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Warren also got into politics. Here are some snippets:
“We lost. I wasn’t expecting to win…We actually had about 700 more votes than I figured we’d get….”
“The SBC is a democracy and in democracies the majority win, so those who oppose women in ministry…get credit for turning out their vote….”
“We made this effort for a variety of reasons. First, I wanted to push the conversation that’s been stagnant for years…nobody’s been talking about it. And we are in a culture–a cancel culture–where people are afraid of dissent. Baptists are famous for dissent…For example, yesterday the messengers voted for conformity and uniformity rather than unity. Conformity is not unity. Conformity is fake unity. Friends, the only way you will ever have unity is to love diversity…God made us a million different ways….”
“William Wilberforce lost seventeen years of votes in the Parliament before the slave trade was abolished. He was just persistent, persistent. This effort inevitably–truth inevitably–wins out over tradition….”
“I wanted to speak up for millions of Southern Baptist women who I believe their spiritual gifts and their leadership gifts and talents are being wasted. And we cannot complete the Great Commission if 50% of our population sits on the shelf and is not allowed to be who God made them to be….”
“I wanted to encourage the next generation of pastors. This…program against Saddleback which started two years ago scared a lot of pastors. And I had over 300 write to me personally [asking] ‘are they gonna get us?’ And I just thought, ‘you know what, I’m probably the right guy to take this on because they can’t hurt me.’ I have been criticized all my life. It doesn’t bother me. The vitriol does not bother me. If you’re going to lead, you can’t follow the crowd. And if you follow the crowd, you can’t lead….”
“What surprised me over the last 24 months…is seeing the underbelly of the SBC and seeing how much lack of transparency there is–secrecy–and its an insider ballgame. If you know the inside, you can get your way….Outsiders…don’t stand a chance….”
“We found almost 2000 churches who a woman on staff either called a ‘pastor” or ordained as a ‘pastor’…This is going to be an inquisition now and its probably going to go on for ten years if they have to ferret out 2000….”
“It’s not really smart, when you’re losing half a million members a year, to intentionally kick out people who want to fellowship with you….”
“The Annual Meeting is largely composed of people who want to keep things the way they are. That’s who shows up at Annual Meetings….”
“This convention is aging. The average Southern Baptist is 56-years-old. That’s way out of whack compared to the population. These are good people…but they’re aging. And the next generation of Southern Baptists [are] not here….So I can guarantee you that change will happen at some point….”
“Our Annual Meeting only attracts four groups…1. People who are paid by the Convention. They’re denominational workers. 2. They are retirees looking forward to a family reunion…3. Local Baptists who come to a Convention when it’s in their area…4. There’s a group of pastors in very small churches who are activists and it actually is a place to shine….”
“People who don’t like to fight have stopped coming to the Convention. Now what that means is the voice of fighters gets louder and louder every year….”
“There are people who want to take the SBC backwards. Some want to take it back to the 1950s–that’s their golden age for the church. 1950s–when white men ruled supreme and a women’s place is in the home and there is not a whole lot of diversity…There are others who want to take the Southern Baptists back 500 years to the Reformation. OK, fine, I agree with you, let’s take the church backwards, but you’re just not going back far enough. We need to go back to the first century. The church at its best was the church at its birth…I want to take the church back…to the ten things they did in Acts 1 and 2 which caused us to grow fifty percent a decade for the first 300 years….”
“100 years ago I would have called myself a fundamentalist because it means you hold to the fundamental doctrines of historic orthodox Christianity. Today [fundamentalism] is an attitude. There are Muslin fundamentalists. There are Buddhist fundamentalists. There are atheist fundamentalists. There are secular fundamentalists. Communist fundamentalists. Christian Right fundamentalists. [A] fundamentalist is someone who has stopped listening….”
“The spirit of the age has been sucked into the spirit of the denominations and even lower, in churches….”
“If you are angry…you are going to fill your church with angry people. The thing about building a church or building a denomination on fighters is that when you run out of enemies they inevitably turn on themselves….”
“We’ll either have a Third Great Awakening or we’ll go the way of Europe….”
“I’m not a political pundit…But I’ll tell you this. In the last few election so many ‘evangelical Christians’ have run for office [that they] divided the vote….”
“To win a primary you’ve got to be a radical, on either side. You need to be a radical Democrat or you need to be a radical Republican because those people are the true believers and…they don’t represent America any more than the people who like to come and argue at a convention represent the whole denomination….Sometimes the best people can’t get through that system….”
“History has shown when you put church and state together it’s not good for either….”
“truth inevitably wins out over tradition”
Um …