Last week, the Conservative Baptist Network (CBN) and other Southern Baptist Convention (SBC) pastors called out Dr. James Merritt, an SBC pastor and visiting professor at Southeastern Baptist Theological Seminary (SEBTS), for endorsing a sermon given by his outspoken gay son (Jonathan Merritt).
In a statement released by the CBN (an unaffiliated network of the SBC), the CBN shared their concern that an SBC pastor and seminary employee was promoting a sermon by an “unrepentant” homosexual. The CBN called it dangerous, saying, “To present to Southern Baptists a man living in unrepentant sin as someone to whom they should listen for a sermon that is ‘faithful to the gospel,’ as the elder Merritt tweeted, is wholly illogical and demonstrably dangerous.”
The CBN specifically called upon the SEBTS board of Trustees and its president, Daniel Akin, to consider giving the “grievous” situation “sincere attention,” arguing that Merritt’s promotion of his son’s sermon goes against the SBC’s “commitment to Scripture as inerrant, sufficient, and authoritative and opposes the Baptist Faith and Message 2000.”