Expert: Bruce Gourley - 3/16/2004

Question
 I was raised Southern Baptist. However,the church that I now attend has Cooperative Baptist ties. Do you know anything about Cooperative Baptists and their beliefs?

Answer
The Cooperative Baptist Fellowship is a denominational-like organization which was founded in 1990 in light of the fundamentalization of the Southern Baptist Convention.  The CBF holds to the historic Baptist principles of the Priesthood of All Believers and Soul Competency (the belief that each individual believer has the right to read and interpret Scripture and to stand before God without a priest or preacher telling him or her what he or she must believe), Religious Liberty and Separation of Church and State, and Authority of Scripture (no creeds) -- all of which are historic Southern Baptist beliefs, but have, in recent decades, been rejected by the current SBC leadership and replaced with a belief in strict pastoral authority, subjection to creeds (the Baptist Faith and Message 2000) in order to be able to understand the Bible, and a rejection of Separation of Church and State.

Another difference is that the current SBC leadership is opposed to women in ministry positions, while the CBF affirms women ministers (Baptists, by the way, have had women preachers for centuries, although they have been a minority).

For more information, The Baptist History and Heritage Society (www.baptisthistory.org) has extensive literature explaining the historical differences between the new and old SBC, as well as the CBF.

God bless,

-- Bruce Gourley
  www.baptistlife.com