A Response to SBC Voic­es Bizarre Crit­i­cism of Ene­mies With­in the Church

We don’t respond to every bit of crit­i­cism or attack made against us, espe­cial­ly not by mak­ing an arti­cle and pod­cast, but this one seemed worth a response. Dave Miller is the edi­tor of SBC Voic­es, an online opin­ion plat­form from which var­i­ous SBC lead­ers and per­son­al­i­ties get their mes­sages out. Dave is the for­mer pas­tor of South­ern Hills Bap­tist Church in Sioux City, Iowa (the SBV Voic­es bio is a year or two out of date). In an arti­cle recent­ly pub­lished at SBC Voic­es, Rev. Miller starts off

“There is no short­age of voic­es in the SBC [South­ern Bap­tist Con­ven­tion] claim­ing that the end is near, that we bal­ance on a precipice over the pit of destruc­tion. I believe most of those voic­es are mis­tak­en – some out of igno­rance and oth­ers will­ful­ly. Most of the “ene­mies with­in the church” they warn us about are bogey­men designed to manip­u­late us into action, so that they can gain and main­tain pow­er.”

Rev. Miller, we pro­vide evi­dence for our claims, what about you? And no, it is not a coin­ci­dence that Dave Miller uses the phrase “ene­mies with­in the church” as he does, because Sioux City, Iowa, is the home of Ene­mies With­in the Church, as well as the home of Rev. Miller. Rev. Miller, if you have a fact-based issue with us, or our con­tent, then we are man enough for you to state that clear­ly and direct­ly. Fur­ther, if you become aware of this (and we are active­ly try­ing to con­tact you), we want to invite you onto The Woke­pe­dia Pod­cast to dis­cuss the facts when it comes to woke ide­olo­gies in the SBC. Please con­tact us at contactwokepedia@gmail.com

Why do we men­tion facts and evi­dence? Because Miller’s arti­cle is devoid of any ver­i­fi­able facts or ref­er­ences. This is very hyp­o­crit­i­cal when a sig­nif­i­cant thrust of the arti­cle is the ever pop­u­lar idea of “uni­ty.” How is attack­ing peo­ple who raise con­cerns, while pro­vid­ing no jus­ti­fi­ca­tion, a path to uni­ty? Or delet­ing dis­sent­ing com­ments, includ­ing our com­ment invit­ing you to dia­log with us? 

Rev. Miller is wrong about the con­di­tion of the SBC, and he is wrong about those who are sound­ing warn­ings to South­ern Bap­tists about ene­mies with­in the church. Now the pur­pose of this response is not to refute his asser­tions, that is han­dled well in oth­er resources, many of which are linked below. 

So if he doesn’t see wok­e­ness as a real thing in the SBC, what does he think is wrong with the SBC? 

“There is a grow­ing unwill­ing­ness to coop­er­ate in mis­sions with church­es and fel­low believ­ers unless they are in near-unan­i­mous agree­ment on ter­tiary issues.”

Now to be fair, the SBC does have a fair amount of that, which is not sur­pris­ing giv­en its size and its inten­tion­al­ly vague con­fes­sion­al doc­u­ment. By no means is that the biggest threat to the SBC right now. But what does he think is a “ter­tiary issue”? Well, a sim­ple look at his, and oth­ers, arti­cles on SBC Voic­es and it becomes clear that things such as CRT fall into that camp. This includes bring­ing in a guest writer to pen a mild cri­tique of CRT that Rev. Miller labeled as “offer­ing [an] oppos­ing view­point.” He then went right up the edge, or crossed it, of insult in a com­ment on the arti­cle. In anoth­er com­ment he mocks anoth­er com­menter, accus­ing him of “will­ful blind­ness” for deny­ing sys­temic racism.

That is by no means a thor­ough exam­i­na­tion, but all said to give exam­ples of where Rev. Miller is at. Grant­ed, his posi­tions are hard to nail down, as the com­bi­na­tion of lack of evi­dence, bla­tant­ly con­tra­dic­to­ry state­ments, and (seem­ly) defi­cient def­i­n­i­tions. Do you not agree with our assess­ment? Well, look at the evi­dence we pro­vid­ed, gath­er some of your own, and bring that to us and we will be more than will­ing to dia­logue about it. 

The only boogey­man pre­sent­ed in the arti­cle is the one Dave claims is hid­ing with­in min­istries that actu­al­ly pro­vide you with evi­dence to look at. Fol­low evi­dence, not emo­tion.

Arti­cle direct­ly deal­ing with Rev. Miller’s arti­cle: https://www.wordfoundations.com/heedthewarnings/

Our film doc­u­ment­ing woke ide­olo­gies enter­ing the church: www.enemieswithinthechurch.com

Woke SBC com­pi­la­tion: https://youtu.be/qOnaakLuJ90

And be sure to check out oth­er arti­cles here, as well as The Woke­pe­dia Pod­cast on YouTube, Rum­ble, or your favorite pod­cast plat­form.