I want to share a little bit of my own stance. As you know, I've always been--I know everybody always laughs about this, but it's correct--I am horrified being in front of people; as a matter of fact, I have to preach at New Orleans Seminary chapel Tuesday, and it scares me to death...but there are certain verses in the scripture that God put in my life years ago that have altered me, and I've discovered that my life is based on them. There are certain statements--for example, "Be strong and very courageous. Be careful to do according to all the law which Moses my servant commanded you; do not turn from it to the right or to the left, so that you may have success wherever you go. This book of the law shall not depart from your mouth and you shall meditate on it day and night, so that you may be careful to do according to all that is written in it, for then you will make your way prosperous, and then you will have success. So have I not commanded you, 'Be strong and courageous, do not tremble or be dismayed, for the Lord your God is with you wherever you go.'"

But He is with me based on my obedience to the very details of what He says in scripture. In Jeremiah, He says, "Before I formed you in the womb I knew you, before you were born I consecrated you, I have appointed you a prophet to the nations," and several other things, and then it says, "The Lord stretched out His hand and He touched my mouth...the Lord said to me, 'I have put my words in your mouth.'" And then this statement from Isaiah: "The grass withers, the flowers fade, but the word of our God stands forever."

It's going to be a hard thing for me to get through tonight, because this is not a small thing for me. I will never bring anything to you I have not run through the deacon body. I have expressed my opinion for several years now. This is a great struggle point, and I want to share very briefly my own heart and then I want to share with you why I am where I am.

When I was in college, my freshman year, back in 1970, we had three Bible professors, and all three were conservative. After my freshman year, two retired. I had grown up in a Baptist home, I was at a Baptist school because God had called me into the ministry and I felt like, therefore, I needed to go to a Baptist school and major in Bible to prepare myself from my inadequacies as a preacher. So I did that, my assumption being that what I would hear in college would be certainly all that I had heard in my home and all that I had heard in my church growing up. When those two guys--two of the three--retired, and they brought in two men from Southern Seminary in Louisville--and I will make everything as compressed as I can--but these two guys brought in incredibly liberal theology. I've shared some of that before. One of them said in class that he didn't believe in demons, satan, hell, or angels. It was amazing.

Then we had a street preacher that came, that the BSU brought in, and I've shared this before, who made the statement that Judas was right and Jesus was wrong, and no-one on the campus, no Bible professor stood against him. I heard those words from his own lips. No-one stood against him, no-one said anything. Three or four of us--and it was all there was--we met with the president of our school, Dr. Nobles, at that point, and said--explained some of the things that had been happening--and said, "Dr. Nobles, we feel like there needs to be some alteration. This is a Baptist school; we ought to be committed to the scripture." And I remember Dr. Nobles saying, "Well, boys, you're right, we need some equity," and nothing was ever done.

Two things happened. There was a young man that lived next door to me, Terry Cotrere, my freshman year. We went all four years to college together. The constant pounding of questioning scripture finally took its toll on me where, one morning, I remember I was in the library at college, and I remember looking out the window to my right, and I looked at the quadrangle, and I was just in total discouragement because I had simply been led to believe that the Bible might or might not be true, and that, as a speaker, I would never be able to be sure of what I said in the scripture. And I remember looking out the window, and I said, "God," and I told Him this, I said, "Look, you called me to preach and I'm here. It's obvious that I have nothing to say when I preach, but that's what you've called me to do so I'm going to do it. I don't know the point, but that's not my problem, this is your deal." And I remember driving out of the library just so discouraged and depressed.

In Mississippi, the license plates are not required on both the front and back of the vehicle, they're only required on the back, and as I was driving behind my dorm, I remember looking, and there was a license plate, and it said, "God is love." And I remember just laughing out loud, for no reason. I just began to laugh, and all of a sudden, the Spirit of God just breathed on me and said, "If you don't believe what I say, the only thing left for you to do is laugh at what I say." And that was a pivotal point in my life...it reversed my leaning, and it brought me back to a movement on the integrity of scripture. It caught me quickly. My friend Terry--we finished college together, we went to Southwestern together, and the reason I came to Southwestern is because it was the only seminary out of the six that was known to be conservative, that's why it outgrew the other five enormously--Terry came with me. We kind of lost track in seminary, but it was obvious the few times we met that Terry had bought into what he'd been taught in college and was leaning away from where I had come, so we kind of lost paths, and a few years later, in the middle of all the convention controversy, I saw him at a convention. He said, "How're you doing," and we talked and reminisced, and he said, "Who are you voting for for president?" I thought, man, I don't want to get into this, and I said, "Well, you know, I'm voting for the conservative guy, and here's the deal," and I think it was Adrian Rogers at the time, I said, "I'm voting for Adrian." He said, "I am too. We have got to stop and stem the tide of liberalism in our convention."

