Hardball Religion: Release Date - Spring 2009

I have spent the last several months working on a book that documents the intentional narrowing of the doctrinal parameters of fellowship and missions cooperation within the Southern Baptist Convention. Readers familiar with this blog will know the troubles I experienced at the International Mission Board of the SBC for speaking out against two doctrinal policies which IMB trustees adopted in 2005, doctrinal policies that exceeded the 2000 Baptist Faith and Message. As a result of these policies, hundreds of otherwise qualified Southern Baptists were prevented from serving on the mission field. This book documents, in narrative form, the events at the International Mission Board that eventually led to trustees in leadership offering a motion to remove me from the board in order to discredit my character and silence my dissent. I then trace the events that led to the eventual unaminous rescision of that motion and the extraordinary action taken by the 2007 Southern Baptist Convention to repudiate the IMB's attempt to establish narrower doctrinal parameters for the SBC. Throughout the book I attempt to explain what is at stake if the SBC does not resist the trend toward neo-Landmarkist, separatist, ecclesiological fundamantalism, which cherishes Baptist Identity more than Christian charity. The book is currently going through the editing process at the publishing company and should be released sometime in the spring of 2009. Two of my fellow trustees have read the manuscript and confirmed to me that the facts presented in the book are precisely the way they remember events occuring at the IMB. The chapters of the book will be as follows:

Foreword
Chapter 1 Blindsided!
Chapter 2 At Home on the Range
Chapter 3 The Phone Call
Chapter 4 The IMB Policies That Became the Fuse
Chapter 5 The Chairman’s Outburst at Pensacola Beach
Chapter 6 The Day Adrian Rogers Died
Chapter 7 Discovery

Chapter 8 The Blog
Chapter 9 Teaching the Rookie a Lesson
Chapter 10 Closed Doors
Chapter 11 Those Weirdoes from Oklahoma
Chapter 12 Meet Me in St. Louis
Chapter 13 Trustee Leaders Trying to Save Face
Chapter 14 A Unanimous Reversal

Chapter 15 "Keep Your Mouth Shut and Your Pen Silent!"
Chapter 16 Religious Liberty and Baptist Freedom
Chapter 17 Turn Off His Mike!
Chapter 18 The IMB Motion at Greensboro
Chapter 19 The 2006 Southern Baptist Convention at Greensboro
Chapter 20 Reflections on the Historic 2006 Convention
Chapter 21 Welcome to the Neighborhood Dwight McKissic

Chapter 22 Sheri Klouda
Chapter 23 Continued Hostility at the IMB
Chapter 24 “What Idiot Said There Was No Investigation?”
Chapter 25 The Garner Motion in San Antonio
Chapter 26 Censured
Chapter 27 Resignation
Chapter 28 Future
After Word


In His Grace,


Wade