The barrage of public responses to Professor Matthew Barrett’s departure from Midwestern Seminary and conversion to Anglicanism is warranted. The combination of Barrett’s move with his public statement explaining it deserves attention and reflection, not just by Southern Baptists, but by concerned Christian leaders throughout the Protestant world, especially the evangelical world.

In this two-part reflection on the Barrett move, I’ll explore why his departure marks a lamentable loss to the SBC and how evangelical engagement with the so-called Great Tradition should be viewed and practiced in light of Barrett’s conversion to Anglicanism.

For my purposes, the Great Tradition movement among Protestants entails the contention that pre-Reformation Christian sources contain much Biblically faithful exegesis, exposition, and application of scriptural truth to the faith and practice of the church. Because this is so, it behooves faithful Baptist professors and pastors to support the retrieval of pre-Reformation benefits in service to Southern Baptists. 

In a forthcoming second installment, I’ll argue that Barrett’s move exemplifies a form of Christian reasoning and behavior that is seldom recognized for the spiritual pathology it unconsciously expresses and perpetuates. I have in mind the ubiquitous, typically unquestioned prerogative and propensity of Christians to “move on” from ostensibly covenant-bonded relationships and, as does Barrett, to identify our Lord a bit too automatically as the prompter of such decisions. God told me. God led me.

In marriage and in church, we have had to redefine Christian love in order to fit it to our refusal to love as we have been loved, including that uniquely essential component of divine love without which it becomes unrecognizable as Christian love—namely, the loyal love that stays (1 Corinthians 13). Khessed love. Our Lord has never been, is not now, and never shall be impressed with what we think love is and does. Barrett’s move demonstrates that he and we need a biblical refresher on the true meaning and display of Christian love.

Lament Over the Loss of Barrett

Barrett’s departure from the SBC marks not only the loss of a productive writing theologian by an SBC seminary, but of a patristic scholar of the sort especially needed within the Baptist movement worldwide. Southern Baptists are indebted to Barrett and a few others for their efforts to show that, whether or to what extent we know it or not, we Baptists are, in fact, the happy heirs of much sound theological and practical wisdom embedded within the pre-Reformation church. Evangelicals working to mine and retrieve theological gems produced in the patristic and medieval eras provide a unique service within the communions they serve. 

Barrett’s rejection of the doctrine of the eternal functional subordination of the Son to the Father (EFS) within the Godhead, as embraced by some Baptist theologians, was spot on. That EFS found fertile ground among us, unfortunately, tends to confirm the stereotype that the Baptist movement may boast a robust history of Bible-believing, soul-winning, and church planting—but tends either to ignore biblically faithful patristic and medieval theology or to outsource such work to Presbyterians, and especially to Anglicans. Barrett’s presence among us helped to undermine the credibility of such stereotypes.

That Southern Baptists benefited from Barrett’s two decades of work among us seems evident to me, but the extent to which Barrett labored not only among us but as one of us looks less clear. On his way out, Barrett offered not one word of gratitude to the denomination that nurtured him in the faith, invested in his training, employed him, promoted him, and exhibited remarkable trust in him. Southern Baptists even bestowed upon Barrett the rare and unique privilege of teaching, preparing, and spiritually forming the next generation of Southern Baptist leaders at an SBC seminary.

Notwithstanding such welcome, investment, trust, and platforming, Barrett uttered not a word of thanks in his parting rant. Instead, he characterizes his 20 years among Southern Baptists wholly in terms of his own “sacrifice” for the denomination. Mightn’t Barrett suffer from a significant blind spot on this score? Perhaps public honesty about the reasons for such a departure cannot help but include critical remarks, but would Barrett’s criticisms carry more credibility and find more receptivity if combined with a word or two of gratitude for the extraordinary opportunities provided to him by the largest denomination in America?

I rank myself among the more persistent and pointed public critics of the SBC and its institutions over the last decade. And I share some of the complaints Barrett has advanced.

But let us critics not get things twisted—critique from within, driven by love, undergirded by gratitude, and anxious to commend and praise where possible as faithful heirs and sons within the wider Southern Baptist family of faith to which our indebtedness is incalculable is one thing. Barrett’s bitter parting words are quite another. I pray Barrett will treat his new ecclesial home better than his exit from the SBC suggests he might.