And I was stunned, and I said, "What are you talking about? You've been on the other side ever since I've known you through college." He said, "Chris, you're right," he said, "When I got out of seminary, I couldn't pastor." He said, "I had nothing to give the people." He said, "I took a year off, and re-worked my way back through what I believed, and finally came to realize that what God says is true and I have to live my life accordingly." He lost a year of his ministry for Christ because of the teaching of professors at Mississippi College. That should not be.

So, a lot of us began to say we had problems. Out of that, they decided to elect a Peace Committee in the convention that was comprised of people on both sides. I want you to listen to their report. Pop [slide] one up there. I want you to listen to what they say. It says, "The Peace Committee has completed a preliminary investigation..." and what they did is, they went to every seminary we have, and all of our institutions, from the Christian Life Commission, to all the things we did. "We have investigated the theological situation in our SBC seminaries..." go to the next one..."We have found significant theological diversity within our seminaries reflective of the diversity within our wider constituency." They discovered things were not the same. "The divergences were found among those," now listen to this, "who claim to hold a high view of scripture, and to teach in accordance with..."

Now, listen carefully. What I found in college was men who would look at me and say, "I believe the Bible is true." Even the guy who looked at me and said, "I don't believe in satan, demons, hell, or angels," would look at you and say, if you said, "Do you believe the Bible is true?" his response to you would be, "Yes, I do." Which was always amazing to me, but they took the position that the Bible is only true theologically--and as I'll show you later, they don't even buy that--but that the Bible is not true historically, scientifically, geographically. It is only true in the ideas that it represents. So they can claim to hold a high view of scripture and yet I'm going to show you what we found in the seminaries. Go ahead to the next one. "Examples of this diversity include the following, which are intended to be illustrative and not exhaustive. Some," and this is seminary professors that are teaching the kids coming out of our colleges, "Some accept and affirm the direct creation and historicity of Adam and Eve..." Did Jesus affirm that? Did He? You bet He did. "...while others view them instead as representatives of the human race and its creation and fall." So we're already finding that our seminary professors do not coincide in their teaching with Jesus. "Some understand the historicity of every event in scripture as reported by the original source, while others hold that the historicity can be clarified and revised by the findings of modern historical scholarship." Now, that doesn't sound like that bad a deal--well, if the Bible is proven to be wrong, then it is--but that's not what we're talking about here. The findings of modern historical scholarship would simply be that, if an historian says, "I think the Bible is in error here," then we were to accept the historian's position. This was told us there one day in class, as a matter of fact, by Dr. Sheridan at Mississippi College.

But the curious thing is that what we've discovered historically is that the Bible always vindicates itself. For example, there was an attack on a Greek word Luke used in the book of Acts, a certain word that he used for a certain Roman position. And they made fun of him and attacked him and vilified him on this, because they said he was wrong, this was never the word that was used. And then they made a discovery archaeologically that, in fact, only for two years was that Greek word the word that was used for that particular Roman office, and that Luke had used it in that two year span. The Bible has always vindicated itself. Go ahead...and then it says, "Some hold and say..." well, this is no big deal, go to the next one, "Some hold that every miracle in the Bible is intended to be taken as an historical event," that would be me, "while others hold that some miracles are intended to be taken as parabolic."

Now, here's my question. How do you decide which miracles are OK and which are not? If you can tell me that, then I'm in here, but you can't do that. So...go to the next one. "The Peace Committee is working earnestly to find ways to build bridges..." we couldn't do that. Now, I want you to notice what the Peace Committee found. The Peace Committee discovered that in our seminaries we had some people that didn't believe in the historicity of Adam and Eve, weren't sure about the historicity of scripture, they claimed to have a high view, they didn't believe some of the miracles were true...so basically, what they discovered is that what a lot of us had been saying was true, they found, this Peace Committee comprised of both fundamentals and liberals.

