Katherine Burgess|Memphis Commercial Appeal
A film premiering this Saturday at Mid-America Baptist Theological Seminary in Cordova takes aim at major conservative figures and institutions in the Southern Baptist Convention, as well as other significant Christian leaders, portraying them as bringing Marxism into Christianity.
And, it’s facing pushback from top Southern Baptist officials, including the president of Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary, whose campus is featured in trailer footage as the narrator talks about seminaries becoming “heavily Marxist.”
“I take strong umbrage at such scandalous and scurrilous slander, particularly when it is apparently condoned by aninstitution such as yours,” wrote Adam Greenway, president of Southwestern, in a letter to Mid-America asking the Cordova seminary to reconsider its decision to show the film “and to withdraw support from those working to divide our Convention by engaging in untruthful attacks against SBC entities like Southwestern Seminary.”
The showing of the film coincides with a gathering Friday night at Mid-America, also promoted by the Conservative Baptist Network, spearheaded by Lee Brand, first vice president of the Southern Baptist Convention. Brand is on the Conservative Baptist Network’s steering committee and was supported by the network in elections during the Southern Baptist Convention’s annual gathering in Nashville in June. He is also vice president and dean of Mid-America.
The gathering and film screening are perceived as major moves by the Conservative Baptist Network, a group that seeks to move the already conservative denomination further to the right,after losses earlier this year at the Southern Baptist Convention’s big annual gathering in Nashville.
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There, Alabama pastor Ed Litton, lauded for his racial reconciliation work, defeated Mike Stone, the Georgia pastor backed by the faction trying to push the convention further to the theological right. It was a narrow win for Litton, with only 556 of the 13,131 votes cast separating the two men.
Brand was not available for comment about the gathering Thursday. Attempts to reach another representative of the Conservative Baptist Network were unsuccessful.
Representatives of Mid-America also did not respond to a request for comment.
In a written statement posted to Twitter, the Conservative Baptist Network said while they did not produce the documentary, they are "extremely concerned about the documented evidence it presents" and that "Southwestern Seminary's inclusion in this film does not appear unfounded."
The letter asks Southern Baptists to consider whether a Southern Baptist entity should affirm a female preacher, "condone plagiarism" by inviting Litton to chapel, instruct a professor not to share his personal testimony on LGBTQ issues, have a professor teach that to understand Scripture a diverse group of minorities must look at it from specific standpoints such as skin color and gender, and facilitate nondisclosure agreements.
Critical race theory, social justice movements targets of film
The film “Enemies Within the Church” uses the kind of scare tactics that the Conservative Baptist Network has been utilizing for the past two years, said Bart Barber, pastor of First Baptist Church Farmersville in Texas.
“Grassroots members of the CBN, they’re concerned that the nation around them is on the brink of falling off into a kind of leftist progressivism that’s going to spell the doom of the nation and is also going to create an environment of increased difficulty for anyone who’s going to maintain any sort of orthodox Christian ministry,” Barber said.
The film seizes and expands on those fears, portraying anyone willing to build bridges across lines of race, politics or sexual orientation as “woke” and thus on the path to Marxism and the destruction of a Christian America.
The conspiracy-filled film, which Greenway says in his letter appears to be hosted in coordination with the CBN, is not made by Southern Baptists. Its producer and narrator is Cary Gordon, a nondenominational pastor from Cornerstone Church in Sioux City, Iowa. Another producer is Trever Loudon, an author who the Southern Poverty Law Center describes as a far-right conspiracy theorist. Loudon is author of “Barack Obama and the Enemies Within” and“The Enemies Within: Communists, Socialists and Progressives in the U.S. Congress.”
A director is Judd Saul, who has directed similar films, including “America Under Siege: Antifa.” Another producer is Curtis Bowers, former Republican member of the Idaho House of Representatives. He directed “Grinding America Down” and “Agenda: Masters of Deceit.”
Throughout the film, ominous music plays as images are flashed onscreen: A migrant caravan, a same-sex wedding, female pastors, Black Lives Matter protests, historical images of the Holocaust.
“American churches today are where the universities were ten years ago, pretty heavily Marxist,” says the narrator early in the film. “They’re not quite there yet but they’re well on their way. Many of the seminaries and Bible colleges are already there.”
It argues that the social justice movement was taught at places like Wheaton College and Fuller Theological Seminary — conservative, evangelical educational institutions — and resulted in “the next generation of academics and pastors (being) taught at their feet.”
Gordon said he was inspired to make the film as a third-generation minister who "can see what's happening in our country."
"I'm starting to hear the lingo of hard left Marxism being adopted in American pulpits," he said, and millennials believe the state gives permission for individuals to exist. "You cannot sustain any longevity of human liberty in that type of a scenario. You will eventually end up like North Korea."
Numerous professors, pastors and well-known authors are attacked over the course of the two-hour film, portrayed as “enem(ies) in the church,” “Marxism spreaders” or members of “woke movement(s).”
Al Mohler, president of The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, is a particular target, described as an “enemy in the church” with text on the screen questioning whether Mohler is a “Christian humanist.”
Mohler, a staunch conservative and evangelical, came in third in the election for president of the Southern Baptist Convention at its annual meeting in June. Mohler has said that critical race theory has no place in the Southern Baptist Convention.
One of the men interviewed in the documentary is Russell Fuller, a former professor at Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, who is portrayed as having been fired for his conservative beliefs. Fuller is slated to speak Friday with Brand.
