Burleson, Blogggers & Bloviaters

I spent four hours this afternoon reading scores of blogsites. Most of the bloggers were from the younger generation of Southern Baptists who are either in seminary or less than a decade out of seminary. I must admit that the younger fellows are phenomenal blogging bloviaters. They are powerfully cocksure when expressing their opinions. And some of them can be quite humorous. One blogger (One who I’ll let the reader search and find on his/her own) wrote the following:

I've shaken the hand of Jerry Rankin, heard O.S. Hawkins respond to "How are you?" by saying "I'm blessed," and have an autographed autobiography of Jimmy Draper. I've heard Roy Fish tell a class on evangelism to "Put THAT in your Calvinistic pipe and smoke it." I've peed next to Danny Akin while he told me stories about the ethics class he took under Paige Patterson. I've had Ken Hemphill (cowboy boots and all) and his wife Paula in our Fort Worth townhouse for brownies and ice cream. I've had many conversations with Al Mohler, including one about an episode of Prairie Home Companion.

This guy is way beyond me because I don't believe I've ever had a conversation with anyone about anything while standing in front of a urinal.

I discovered several interesting points while reading the young bloggers. Especially in the discussion about Wade Burleson:

1) The younger fellows seem to be ignorant (in the sense of being unaware or uninformed) of the history of the SBC takeover. It seems they believe rebelling against existing SBC leadership is something new. They believe the "conservative resurgence" of the last generation (the generation in which they did not personally know) was a theological battle while the IMB controversy is a battle over legalism. In truth, both battles related to power and control in the denomination.

2) The younger fellows seem to be oblivious to the fact that their rebellious nature mirrors the rebellious nature of the of the Pressler/Patterson faction. The Pressler/Patterson faction believed the SBC "liberal" leadership was nothing more than a "good ole boy" system designed to prevent conservatives from getting equal treatment in the system. The younger generation believes the present leadership runs things from behind a "green curtain." The younger fellows are suspicious of the very people gained the power for the fundamentalists. In truth, their rebellious nature is the same.

3) The younger fellows, especially the ones from Southern Seminary, believe that Al Mohler and Russ Moore are excessive legalists. I was surprised at the animosity shown toward Mohler and Moore. They are only recently discovering something that many of the older generation have known for a long time.

4) The younger generation has an element of communication (blogging) that the older generation did not have. They are at home communicating through the blogosphere. They know how to use the bells and whistles of the internet much better than the old codgers like myself and those of my generation. They're way ahead of us. My generation had only the print media through which to express ideas and opinions. Sometimes it took weeks to get a controversy going full-blown. The younger guys can get a controversy going in a matter of hours. Through the print media, we couldn't produce near the volume of material that they then can in the same amount of time. I'm into the blogging scene but in reality I'm a dinosaur compared to the young fellows. They leave me, and others of my generation, in the dust. They're true bloggers. I'm a slogger...