The Baptist Union of Great Britain is considering changing its rules to allow its ministers to contract marriage with people of the same sex. “In a communication with its churches, it confirmed a request was made in 2020 by 70 members–the majority of which are ministers. The request asked that the Ministerial Recognition Rules be changed to remove a line which says that marriage is defined as ‘exclusively between a man and a woman.’ In a long letter addressing the issue, Baptist Union general secretary Lynn Green said: ‘A number of conversations and a consultation will take place in the coming months but no time scale has been provided. The Baptist Union has, however, confirmed that no decision will be made at the Council meeting in October’” (“Baptist Union to Consider,” Premier Christian News, June 22, 2022). This measure probably won’t be officially approved, but it would not even be entertained if Baptist Union pastors were true Bible believers. This is the same Baptist Union from which Charles Haddon Spurgeon, pastor of Metropolitan Tabernacle, London, England, withdrew in October 1887. A few months earlier he wrote, “Believers in Christ’s atonement are now in declared union with those who make light of it; believers in Holy Scripture are in confederacy with those who deny plenary inspiration; those who hold evangelical doctrine are in open alliance with those who call the fall a fable, who deny the personality of the Holy Ghost, who call justification by faith immoral, and hold that there is another probation after death. It is our solemn conviction that there should be no pretense of fellowship. Fellowship with known and vital error is participation in sin” (The Sword and the Trowel, Aug. 1887).” The Baptist Union has continued to pursue the path of apostasy. In the 1920s, 30s, and 40s, H. Wheeler Robinson, pastor of Baptist Union churches and principal of Regents Park College, denied the infallibility of Scripture, considered the Old Testament a product of religious evolution, and denied the historicity of Adam and original sin. He blasphemously claimed that Jesus was not right in everything He said. “The language and the thought of a particular generation are stamped upon His sayings” (Robinson, Ancient and English Versions of the Bible, p. 287). In 1971, Michael Taylor, principal of the Baptist Union’s Northern Baptist College, addressed the London Baptist Assembly on the theme, “How much of a man was Jesus?” He denied that Jesus Christ is God. Though many protested the man’s heresy, the Baptist Union refused to discipline him or remove him from office. In 2013, Lynn Green became the first female president of the Baptist Union. She received a standing ovation for her inaugural sermon. She proclaimed, “I believe that our union is ready for generational change. It is time to embrace a new way of being for the 21st century.” This is the philosophy of the emerging church.
(Friday Church News Notes, July 29, 2022, www.wayoflife.org, fbns@wayoflife.org, 866-295-4143)