Now, it was voted on in the convention, and accepted, and we tried to accomplish this. Out of this began the split that we have engendered here. When the Peace Committee report was accepted, a split began in the convention. The Cooperative Baptist Fellowship, [which had started out] fledgingly, at this point began to really move along. The CBF was a group formed to go against this new movement in the SBC to say to our seminary professors--and I don't have the whole rest of the report, there wasn't anything germaine to this, but we go on in the Peace Committee report and say that if you're going to teach with cooperateve program dollars that you ought to teach that the Bible is true--out of this came the CBF which said, "No, we don't think you ought to have to do that, we think this is terrible," and so the CBF began to move away. Out of that came, in Texas, a group called the Texas Baptists Committed. They came out in support of the CBF, and you need to bear these in mind because I'm going to show you something in a moment. The Texas Baptists Committed came out, and they were committed to making sure that men like me did not control the state convention as we had begun to control the national convention.

Colleges are controlled by state conventions; seminaries are controlled by the national convention. The national convention, after this report, began to be taken over; as a matter of fact, today, all six seminaries hold a high view of scripture...a literal high view...all six seminaries are committed to inerrancy. We do not have a president that's not. Our professors are committed to that. When I step into New Orleans Seminary chapel on Tuesday, I will be among friends, because I will be among people who believe what I do about the scripture. The colleges, however, were under state control, and so a lot of groups formed in the states, such as Texas Baptists Committed, which was to make sure that men like me didn't get into control...as a matter of fact, when Baylor pulled out, I was on the committee in this state to select the trustees for all the colleges. A friend of mine, who is now the head of Buckner, Ken Hall, had recommended me to serve on that committee, and he told me later, he said, "Chris, your name was fiercely bandied about because of your stance, and there were several men that did not want you to serve because they want to move away from this position."

Now, out of that came the Texas response. We began to notice changes that we had never seen before. Number one, Baylor was removed from our control. Historically, we paid the money for Baylor, men who had endowed Baylor were strong Baptists, and Baylor--and it was legal, nothing illegal about it--Baylor moved themselves out from under the BGCT control. I didn't like it, but I didn't decide to leave because I said, it's not germaine to the scripture. The Bible does not say that Baylor has to be in the Baptist General Convention of Texas. It doesn't say that. It wasn't a Biblical issue for me; I didn't like it, I was hot about it, but it wasn't a Biblical issue, so we ignored it.

Then came the second change. The cooperative program was altered. The cooperative program is a genius thing in that we had never had a missionary come home for a lack of funds. But it was changed to where you can now send your cooperative program money--in the past, when money was sent to the cooperative program, it went to anything Southern Baptist--they changed that ruling in Texas so that now you can send money to the Cooperative Baptist Fellowship and still count it as cooperative program funding. The reason they did that, as I will show you at the end of this thing, is that it's a way to finance their agenda. I still wasn't happy about that, but again, the Bible doesn't say anything about the cooperative program; I'm OK. There's no reason to leave. I don't like Baylor being gone, I don't like the cooperative program being changed, I don't think money ought to just be given anywhere, but, you know, hey, it's not a Biblical issue, so I don't address it from an avenue of "we need to get out."

But then one day a friend of mine called me and said, "Have you seen the position paper of the Christian Life Commission on abortion?" Now folks, do you know why kids killed kids at Columbine? Because when we legally say that a mother can kill her own children, there's no reason why you can't kill somebody you know. Abortion has not only killed 1.5 million people a year, including perhaps the person who had the cure for cancer--the ramifications of that staggering number are amazing--but it opens the door to a devaluing of life in this culture. For me, it is the pivotal moral issue of our day. So, being Baptist, my assumption would be that the convention would stand against abortion. I want you to listen--pop to [slide] ten--I want you to listen to what the convention publicly says about abortion. Here's the BGCT position on abortion:
"We are opposed to abortion. In 1980, the convention passed a resolution reaffirming the 'view of scripture of the sacredness and dignity of all human life, both born and unborn, and...that we favor appropriate legislation prohibiting abortion except to save the life of the mother or in cases of incest or rape.'"

