SOCIAL JUSTICE STATEMENT SPURS ‘PRODUCTIVE CONVERSATION’

By Marsha West - Posted at Christian Research Network:

Baptist Press has a piece on the battle brewing over a recently released statement titled Social Justice & The Gospel. As a result, “productive conversations” are now taking place by those in the evangelical community who land on different sides of the social justice discussion. John MacArthur, a conservative evangelical who spearheaded the SJ&G statement, strongly disagrees with Russell Moore, a progressive evangelical who believes that “the Gospel is a Gospel … of both justice and justification.” We shall see how this all plays out.

Top tier signatories of the statement include John MacArthur, Voddie Baucham, Phil Johnson, James White, Tom Buck, Anthony Mathenia, Michael O’Fallon, Tom Ascol, Darrell Harrison, Craig Mitchell, Justin Peters, Jeremy Vuolo and Josh Buice. Over at SH&G, Phil Johnson clarifies what the signers of the statement believe to be the true Gospel of Jesus Christ in a piece he wrote titled A Gospel Issue.

So without further ado, here’s David Roach’s report:

Amid ongoing discussion of social justice in the Southern Baptist Convention, more than 5,500 people — many of them Southern Baptists — have signed a statement claiming “lectures on social issues” in the church and “activism aimed at reshaping the wider culture” “tend to become distractions that inevitably lead to departures from the gospel.”

Read more here. 

Baptist Press link.