I was among those opposed to Barrett’s and others’ efforts to include the Nicene Creed in the SBC’s formal standards. I believed then, and I still believe now, that contemporary challenges not rooted in those addressed by Nicaea call for the SBC’s more urgent attention. Diverting attention away from these more urgent challenges does not serve our denominational needs at this time.

The truly serious threats to biblical faithfulness within the SBC are those related to the infiltration of wokeness into our institutions and the adoption of business and seeker-driven, rather than theological and covenantal, understandings of the church, as well as progressive funding infiltrating SBC coffers.

Communions that affirm Nicaea as Barrett would have us do are among the most woke to be found. Indeed, Barrett left the SBC to align with the Anglican Church of North America (ACNA), where the author of the book Reading While Black, Esau McCaulley, is a significant force. McCaulley swallowed much of the critical race theory ideology in the wake of George Floyd’s death, including intersectional prioritizing of the voices of designated “oppressed” groups as preferred commentators on Scripture.

Is Barrett exchanging one set of problems for another in his hop to the ACNA? Is he jumping out of the frying pan into the fire? Nicaea serves the church universal, including Baptists. However, Nicaea does not pose a significant barrier to the current ideological and cultural enemies now corrupting the church. One of the main lessons that evangelicals can draw from the trajectory of the Reformed resurgence is surely the limited power of formal ascription to sound doctrine in forestalling profound compromise with the world. I did not realize this twenty years ago, but I do now.

Woe to Presbyterians and Baptists who would dare distance themselves from formal affirmation of the Nicaea-friendly Westminster Confession, the Baptist Faith & Message (2000), or the Baptist Confession of 1689. But woe to us if we have not recognized the limits of protection afforded by such statements of faith, however essential they undoubtedly are to the maintenance of doctrinal faithfulness among us. They have proven insufficient to secure trust among and an enduring ministry partnership within Southern Baptist churches.

As I have argued here and here, discernment of what churches, seminaries, or denominations are actually delivering to students, congregants, or other constituents at any given time cannot be limited to a perusal of formal confessions of faith. Indeed, many doctrines affirmed in those statements may well be in a state of utter neglect. The best clues to what Christian entities actually deliver at a given time can be found in their current branding and messaging. 

Is Great Tradition Enamorment Inimical to Baptist Fidelity?

Barrett’s explanation for his flight from the SBC to the ACNA inevitably evokes the negative diagnosis of all Protestants by the most famous and influential convert to Roman Catholicism in several centuries, that of Cardinal John Henry Newman (1801-1890). Newman concluded that “To be deep in history is to cease to be Protestant.”¹

Having taught historical theology to seminary students since 1994, I reject Newman’s thesis. But that is not the same as declaring Newman’s critique utterly baseless. And the Barrett debacle surely invites renewed engagement with the Cardinal’s indictment.

The suggestion that Great Tradition engagement has too often lured Baptists away from their spiritual home to “higher church” traditions, such as Anglicanism, Roman Catholicism, and Eastern Orthodoxy, exhibits some saliency. Exhibit A in the month of July 2025: Matthew Barrett himself. We should also recall previous high-profile moves to Rome by former evangelicals Francis Beckwith, Scott Hahn, and John Michael Talbot. Peruse Patrick Madrid’s volumes, Surprised By Truth (vols. 1, 2, & 3) for testimonies akin to Barrett’s. They characterize their moves as a “coming home” or as a “return home” to the beautiful, ancient, and liturgy-rich universal church.

The 18-year-old Dietrich Bonhoeffer’s Lutheran communion appeared to him embarrassingly provincial in comparison to the impression Vatican City made upon him upon his first visit there. He said, “[t]here is a word that when a Catholic hears it all his feelings of love and bliss; that stirs all the depths of his religious sensibility…that certainly awakens in him all the feelings of home. . . . that word is church.”²

My first reaction to Bonhoeffer’s assessment was that my own Southern Baptist home church, together with my belonging to the Southern Baptist Convention, did stir these exact feelings in me. So why did Bonhoeffer’s Lutheran church not do so for him? Perhaps because he and his family rarely darkened the door of their local church—they were Christmas, Easter, baptism, marriage, and funeral attenders.

