It seems as if the Southern Baptist Convention is having a bit of an internal disagreement about whether or not the use of birth control is acceptable. Dr. Thomas White of the Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary says its not and that those who use it are selfish and committing murder:
The Southern Baptist Convention is reacting after News 8 showed a message from a Southern Baptist preacher teaching Fort Worth seminary students that the birth control pill equals murder.
In a controversial sermon to students at the Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary, Dr. Thomas White, acting as the student services vice president this month, preached that birth control is murder and called attempts at family planning selfish.
“Some of you are involved in that exact same sin,” he said.
But Richard Land disagrees, kind of:
“I don’t believe prudent planning is rebellion against God’s will as long as couples accept God may cause them to have unplanned pregnancies anyway,” said Richard Land.
But, Land said he ultimately agrees with Dr. White on the subject of the birth control pill.
…
“The Southern Baptist Convention is not opposed to the use of birth control within marriage as long as the methods used do not cause the fertilized egg to abort and as long as the methods used do not bar having children altogether unless there’s a medical reason the couple should not have children,” he said.
The most interesting angle of this kerfuffle is found in a video report from WFAA in Dallas regarding the issue in which Dwight McKissick of Cornerstone Baptist Church decries White’s views as “fundamentalist run amok” and declares that the seminary is “degenerating into a Baptist fundamentalist indoctrination camp.”
That would be the same Dwight McKissick who recently appeared in this anti-gay Family Research Council video in which he proclaimed that efforts to liken gay rights to the civil rights struggle are “insulting, demeaning, and offensive” and called it racist to “compare my skin with their sin.” He’s also the one who, at the FRC Values Voter Summit back in 2006, declared that the gay rights movement had come “from the pit of hell itself” and suggested that the Anti-Christ was gay.
When you are being pejoratively decried as a radical fundamentalist by … well, another radical fundamentalist, maybe you’ve gone too far.
