On Wednesday Night, April 5^th, our topic will be “Religious Liberty.” I received an inquiry from one of our members concerning an article they had read on “The Pulpit & Pen” website concerning the Southern Baptist Convention.

The article reported that in May 2016, “the SBC’s International Mission Board (IMB) and its Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission (ERLC)… [joined together to] support.. a mosque building effort in New Jersey.  Both agencies signed on to an amicus [Friend of the Court] brief to support the Islamic Society of Basking Ridge New Jersey in its lawsuit seeking a redress for city zoning ordinances that denied building permits for its planned construction of a new mosque in the town… By December 2016, the mosque won as a federal judge weighed in on the dispute, landing on the side of religious liberty for the mosque…”

As Southern Baptists have learned about this, it has caused concern among the churches of the SBC. Baptists have long been champions of Religious Freedom – but using Baptist influence to help Muslims build a mosque seems by many to have gone too far. One of the IMB Trustees has resigned over this action and several churches have began withholding funds from the SBC in protest.

ERLC President Russell Moore’s response is : “What it means to be a Baptist is to support soul freedom for everybody…. when you have a government that says we can decide whether or not a house of worship can be constructed upon the theological beliefs of that house of worship, then there are going to be Southern Baptist churches in San Francisco and in New York and throughout the country who are not going to be able to build.”    What do you think?

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