Fundamentalist

Maybe a more preliminary question is, “Who separates?”  Or furthermore, “What is biblical separation?”  Evangelicals can’t give a good answer on separation because they do not preach separation.  They do not teach separation.  They are not separatists.  Separation, when they practice it, is not about God.  It is not about obedience to scripture.

Warren uses all sorts of strategies against the SBC in his interview that sound just like what a fundamentalist might do.  He wants to change the criteria for separation and he applies pressure in political ways.  Warren pulls the race card and says that “black churches” ordain women.  He concludes, “The SBC is holding up a sign saying:  All Black churches, look elsewhere.  You’re not wanted here.”  I wonder what black pastors think about Warren’s statement, who don’t endorse female pastors.  Is the idea of “Black churches” itself a kind of racism?  All “Black churches”? Warren lumps all into one category of groupthink.  Not one church peels off the lockstep, uniform whole according to the Warren assessment.

A tell-tale moment, very fundamentalist of him, Warren says, “This issue, the women’s role, it’s not a primary issue because it doesn’t have to do with salvation.  It is a secondary issue.”  This way of talking is inherently fundamentalist.  Warren is saying that someone separates on “primary issues.”  These are what?  Fundamentals.

John MacArthur

John MacArthur, when he attempted to answer in the Q and A in the matter of separation, talks the same way as Warren here.  He’s attempted to categorize what is primary and what is secondary.  MacArthur says, the woman’s role is a primary issue.  He says, infant sprinkling, that isn’t a primary issue.  That’s secondary, and you don’t separate over that.

MacArthur also echoes Warren or Warren echoes MacArthur with the statement, “It doesn’t have to do with salvation.”  MacArthur called this someone who is in the kingdom of God.  You’ve got to work with people who are in the kingdom of God.  Are these women pastors in the kingdom of God?  Are they saved?  I think you can see how that this kind of arbitrary, unscriptural standard will not settle issues of separation.

First, do we separate?  Second, what is the basis of separation?  In part three I want to go through MacArthur’s Q and A answer to show how he falls short.  We know that Rick Warren falls short, but he’s talking the same way as MacArthur about separation.

More to Come