The Ecumenical movement seeks to unite the denominations and churches into a common body. It is the belief of this Pastor and the position of the First Baptist Church of South Brevard that this cannot be achieved without compromising fundamental truths that are at the very heart of what we believe.
The very Basis for Christian belief is compromised by this ecumenical crowd. Unity, as they see it, cannot be achieved without doing away with the Bible as the sole authority in all matters of faith and practice.
Eugene Carson Blake, a past top administrative officer of the World Council of Churches, and past president of the National Council of Churches stated in his address entitled "A Proposal Toward the Reunion of Christ's Church."...."The scripture as the sole basis of authority must be dropped if unity is to be possible. So long as the wording 'sola scriptura' is required, no bridge can be made between Catholic and Evangelical.It is now clear in ecumenical conversations that Protestants generally have come to recognize the right place of tradition...." (p.70 "Eugene Carson Blake", Zoth Century Reformation Hour, Collingswood N. J.)
As independent Baptists we belong to neither the catholic(universal) or protestant groups. We believe that the BIBLE IS OUR SOLE AUTHORITY! It is given to us by God and is profitable for doctrine and practice (II Tim 3:16,17). It is the STANDARD (I Peter 4:11). It is to believed, read, known, searched, taught, talked of and received. There is blessedness in hearing and obeying it (Luke 11:28, James 1:25) and we shall have nothing to do with those who seek to make it of minimal effect through their traditions ( Mark 7:9-13). The Ecunemical crowd is wrong because their authority is wrong.
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http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harry_Emerson_Fosdick
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A very interesting article on the beginnings of modernism.
Harry Emerson Fosdick
Fosdick became a central figure in the Fundamentalist-Modernist Controversy within American Protestantism in the 1920s and 1930s. While at First Presbyterian Church, on May 21, 1922, he delivered his famous sermon “Shall the Fundamentalists Win?”, in which he defended the modernist position. He graduated from Colgate University in 1900, and Union Theological Seminary in 1904. While attending Colgate University he joined the Delta Upsilon Fraternity. He was ordained a Baptist minister in 1903 at the Madison Avenue Baptist Church at 31st Street. Fosdick was the most prominent liberal Baptist minister of the early 20th Century. Although a Baptist, he was Pastor of the First Presbyterian Church on West Twelfth Street and then at the historic, interdenominational Riverside Church (the congregation moved from the then-named Park Avenue Baptist Churc, now the Central Presbyterian Churc ) in New York City.
The General Assembly of the Presbyterian Church, U.S.A. (Northern) in 1923 charged his local presbytery to conduct an investigation of his views. A commission began an investigation, as required. His defense was conducted by a lay elder, John Foster Dulles, whose father was a well-known liberal Presbyterian seminary professor.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carl_McIntire
ReplyDeleteCarl McIntire
During the late 1920s, Princeton Seminary was embroiled in the Fundamentalist-Modernist controversy that had disquieted the Presbyterian Church in the United States of America as well as other Protestant denominations. McIntire became a strong supporter of J. Gresham Machen, a conservative professor of New Testament. With Machen, McIntire opposed a reorganization of the seminary in 1929 that appeared to strengthen liberal elements in the church. He followed his mentor and three other professors from Princeton to the newly founded Westminster Theological Seminary, where he completed his Th.B. degree in 1931. In 1931, McIntire was ordained into the ministry of the Presbyterian Church USA, serving for two years at Chelsea Presbyterian Church, Atlantic City, New Jersey. In 1933, he was called to the Presbyterian Church of Collingswood, New Jersey, near Philadelphia, the largest church in the West Jersey Presbytery. McIntire remained a resident of Collingswood for the rest of his life. The Women's Missionary Society of the Collingswood church called his attention to what they perceived as a modernist perspective in the missions study book, which had been promoted by the denomination's Board of Foreign Missions. McIntire joined the conservative side in the on-going Fundamentalist-Modernist debate, and in 1934, at Machen's invitation, he became a founding member of the Independent Board for Presbyterian Foreign Missions, an agency organized as an alternative to the denominational mission board that the conservatives claimed supported theologically liberal missionaries. The Presbyterian Church treated the new board as a challenge to its authority and demanded that the clergymen resign. After they refused, Machen, McIntire, and seven other clergymen were tried by an ecclesiastical court in 1935-36. The board members lost, and they renounced the jurisdiction of the Presbyterian Church, as did the Collingswood Presbyterian Church, only a tiny minority of whose members refused to support their young pastor.