Now, OK, that's fine, sounds good, and why don't we just skip all these [slides] here, but there are several things...they talk about banning partial-birth abortion, they talk about affirming that parents should have control, all those sorts of things. Now, this is all the PR. When you go to the website of the BGCT and you pull up their position on abortion, this is what you're going to hear which, although I don't agree with incest or rape, basically is a pro-life position. But then a friend called me and said, "You'd better get the position paper from the Christian Life Commission on abortion."

Now, the Christian Life Commission is the state commission you pay for that is charged with speaking to the moral, ethical issues of our day. This is where the theological statement will be made from our convention. I want you to read--pop to [slide] 22--I want you to read the Christian Life Commission:

"Aborting a developing life should be regarded as an extreme act undertaken only under extreme circumstances. Reverence for the life of the mother helps to define these circumstances. The most obvious case is pregnancy which threatens the mother's physical survival." I'm OK there; pop to the next one. "Other cases in which abortion might be contemplated include pregnancies which result from rape or incest. When carrying pregnancies resulting from rape and incest to term is so traumatic as to destroy the emotional health of the mother, abortion might be considered as a regrettable alternative." Now, pop to the next one. "Abortion might also be considered in cases of severe and chronic mental illness in which pregnancy imminently and severely threatens the life of the mother for reason not related to rape or incest but which are equally devastating to her mental and emotional stability." Now, what did that just say? Will you please tell me a crisis pregnancy--which is any pregnancy in marriage out of adultery, or outside of marriage period--please tell me a crisis pregnancy that, by definition, we call crisis, why? Because it endangers the mental, emotional health of a mother. That is a loophole to kill any baby in. Pop to the next one. "Reverence for the life of the mother, father, and larger family may mean that pregnancies involving fetal deformity and disease incompatible with life are not carried to term." Now they go on in the next thing and mention this "condition, anencephaly, for example, the fetus fails to develop a brain and is doomed to eventual death. In these and other cases of extreme fetal abnormalities, abortion might be chosen...." You need to understand there are a lot of people that would consider an "extreme fetal abnormality" Down's Syndrome.

When I first got this, I was appalled. Because basically what it says is, you can kill your baby if your life's in danger, you're raped, incest, you got a mental, emotional trauma because of this, or your kid is going to be born in a way you don't like--you can kill him. So I called the head of the Christian Life Commission. He said, "Yes?" I said, "My name's Chris Osborne, I'm the pastor of Central Baptist in Bryan, and what is this deal?"

He said, "Well, ah...you have a problem with it?"

It's those times, you know, I make sure my secretary's near so I won't totally scream on the phone, and I said, "Yeah. Yeah, I really do." Well--and listen--now, he's the one, this is what he said. He said, "You feel like you can drive a truck through this?" I said, "Yeah!" And he said, "Well, I understand." That was the extent of the conversation.

Now, how is it...why would the convention develop a PR statement that is different from the Christian Life Commission position? Because, what we discovered accidentally, you can vote on one; you can't vote on the other. You can change, at the convention, the PR statement of the convention. Who's going to change it? We're all going to stand on that and go pro life, I'm in. Let me show you something. I was in San Antonio when this happened. Look at...go to [slide] 27. We decided that we would move at the convention that the "Christian Life Commission be directed to revise its document," --go ahead-- "'Abortion and the Christian Life' to bring it in line with mainstream pro-life ethics and terminology, and to indicate a tolerance of abortion only when the physical life of the mother is in imminent and immediate danger." That is the position of your Southern Baptist Convention. So we made a recommendation from the floor that the convention instruct--the same convention that says to you, "We're pro-life!"--we made a recommendation to instruct that convention to instruct the Christian Life Commission to alter what their position paper was.

I want you to listen to the response. Ah...Keep going. It was "Seconded. Motion to be considered at the miscellaneous session..." Pop on. Here's the president of the convention that year, he read the motion. The "Parliamentarian explained that the motion is a subsidiary motion to refer and instruct." Duh. Listen: "Since there was no main motion to adopt the CLC document on abortion," and there never will be, "there is nothing to refer. Furthermore, the motion to refer and instruct cannot instruct as to content, under Section 13 of Robert's Rules. This motion seeks to instruct as to content." Therefore, "On this basis the motion is out of order...McBride advised Phillip Brown that he had the right to appeal...Brown desired to appeal the ruling. Vote taken on sustaining the rule of the chair. The ruling of the chair was sustained."

