*UPDATED* A Cau­tion­ary Tale: SBC Pres­i­den­t’s Attacks on a Pas­tor are now Being Used by Left­ists

We’ve updat­ed this arti­cle with some shock­ing infor­ma­tion, new infor­ma­tion is found in the “True Repen­tance is Free­ing” sec­tion.

When prepar­ing an arti­cle, the first ques­tion is to decide if the piece will be a news arti­cle or opin­ion piece. AKA: do you sim­ply present the facts of the sit­u­a­tion, or is there com­men­tary and expla­na­tion that should be added. In this case, I feel that more expla­na­tion is help­ful, as I feel this fits in as one of my “cau­tion­ary tales.”

The Back­ground

Quick­ly, who are the key play­ers in this tale? First there is Dusty Deev­ers, pas­tor of Grace Com­mu­ni­ty Church/Grace Reformed Bap­tist Church in Elgin, Okla­homa. Dusty is run­ning for the 32nd state sen­ate dis­trict in Okla­homa with his most promi­nent posi­tion being that of the total abo­li­tion of abor­tion.

Next is Bart Bar­ber, 2nd term pres­i­dent of the South­ern Bap­tist con­ven­tion. Bar­ber has repeat­ed­ly attacked Dusty on Twit­ter (“X”) for his abo­li­tion­ist stance. Bart styles him­self as a con­ser­v­a­tive and sup­port­ing SBC pas­tors, yet he has a bit of a habit of sid­ing with liberals/Marxists and attack­ing SBC pas­tors.

Final­ly we have Bap­tist News Glob­al, who repeat­ed some of Bart’s attacks on Octo­ber 16th, which were then picked up by Dusty’s oppo­nent, Lar­ry Bush, a pro mur­der Demo­c­rat.

What a Web we Weave

To under­stand the sit­u­a­tion, let us look at a few of Bart’s com­ments from Sep­tem­ber 15th, 2022, where he became unhinged, by his own admis­sion, respond­ing to Dusty’s Tweet about poor track record of the recent­ly appoint­ed ERLC pres­i­dent, Brent Leather­wood. (who we recent­ly talked about in an episode of the EWTC Pod­cast)

This isn’t an exam­i­na­tion of the entire­ty of that sit­u­a­tion, but it should be men­tioned that Bart man­gles Dusty’s, Abo­li­tion­ist’s, and in fact any non-incre­men­tal­ist (the idea that the way to end abor­tion is to make grad­ual, incre­men­tal change) approach to end­ing abor­tion. He claims that it was his posi­tion, the incre­men­tal posi­tion, that holds sole claim to Roe being over­turned. Why is it impor­tant to point this out? Because Bart’s cen­tral claim is that “unless you 100% agree with every jot and tit­tle… [Deev­ers] will label you ‘against the inno­cent pre­born.’ ”

Huh, that’s fun­ny, because it seems to me that Bart’s straw­man argu­men­ta­tion and claim­ing things for his camp, and his camp alone, could be seen at exclu­sivism. I.E. you must 100% agree with every jot and tit­tle of Bart’s posi­tion.

Bart would lat­er “apol­o­gize” for some of his lan­guage, say­ing that he inten­tion­al­ly used inten­tion­al­ly inflam­ma­to­ry and accusato­ry lan­guage because he was angry. This was a very fake apol­o­gy, as it pushed much of the blame onto Dusty, while Bart left the offend­ing tweets up.

But I skipped part of Bart’s quote, and that’s the part that’s caus­ing dra­ma now. The full quote is, “Because unless you 100% agree with every jot and tit­tle of Deev­er­s’s obses­sion with send­ing 16-year-old girls to prison for suc­cumb­ing to the coer­cion of their par­ents to have an abor­tion, he will label you ‘against the inno­cent pre­born.’ ”

That quote was recent­ly picked up by Bap­tist News Glob­al to poke at Dusty, label­ing him an “Ultra-Con­ser­v­a­tive pas­tor” with “extreme anti-abor­tion views.”

Final­ly, Dusty’s oppo­nent sent out a mail­er with the quote, using it to attempt to scare vot­ers and dis­cred­it Dusty. Bril­liant tac­ti­cal move on his part, as the SBC is still gen­er­al­ly seen as staunch­ly con­ser­v­a­tive, so if the pres­i­dent is will­ing to go after a pas­tor with such force, then he must be “way, way, too extreme.”

A Cau­tion­ary Tale

Tru­ly this serves as a cau­tion­ary tale for many rea­sons. It should remind us of the pow­er of social media, and to be care­ful with the state­ments we make, espe­cial­ly the care­less state­ments. The care we must take with social media increas­es great­ly as our influ­ence does, and when you’re the head of the largest Chris­t­ian denom­i­na­tion in the US, then you real­ly need to take that seri­ous­ly.

To me, this is also a reminder that the idea of “don’t cri­tique pub­licly” is only applied by peo­ple on the left to peo­ple on the right, they them­selves are not behold­en to it. It’s sim­ply a tac­tic used to manip­u­late you into silence, some­thing we’ve cov­ered before.

Worth not­ing is that when we make a habit of attack­ing polit­i­cal and the­o­log­i­cal con­ser­v­a­tives while defend­ing those on the polit­i­cal and the­o­log­i­cal left, instead of call­ing out their errors, we will inevitably find our­selves doing their work for them. In this case, Bart did, and that real­i­ty has just been exposed in a dra­mat­ic way.

Final­ly, repen­tance:

True Repen­tance is Free­ing

Bart, by his own admis­sion, intend­ed to mis­rep­re­sent and attack Dusty, some­thing he’s done to oth­ers he dis­agrees with. This pat­tern of inten­tion­al­ly attack­ing, then offer­ing fake apolo­gies that don’t cor­rect the error, sug­gests a man that is bound by his emo­tions. True repen­tance would pro­vide a road to free­dom, though. It would pour water on the fire of the tongue that lash­es out at those he claims to rep­re­sent. Yet he resists this, leaves up his dam­ag­ing com­ments, and offers fake apolo­gies that only serve as a self right­eous form of manip­u­la­tion.

*UPDATE* Bart has respond­ed by say­ing he “will not speak against Mr. Deev­er’s cam­paign,” though he goes on to include com­ments that could be seen as accusato­ry. This isn’t just a lie, but Bart, despite liv­ing in a dif­fer­ent state, went out of his way to donate to Dusty’s oppo­nent in the Repub­li­can pri­ma­ry. This lev­el of spite is beyond what I was expect­ing, and I’d hope South­ern Bap­tist would see this for the scan­dal that it is.

Peo­ple like to dis­cred­it me, and oth­ers who pro­duce sim­i­lar con­tent, as some­one who just wants to see peo­ple torn down, is just bit­ter, or just uncar­ing. This could­n’t be fur­ther from the truth, and in truth my desire is to see repen­tance. I pray earnest­ly for peo­ple like Bart, and I hope to see him leave the bondage of his unre­pen­tance behind. Until then, he stands as anoth­er cau­tion­ary tale.