“I’ve seen a real shift at Southern (Baptist) Seminary mostly in the last 5-6 years, there’s been a real shift toward the left. We have guys teaching postmodernism, social justice and of course critical race theory,” Fuller says.
Presidents of all six of the Southern Baptist Convention’s seminaries have denounced critical race theory — while also condemning racism. They affirm the Southern Baptist Faith and Message.
Mid-America is Southern Baptist by theology but operates independently of the Southern Baptist Convention. Unlike the six seminaries supported by the Southern Baptist Convention, it does not receive funding from the SBC’s cooperative program.
Barber said that Mid-America’s role as a host site for the Friday meeting and the Saturday film screening is a consequential one.
In the Southern Baptist conservative resurgence starting in 1979, the six Southern Baptist seminaries truly had drifted toward the left in terms of theology and politics. However, Mid-America continued to teach the inerrancy of the Bible and a theologically conservative point of view, something that helped it to grow and remain popular.
Then, when control of the convention was regained by the conservative faction and the seminaries became staunchly conservative, Mid-America lost that uniqueness, Barber said.
“It helps Mid-America quite a bit to distinguish itself again by saying all the Southern Baptist seminaries are drifting leftward and we’re your conservative alternative,” Barber said. “Because Mid-America is available to host an event like this and promote it, this also is a substantial part of the narrative that’s happening here.”
Former head of the executive committee Morris Chapman and former SBC President Steve Gaines, also pastor of Bellevue Baptist Church in Memphis, have also weighed in on the controversy on Twitter, with Gaines tweeting that "The SBC has only 6 seminaries" and that their heads "ALL affirm the doctrine of the BFM2000 drafted by Dr. Adrian Rogers & his committee," referring to the Baptist Faith and Message 2000.
The film accuses J.D. Greear, former president of the Southern Baptist Convention, of teaching “false doctrine” regarding hom*osexuality (Greear believes hom*osexuality is a sin, but teaches that other sins are “more egregious”). It calls author Tim Keller, a member of the conservative Presbyterian Church in America, an “enemy in the church” who “teaches false social gospel” that “merges the true gospel and social gospel together via critical race theory and the social justice movement, pushing Christians to accept Marxist and communist ideals.”
Kevin Ezell, head of the SBC’s North American Mission Board, is also called an “enemy in the church,” with the documentary accusing him of requiring “new church plants to teach critical race theory and social justice or be denied funding or approval.”
Russell Moore, formerly the head of the SBC’s Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission, is described by Ray Moore, executive director of Exodus Mandate, as turning the ERLC into a “genuinely leftist social justice arm of the Southern Baptist Convention. It’s like the Southern Baptist Convention has this cancer.” The ERLC regularly advocates for conservative issues, opposing abortion, standing for religious liberty and opposing the Equality Act.
The specter is also raised of criticism of Litton, current SBC president, for plagiarizing a sermon from Greear, with the film overlaying the two sermons. Litton apologized for using material from his predecessor, saying he had borrowed it with permission.
“The social justice movement, the social justice gospel, the so called woke gospelers, they are deviating, they are co-opting," Gordon said. "If I’m a pastor in an old, stale cathedral and no one’s been coming to church for years and it’s slowly dying out and I decide to start using language and lingo and terms that young people like, like wealth distribution and white privilege, which is a term coined by communists, and talk about being cisgendered and all of these things that are incompatible with Scripture, well then it makes me feel good because people show up on Sunday. A lot of churches are adopting language to try to feel relevant again and to try to attract people again … but at what cost? I say it’s at the cost of the future of the country. It’s at the cost of liberty."
Preparing for Anaheim
Brand will be joined Friday by several other well-known names in Southern Baptist circles, in addition to Fuller.
One of those is Rod Martin, founder and CEO of The Martin Organization. He has served as senior advisor to PayPal founder and CEO Peter Thiel and to former Apple CEO Gil Amelio and as policy director to Gov. Mike Huckabee. Martin, a member of the CBN’s steering committee, resigned from the Southern Baptist Convention’s executive committee along with a swath of resignations from CBN supporters after the committee voted to waive attorney-client privilege as part of an ongoing inquiry into the group’s handling of sex-abuse allegations.
Also speaking will be Allen Nelson IV, pastor of Perryville Second Baptist Church in Arkansas, Randy Adams, executive director-treasurer of the Northwest Baptist Convention, and Tom Ascol, pastor of Grace Baptist Church in Florida and founder of the Reformed Baptist group Founders Ministries. Ascol is not officially involved with the CBN, but is perceived as a supporter of the network.
Not everyone associated with the CBN believes the people named in the “Enemies in the Church” film is a Marxist, Barber said.
Rather, “the more reasonable people within the CBN, what they would say is I don’t think J.D. Greear is a Marxist, these people would say, I think J.D. Greear cares too much what Marxists think of him,” Barber said.
Part of the goal of the Friday meeting is likely preparing for the 2022 Southern Baptist Convention annual meeting, Barber said. Next year, the meeting will take place in Anaheim, California.
“They’re going to gather (in Cordova), they’re going to screen that film, they’re going to articulate a set of talking points about why things in the Southern Baptist Convention are so liberal right now — which is just bizarre — and they’re going to use those talking points to spend the rest of the year getting people motivated to go to Anaheim in the summer to give another try at getting some votes,” Barber said.
Katherine Burgess covers county government and religion. She can be reached at katherine.burgess@commercialappeal.com, 901-529-2799 or followed on Twitter @kathsburgess.