We asked this "pro-life" convention to instruct the Christian Life Commission to get rid of all these excuses for abortion and to say you just don't do it unless the mom's life is in danger, end of discussion. We were told that we are not allowed to speak on the floor to the report of the Christian Life Commission. Which meant that, although I pay for that, I can't speak to it. All I can do is pick up the phone and complain, and they'll simply sit in their chair and say, "Yeah, I can see where it's a problem for you," and hang the phone up. You have no ability to correct this issue. Your money pays for it, but you're not going to be able to correct it.

That was bad enough for me, and at that point I began to think to myself, "It's time to get out." Then another thing occurred. I called the Christian Life Commission because a thing came out in the Baptist Standard. About the time they sent me a letter and said, "We need to get involved in gambling, and stop gambling," there was a thing in the Baptist Standard that the state legislature in Texas was considering a motion to demand that abortions not be performed unless parents were contacted. So I wrote a little letter, with my distinct style, and I wrote a letter and said, "When you get as serious about abortion as you do gambling, call me."

So I got a letter back. It said, "Dear Chris, it was not hard to read the understanding in your letter," and then the letter said, "but Senator Shapiro, who sponsored this bill, asked us not to be involved." And I read that and I thought, that doesn't make sense to me. So I called Senator Shapiro's office. Couple days later, my secretary rang me and said, "The chief of staff of Senator Shapiro's office is on the phone." I picked it up, we introduced ourselves, I explained the letter, told him what was in it, and he said, "Chris, I don't know what's going on, but we have begged them to be involved, and they have refused to participate with us."

So I fired a letter back, copied to Dr. Pinson. I said, "It seems to me we need a little more integrity coming out of the ethics commission in our state." I had no response for about two and a half months. Then, after two and a half months, I got a letter, not from Dr. Pinson, but again, from this guy, who basically, in the letter, Clintonized me. He wrote me back and said, "Well, I didn't mean that..." and here we went. And then this year in El Paso, a major thing occurred that was the final straw for me.

I want you to look at--pop to [slide] 36...I'm sorry, matter of fact, go to [slide] 38. Now, I want you to listen. We made an amendment in the [Southern Baptist] Convention to the Baptist Faith and Message. We did it to speak to the family because we felt like in our convention that the family was disintegrating and we needed to speak to the issue Biblically. So basically what we did was we cut and pasted Ephesians 5. I want you to listen--now this is not the whole amendment, but this is the gist of it--listen: "The husband and wife are of equal worth before God, since both are created in God's image. The marriage relationship models the way God relates to His people. A husband is to love his wife as Christ loved the church." Where did we get that? Ephesians. "He has the God-given responsibility to provide for, to protect, and to lead his family. A wife is to submit herself graciously to the servant leadership of her husband even as the church willingly submits to the headship of Christ." Where did we get that? Ephesians. "She, being in the image of God as is her husband and thus equal to him, has the God-given responsibility to respect her husband and to serve as his helper in managing the household and nurturing the next generation."

Do you have a problem with that? Well, our [Texas] convention did, because our convention voted it down. Our convention said, "No, we can't go with that." And all the arguments were, "It just makes the woman demeaned, it makes her lower than the man," and finally, Charles Wade--a lot of churches left the convention at this moment--and finally Charles Wade, the new head of the convention, came out and said, "Well, now, hear us in response," and he had a long, verbose response, but basically his response was what we began to hear, that, right before Ephesians 5:22, where we start this thing, there is a verse that says, "Mutually submit to one another." Now, he said, as many others do, that that verse is what you really need to base your marriage on, not this other part. That's basically what his and everybody else's argument is.

Now, I don't have a problem with that. When Paul says, "Mutually submit to one another in Christ," that is exactly right. In a marriage, there is to be mutual submission. But when he goes into all the roles of the home, what he is doing is explaining how that mutual submission works itself out in the home. It does not negate it, the other explains it.

