The Vote—The final business meeting came early Friday morning. The final issue on the agenda was this vote which was placed before the membership. Less than 5 percent of the society’s 4,600-plus members attended the business meeting, but the constitution specifies that such an amendment requires an affirmation from 80% of those attending the business meeting, not of ETS as a whole. A standing vote took place, and 46 of the 177 members who voted favored the amendment. Apparently, people who attended the business meeting simply abstained. Immediately after the vote, ETS secretary-treasurer James Borland moved to adjourn. President Bullock accepted the motion with a second, despite loud objections. He then put the motion to the gathered members. Over the voices of more noisy protests, the motion carried and the meeting was adjourned. Members quickly filed out of the hall.

Several members approached the platform to question President Bullock’s speedy closing of the meeting. Grudem, among others, was frustrated that his planned proposal was preempted. Bullock explained to those gathered around him on the platform that had the vote been stronger, he would have allowed for the Grudem motion. Since, in his opinion, there was a weak showing to the amendment, he felt justified in closing the meeting. Other members of the executive committee seemingly were caught off guard. It was an unexpected and disappointing conclusion.

If the ETS follows Robert’s Rules of Order, a motion to adjourn cannot be debated, it is a privileged motion. Since this is so, the abrupt ending without debate was legitimate under the rules of order, but it also was clearly a power play on the part of quicker witted opponents of doctrinal amendment.

Should we be surprised? It is ever thus!

Look back at the records of the meetings in the days of the Fundamentalist-Modernist controversy and I would expect you will see similar power plays by savvy modernists and their moderate enablers to head the conservatives off at the pass. Same old story here. The simple and naive are tripped up by procedure. No surprise. Kind of funny, though, in an ironic sort of way. I don’t know why victims of this power play should be surprised. They aren’t going to win in the game of political hardball.

It remains to be seen what the ETS membership will do in light of this decision. Many of those present, including Grudem and the two Southern Baptist men who originally proposed the motion, were disappointed. Since the meeting ended, however, Burk and Van Neste think they have gained some ground in that the executive committee is now motivated to take up the matter more closely. One thing became patently obvious: the society needs a parliamentarian to help run its meetings. For two members of the executive committee to limit further discussion, without the knowledge of the committee as a whole, seems odd. Time may have played a factor as further discussion would have taken the meeting over its allotted time slot.

Gained ground? Right. Mark these fellows down as hopelessly naive.

The society needs a parliamentarian to run its meetings? Hah! They obviously have one and he ran his opponents into the ground. What the conservatives need is to realize who and what they are dealing with. And perhaps they need to read the rules of order again.

The motion failed for several reasons. First, those who supported it early in the discussion failed to attend the vote in sufficient strength to carry the day. Even some who favored the motion on Wednesday were missing at the vote on Friday. Moreover, the statement itself, while broad enough for some, was too narrow for others. One Arminian argued that he could not sign it because the statement affirms that all humans are guilty. He believes, however, that infants, though sinful, are not actually guilty until they commit personal sin. So it seems that while the statement is broad, it is not broad enough. Another man suggested that the statement would omit Landmark Baptists because it affirmed the universal church. In the end, perhaps Mohler will prove to be prophetic. Maybe ETS is really a society about the study of evangelicalism rather than a group of evangelical scholars, though doubtless many will dispute this interpretation. Time will tell.

Those who supported it earlier didn’t support it sincerely enough to bother to show up and vote. Right! Do the words ‘lip service’ carry any meaning? If you support something that is going to be voted on, you show up to vote. Actions speak louder than words.

One of the things that is ironic here is that we see again the display of the left’s superior politicking. The conservatives usually don’t have this figured out and usually get overridden every time. This is just like the old controversies of the twenties. What is even more ironic is the so-called fundies who are surprised (and involved) in all of this.

Deja vu, anyone?

Now, which organization requires the more exclusive standard of doctrinal agreement as its foundational basis?

