by Rodney Kennedy 

Rodney Kennedy has his M.Div from New Orleans Theological Seminary and his Ph.D. in Rhetoric from Louisiana State University. He pastored the First Baptist Church of Dayton (OH) – which is an American Baptist Church – for 13 years, after which he served as interim pastor of ABC USA churches in Illinois, Kansas, New York, and Pennsylvania. He is now a full-time writer, and lives in Louisiana. His eighth book, Dancing with Metaphors in the Pulpit, was the focus of this righting america interview. And for Kennedy’s most recent sermons and articles, see theprogessivepreacher.com.  

In Unleashing the Scripture: Freeing the Bible from Captivity to America, Stanley Hauerwas suggests that the Bible should be taken from North American Christians. Not a point that Southern Baptists would take well. 

Neither would they appreciate what the Danish philosopher-theologian Soren Kierkegaard had to say about the Bible in his Journal  (p. 150): 

Fundamentally a reformation which did away with the Bible would now be just as valid as Luther’s doing away with the Pope. All that about the Bible has developed a religion of learning and law, a mere distraction. A little of that knowledge has percolated down to the simplest classes so that no one any longer reads the Bible humanly. As a result it does immeasurable harm where life is concerned. Its existence is a fortification of excuses and escapes; for there is always something one has to look into first of all to have the doctrine in perfect form before one can begin to live – that is to say, one never begins. . . . Christendom has long been in need of a hero who, in fear and trembling, had the courage to forbid people to read the Bible. That is something quite as necessary as preaching against Christianity.

I was born in the deepest recesses of what is now known as the “Right Wing.” There’s no doubting how deep in my mind Southern Baptist preachers planted the notion of being afraid. My mother awakened me one night. I was standing up in my bed, running in place. When I gained consciousness, I pleaded, “Mama, don’t let the devil get me.” 

My journey away from the Southern Baptist Convention (SBC) started early. I didn’t so much leave as almost unconsciously move further and further away. My moving away from the SBC could be compared to a long row of dominoes. I nudged one of the dominoes and it fell onto the next one. Frightened, I stopped the line of dominoes from falling and put the first two back in place. 

But from the moment I questioned why the Bible contains more than one creation story, more dominoes started crashing, and I didn’t stop them. Cain’s wife, the death of Abel, the flood, the sons of God and the daughters of men, the Tower of Babel, the young age of the earth and on and on the dominoes tumbled until they were a runaway train. At age 8, I told my mama, “The Sunday school story of the flood gives me nightmares. How could God be so cruel?” I couldn’t imagine our family ever being one of the eight saved by the Ark. 

That is to say, Genesis, on a literal level, was of no comfort. Enough terrible things happen in life without adding God to the list of predators. The death of Abel still affects me personally.  

Biblical literalists think in abstract terms about God’s mysterious ways. On the other hand, I see every broken, torn and mangled human body in history and ask, “Why?.” I need a gentler God than the Calvinist Jonathan Edwards and his “Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God.” Their concern for a “pure, literal” Bible exceeds their empathy for fellow humans. They pray over sins too small for a man like Adam or me to notice. 

The first time I heard someone say of the death of a three-year old to the ravages of spinal meningitis, “God needed another angel,” at least a dozen more dominoes hit the ground. 

When I listened to our preachers teach our relationship with God was transactional, I felt I was breathing the toxic air of bad religion. And I knew I had to get away from bad religion. God doesn’t need more angels. God doesn’t need anything. I could hear the click-clack of all the falling dominoes and not only did I let them all fall, I exulted in it.

I knew I was home when I realized Genesis tells us we were made by God’s love and freedom alone and the age of the earth is of no consequence. I put my trust in God’s almightiness, not the exegetical expertise of Al Mohler, David Barton, Ken Ham or other dull lights of Christian fundamentalism. 

As I have reviewed the twisted, tortured Southern Baptist reading of Scripture about the role of women, I realized they are guilty of selective literalism. It’s not the Bible, but the preacher-leaders who determine what is literal truth. It was a sneaky but effective move for the preachers to claim authority over the Bible while continuing to hide behind the “authority” of the Bible. All my dominoes fell here with a loud crash like God speaking from Sinai. 

In any event, I am glad to still be a pilgrim progressing. My ongoing journey led me in a wilderness period away from the left edge – it seemed an abyss – back in the direction of an ambiguous center. I’m not sure there is a center, but I have learned how zealous the disciples on each side can be. I am also not persuaded the “Left-Right” metaphor is an honest take on our situation. 

What I’ve noticed is how easy it is to move more and more to the left or the right. We are already a fractured, divided nation filled with people unwilling to respect different perspectives. I am puzzled when Facebook friends accuse me of “not knowing the Bible,” of “twisting the Scripture,” and of “biblical ignorance.” Having spent 70 years reading, studying, pondering, researching and preaching the Bible, I can’t imagine how people reach these conclusions. I have decided not to take them literally but hyperbolically. They are actually saying, “Yuck” to my views. They are saying I’m wrong and they don’t like my views. 

As regards the Southern Baptists, they have set sail for an excursion deeper into the dark seas of the right wing. I haven’t seen any SBC “ships on the horizon” moving to the center. The SBC seems guided by ancient maps plotting the world as flat. Written on those maps were words scrawled across the expanse of the oceans, “Beyond this point, monsters.” 

I have no explanation for Albert Mohler embracing Doug Wilson, a Christian nationalist who is not a Southern Baptist and believes women should not have the right to vote. Earlier, the SBC welcomed all sorts of independent network Pentecostals such as the Seven Mountain Dominionists. These groups don’t possess a single page of historic Southern Baptist theology, but the SBC sailed gladly into these camps. 

Mohler seems to have contracted an old Jerry Falwell, Sr., flaw. Falwell famously said, “If you see someone further to the right than me, let me know, and I will move over.” My movement to the left center seems simple compared to the SBC ships falling off the edge of the right rim of a “flat earth.” 

Ironically, the SBC may not have noticed the absence of their fellow right-wing cohorts on the issue of women in ministry. Pentecostal groups of all kinds have women prophets, apostles, and preachers. The SBC has moved more to the right than Paula White. There are no more dominoes. 

I don’t inhabit a universe with edges. Our planet is not flat and one-dimensional. It is sort of round. I possess the spirit of the explorers who first dreamed of sailing around the world. There is much to yet to learn. In that regard, the epistemological certainty of the SBC feels like a millstone around the neck. 

Ecclesiastically homeless – I am a catholic baptist communing in the Episcopal Church – I look forward to the new lessons of each new day. Literalism is boring except when it is scary, as in the teachings of Jesus. That’s the journey I’m on now – attempting to take Jesus’ words as words he intends us to actually obey. 

Maybe the literalist SBC will take a literal view of the Sermon on the Mount and Jesus’ sermon at the synagogue at Nazareth. But I am not hopeful because the SBC suffers from selective literalism. They have a gift for turning a literal statement into a metaphor. “Jesus didn’t really mean that” is a standard SBC statement. 

What a fascinating world we inhabit.

Somewhere in my subconscious mind, the dominoes keep falling, but I barely notice these days. God has given us a fully equipped, flourishing universe of diversity, inclusion and grace. I’m at peace.