By Lisa Graas, Editor, Pierced Hearts

I received a press release in my email from Pastor Rick Warren’s publicist late last night after Warren made an appeal to the “Messengers” at the Southern Baptist Convention to get them to reverse the SBC decision to “disfellowship” his church. The decision was made to “disfellowship” Warren’s congregation, Saddleback church, because they have women pastors on staff. I believe his appeal to them indicates just how fluid and limp protestantism is. At its core, Protestantism really stands on nothing except opposition to the Catholic Church. It has no other thing to unify it.

Let’s look at the issue at hand, the ordination of women. According to The Baptist Faith and Message:

While both men and women are gifted for service in the church, the office of pastor is limited to men as qualified by Scripture.

This is one of many things that the Southern Baptist Convention gets right about the Word of God. But wait. Listen to Rick Warren talk about how none of this actually matters to Baptists.

Warren…challenged his denominational peers, “No one is asking any Southern Baptist to change their theology. I am not asking you to agree with our church. I am asking you to act like Southern Baptists who have historically ‘agreed to disagree’ on dozens of doctrines in order to unify around a common mission.

“Since Baptists have always allowed disagreement on dozens of doctrines — including the essential doctrines of salvation, why should this one issue cancel our fellowship?” Warren challenged. “In 2013, when Calvinists were under fire, Baptists agreed to disagree, and the split was averted. Now ten years later, will we treat egalitarian Baptists with the same grace we showed the Calvinists?

“We should remove churches for all kinds of sexual sin, racial sin, financial sin and leadership sin — sins that harm the testimony of our Convention,” Warren continued. “But the 1,928 churches with women on pastoral staff have not sinned. If doctrinal disagreements between Baptists are considered sin, we ALL get kicked out! You’ll never get 100% of Baptists to agree 100% on 100% of every doctrine.

“That’s why our constitution says churches must closely identify not completely identify with our confession. The Baptist Faith and Message is four thousand and thirty-two words. Our church disagrees with only one word. That’s 99.99% in agreement. Isn’t that close enough?”

Can you imagine a Catholic priest saying this? He would be corrected by his bishop and, if that failed, he would be laicized. That priest’s congregation would continue to be Catholic, though. They’d be assigned a new priest who would be able to withstand correction from his bishop.

What standards does a Catholic bishop use? The Bible, yes, but also the catechism and canon law, ALL OF WHICH must AGREE with each other according to Catholic teaching. You see, the doctrine of “Bible only” gets you into this situation that is here exemplified by Rick Warren. That is doctrinal disagreement on MAJOR points like the ordination of women.

We’re not talking about how to pave a church parking lot here, which is something that is never mentioned in the Word of God. We’re talking about something The Baptist Faith and Message rightly says is “qualified by Scripture.” Rick Warren’s position has become not “Bible only” but “Bible be damned.” He’s allowing women to preach in spite of what the Bible says, and he asks the SBC to give him a wink and a nod as he does it because, according to him, that’s how Baptists “act” with each other.

Warren is right, though, that The Baptist Faith and Message is just so many words that are, ultimately, meaningless. In like manner, the “Bible only” doctrine is meaningless as is evidenced by the fact that not even Baptists agree on major points of salvation doctrine yet they continue to “fellowship” with each other.

I sit here today most grateful, again, to be Catholic, where the Bible is backed up by the context of Sacred Tradition and the teaching of the Magisterium (bishops). I see these protestants using the Bible as though it is a cookbook to conjure up whatever they subjectively hope it is saying to them and I am grateful for the early Church Fathers whose writings still exist and who can tell us what the early Church actually believed. If the Church disagrees with me, I am the one who is wrong. It’s very simple, folks.

“Bible only” is a doctrine of demons. Beware of it like the plague. Rick Warren’s words to the Southern Baptist Convention are proof of this. Ultimately, their “message” to the world is meaningless.

Photo: Rick Warren. Credit: Jesse Childers