It should be pretty obvious that the more rigorous and exclusive organization is the NAE, as far as doctrinal foundation goes. In my recent posts on the Kevin Bauder lectures, my post NE is dead, long live NE highlights Dr. Bauder’s contention that the mainstream of evangelicalism has adopted the Indifferentist philosophy of the New Evangelicalism (which he says is dead). I think we have to agree with Dr. Bauder that Evangelicalism is Indifferentist in the main. I would go further and suggest that Indifferentism permeates the entirety of Evangelicalism, to one degree or another. (To understand Indifferentism, see indifferentists defined.) In any case, I would submit that Indifferentism is pretty well evident in the foundational doctrinal philosophy of the NAE and the ETS, but more so in the ETS with its minimal doctrinal standard.

In recent years, the ETS has been embroiled in doctrinal controversy over Open Theism. An unsuccessful attempt was made to expel some proponents of OT. These controversies prompted others to push for a more detailed doctrinal foundation. For more links and more details of the arguments for the amendment, you can check out this post by one of the proponents.

The arguments about the ETS and it’s doctrinal statements are of little interest to me, as far as having an interest in the ultimate outcome is concerned. I am interested, however, in some the arguments that individuals are making against tightening up the doctrinal basis of the ETS. Notice, for example, this statement, found at this site:

If ETS starts going down this road, it risks becoming the Fundamentalist Evangelical Society, being closed off to the ideas of the world that may perhaps threaten what status quo of doctrinal beliefs.

The same poster also made this comment:

Each society can make up its own rules, but when people start retreating into the fundamentalist notion of shutting out others who may not have the same or do not have as conservative of views as they do, I get nervous about Christian scholarship’s future.

Other arguments are made against imposing a more severe doctrinal statement on the Society, including an argument that the ETS is not a church and therefore has no power to establish any kind of church court system in order to expel those who might come to deny the doctrinal statement.

On the blog “Parchment & Pen” C. Michael Patton makes this argument concerning the ETS foundation:

The idea here is to be broadly Evangelical. This way, whatever denomination you are from, whatever your view on baptism, whatever your liturgy, whatever your view on predestination, you can find engagement here among those who were bound by one “fundamental”: the inerrancy of Scripture. It is assumed that if society members held such a view of Scripture, they could not verge far off the beaten path. As few anchors as possible creates a stable center of unity and diversity among its scholars. The society chose to have a “doctrinal basis” rather than a doctrinal statement or an extensive confession of faith.

It is interesting to me that evangelicals are so strongly committed to a minimalist doctrinal statement in order to define of the center of their scholarship. If this isn’t Indifferentism, then what is? When the supporters of the minimalist statements accuse any tightening of doctrinal statements of being a “fundamentalist notion”, doesn’t that display the Indifferentist mindset?

I would submit that those who are opposed to an increased doctrinal definition for the ETS are actually those who are most in accordance with the ETS founding principles.

I have asked the question before, and I ask it again, why would real Fundamentalists be involved in the ETS? The whole organization is completely Indifferentist in principle and in belief. If Indifferentism is such a serious error, as Kevin Bauder says (see earlier posts on his lecture series), how can a professor who serves under him in a Fundamentalist seminary legitimately participate? Such participation seems to embrace a philosophy that is entirely antagonistic to the Fundamentalist ethos.

The only defense I have heard of such participation is the defense that the ETS is purely an academic organization where scholars (those with Th.M. degrees and above) can submit the fruit of their scholarly labors in a public forum for peer-review. It is said that such activity involves no ecclesiastical entanglements and is a purely professional association, much like medical associations and legal associations like the Bar.

It would be interesting to know whether our “Fundamentalist” ETS members are in favor of the more restrictive doctrinal position or not? According to its opponents, such a move would make the ETS more like a church. It is kind of ironic that Fundamentalists should logically side with the doctrinal minimalists in order to maintain any semblance of the argument that the ETS is purely a professional, academic organization and thus allowing Fundamentalist participation!

I have yet to see a convincing argument Fundamentalist seminary and Bible college professors have any legitimate grounds for participation in the ETS.