So basically, however they call it, our convention voted this down. When I saw that, it was the final straw for me, and I began to realize that it was time to get out. Let me tell you something, folks. The only reason God has blessed this church is because we stand on what He says. And if we stay aligned with any entity that doesn't, we'll lose His blessing. I do not understand how we can vote down clear scripture, both on abortion and now on marriage, but to show you how far we've gone...the Cooperative Baptist Fellowship now controls your convention. Let me show you. Now, I got this from...go to [slide] 55...I got this from the First Baptist Dallas' recommendation. Listen: "For the last seven years at least 20 and as many as 70 members of the BGCT Executive Committee and the Committee to nominate Executive Committee members have been identified with the Cooperative Baptist Fellowship or Texas Baptists Committed." Now, that doesn't sound that bad, but I want to show you why that's horrible. "And scores of others who have served in leadership positions on committees of the BGCT have served in leadership roles with the CBF or been identified with the TBC."

The reason this is so dangerous...as a matter of fact, look at [slide] 57: "Eleven of the eighteen members (61%) of the BGCT committee that selected Charles Wade"--who, by the way, is on the Executive Committee of the Cooperative Baptist Fellowship--"to be the new executive director were identified with the CBF and/or TBC." Eleven out of the eighteen. We began to discover that the people who were being elected into convention leadership were not the same as the people serving in the Baptist Building. The people in the Baptist Building up until today have been solid, great, Godly people, as Godly as anybody in this church. But the elected leadership that has taken over the state has begun to alter that.

Just to give you one example, they sent one of their men down--two of their men down--Tom Romain and Ed Rogers, Baptist Building men, who came down after the convention, where they said they were going to do their own literature in the state. They came down, and Ed Rogers was talking, and they were at Hillcrest Baptist. I took Dean Gage with me, and we went over and sat down, and we were listening. So Ed Rogers said the convention had voted--the elected people, who were in CBF, voted--and said, "We're going to write our own literature. We don't want the Southern Baptist Convention literature; we're going to write our own." Ed Rogers, who is with the Baptist Building, stood up in that meeting at Hillcrest and he said, "We will never do our own literature."

So I raised my hand and I said, "Wait just a second...convention last said we would produce our own literature. Isn't that correct?"

He said, "That's exactly correct."

I said, "You're telling me we're not going to?"

And he said, "That's exactly what I'm telling you."

Now this was all at Hillcrest. I said, "Are you telling me, then, that there's a difference between the elected leadership in the state and the people in the Baptist Building like you?"

He said, "I'm exactly telling you that."

I said, "And you're telling me--because I want you to be clear on this--that the elected leadership will not control this state?"

He said, "I'm telling you that."

Here are the new literature that our state just produced, that Ed Rogers told me at Hillcrest Baptist would never come to pass. The elected leadership have taken over from the Godly men in the Baptist Building. And the reason I stress this is because of where they are. To be part of the Cooperative Baptist Fellowship is the most horrible thing...go to slide 59...that's 58; go to 59. OK. The Cooperative Baptist Fellowship is housed at Mercer University in Georgia. I want you to listen to what the president of Mercer, where it's housed--and I wanted to be fair, so I bought the book, I read his book that's footnoted and quoted here, because I wanted to be fair.

"When we talk about God, let's be honest." Listen to this. "The heart of our confession is that Jesus Christ is Lord." No problem there, go to the next one. He also argues, "Jesus is not God...He did not have to die." As a matter of fact, what he says is not quite that. He makes a statement in the book--matter of fact, what I discovered was that these footnotes are mild--he makes a statement in the book that Jesus Christ did not die to remove us from any penalty of sin. He only died to show us that God loves us. Now, you can't be saved unless you understand your sins have been removed through the blood of Jesus Christ. "He discounts the virgin birth as unimportant." Oh, no, no, no...that's not how he phrases it. Let me tell you how he phrases it. In the back of the book, and I quote, "The virgin birth may be true, even though it is not factual." That is neo-orthodoxy at its purest moment. "He rejects repentance, accepting Jesus as the basis of salvation, and claims that doctrinal soundness is arrogant theological nonsense. He served on the CBF coordinating council, and the CBF is currently housed in the Mercer building." He is one of the main connectors, he is one of the main leaders, no-one has ever stood out against anything he said because that is the position of CBF.

Drop down to [slide] 65. Listen to this. "Baptist General Convention of Texas...James Dunn just retired as the director of the Baptist Joint Committee. He received money from his..." Pop to the next [slide]. "...three state conventions..." Ah... "Dunn has also been a regular 'breakout' leader at CBF General Assemblies..." pop to the next [slide]...now watch this. "In 1994, the BJC (when Dunn was there) was given 'special thanks' along with Planned Parenthood," who's killing babies in this town, "People for the American Way and Americans United for Separation of Church and State for a leadership role in the production of a political training manual entitled How to Win: A Practical Guide for Defeating the Radical Right in Your Community." And who would you assume the "radical right" would be? John Burch, that kind of thing? Oh, no, no, no. Let me show you.

"Among the manual's 68 contributing organizations...were: National Gay and Lesbian Task Force, Gay and Lesbian Victory Fund, Penthouse International," I don't think there were pictures in the book, "National Abortion Federation..." Go to the next [slide]...ah, pop to the next one. "Concerning homosexuality, the manual states: 'You cannot successfully battle right wing forces without gay and lesbian participation.'" Pop to the next [slide]...next one...ah, pop to the next one. "The manual identifies the 'Radical Religious Right' as: Focus on the Family, Concerned Women for America, American Family Association, Rutherford Institute," who are the only ones protecting your legal rights in this country, "Christian Coalition, and other such conservative Christian organizations."

Not John Burch, not David Koresh; us. We're the radical right. Your convention gave James Dunn an award, they gave him a citizenship award in 1998, partly because of his work on this book that is used by the gays and lesbians and abortionists to attack what you believe in as a child of God. That is unbelievable to me, but that's what's happened. That's the CBF. We are now, with Charles Wade and others--Charles Wade being on the Executive Committee of the Cooperative Baptist Fellowship--our convention is now becoming controlled by the CBF.

So, I have a problem. I can't align myself with abortionists. I can't align myself with people who do not stand under the roles of Scripture. And I have difficulty aligning myself with anybody who would question the virgin birth or the penal atonement of Jesus Christ, and then say we ought to walk together. Can't do it.

That's your convention today. It is not the convention I knew 22 years ago. So my position, and the deacons' position, is to leave.

One last thing, and then I'll open it up for questions. In El Paso this year, there was one thing--I didn't catch it until I finished a Dallas Morning News article. The Dallas Morning News was where I first learned that they had rejected the family amendment. Last paragraph in the Dallas Morning News, this statement: that there was an amendment to change the bylaws of the state convention--the Texas state convention, now listen--to allow churches from other states to align with Texas Baptists. Why would you do that? Listen. Go to [slide] 77.

Herbert Reynolds, chancellor of Baylor University--this is what he delivered in 1998, and this is the direction now we're going. "Since the Fundamentalists have said and done about everything they wanted to say or do for twenty years, why should we in Texas give any credence whatsoever to movements of this sort?" Keep rolling. "And let us not ignore the asinine Amendment to the Baptist Faith and Message Statement this past June in Utah which...demeans our women." How in the world do you cut and paste Scripture and then look at me and say it demeans our women? I don't think God ever demeaned a woman in His life. That is unbelievable. Keep going. "We are, defacto or in actuality, two denominations now," listen to that word: not two conventions; no, we're two denominations, "Mainstream Texas Baptists as contrasted with the Southern Baptists of Texas and the Southern Baptist Convention. We differ as much from the SBC as any two other Baptist or non-Baptist denominations in those ways." Keep going...ah, pop down. "We must recognize the fact that many of the Fundamentalist followers are in their 30's and 40's," I'm still young, "and will still be around for another forty to fifty years." I don't think so. "Thus, we simply cannot afford to sit around and wait passively for history to continue to unfold in the way that is has for the past twenty years." Keep going. "In my opinion, Texas is the only state that has the history, the freedom, the strength of numbers, the finances, and the soundness of Identity, Polity and Theology, to not only row our own boat, but to...lead out in partnering with other states, associations and geographical territory than ever before envisioned by a direct operating entity."

That, folks, is why they changed, why they are trying to change, the convention. This convention is pulling away from the Southern Baptist Convention. The Baptist General Convention of Texas is going to, in the next five years, pull out of the Southern Baptist Convention, because they cannot align with conservative theology. I don't want to wait until they pull out because I have to; I think we need to pull out because it's right. So that's the position.

OK. We have microphones in the aisles. Questions. And I'll take anything except questions about my deer hunting. No questions? Ah...uno.

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(The Q&A section is unfinished--we're working on it!) [41:00]