Bonhoeffer’s active and impressive churchmanship did not commence until well into his adulthood. But his words could hardly be more relevant and indicting today for Southern Baptists. I’ll explore why that is the case in the second part of this two-part examination. But nota bene, the religious (and I would say biblically) valid longings Barrett and others seek to satisfy in moves to higher church traditions overlap with those Bonhoeffer found stirred at Rome in 1924.

I know from personal experience that Southern Baptists have made good on this score in the past. They are not doing so now. Barrett’s departure and the rationale he advances for doing so do not reflect well upon him. But woe unto us if our churches prove incapable of engendering the feelings and winning the loyalties expressed by what we once called our “church home.” Failure here today promises more “Barretts” tomorrow.

The Beeson Vision

Beeson Divinity School, where I have now taught for 17 years, attracted me not least because of its embrace of the Great Tradition under the leadership of its founding Dean, Dr. Timothy George. Beeson’s interdenominational faculty and student body aim to provide an environment conducive to the pursuit and testing of the compatibility of Great Tradition engagement with both Scripture and denominational loyalty. The disappearance of denominational loyalty is part of the widespread loss of trust in institutions and the valorization of spiritual consumerism that Beeson tends to resist.

The vision of Beeson is one of “inter,” not “non,” denominationalism. Timothy George noted one of the fruitful possibilities afforded by an interdenominational seminary in 2012 during a Q&A with students upon his return from a synod at the Vatican, where he represented the Baptist World Alliance. Asked how he relates to Christians whose views differ so much from his own, George said that his first thought in such circumstances is not to try to convince others of Baptist views, but to look for gifts other traditions might offer to Baptists. Furthermore, if non-Baptists are wise, they will recognize the gifts that their own traditions need and that the Baptist tradition has to offer. The concept of “gift-exchange” is surely a compelling incentive to take our place within the Great Tradition, not as spiritual seekers, but as good under-shepherds charged with partnership in the care of The Good Shepherd’s Baptist flocks. Pastors worthy of the name welcome help in this task from any source capable of delivering it. 

Barrett was not only in a position to serve Baptists in this way, but he also provided such service to Southern Baptists with his contributions to the EFS controversy. His departure makes him, for now, an unstable, unsure, spiritual seeker loyal not to any identifiable body of believers but a shopper in the great market of spiritual products and services; more loyal to his spiritual comfort and shifting predilections than to the family of faith that trusted him and entrusted to him the formation of its future leaders.

But how different is Barrett from the typical pew-sitter in Southern Baptist congregations today? Or from their pastors? Is not Barrett a higher-profile exemplar of the “seeker mentality” that Southern Baptists, Presbyterians, and the Tim Keller-ization of the Reformed resurgence have championed?

Haven’t we all contributed to producing the evangelical Barretts of this world? Are we ourselves Barretts in waiting?

Baptist-ness and the Great Tradition 

Hostility toward Great Tradition engagement as such smacks of a benighted insecurity that is bound to throw the perfectly healthy historical-theological baby out with the admittedly nasty bathwater of ancient heresy, and thus does not serve the health of the denomination. Most of the great Reformers steeped themselves in the fifteen centuries of Christian witness and practice that separated them from the apostolic age. 

Their serious and profitable interaction with figures such as Augustine, Bernard of Clairvaux, John Tauler, Athanasius, and the Cappadocians is well known. Luther did not set out to cut the umbilical cord from Mother church, but to call her back to the truth of justification by grace alone, through faith alone, in Jesus Christ alone, according to the divinely inspired and authoritative Holy Scriptures alone. The swordlike power of the Spirit-wielded word of God to separate ligament and bone overcame the Roman Catholic and Renaissance humanist Erasmus’s “can’t we all get along” theological latitudinarianism. Against Erasmus’ unifying but theologically squeamish aims, his critical edition of the New Testament of 1516 provided the egg Luther would hatch for the recovery of the doctrine of justification.

Adherence to sola scriptura as the unique foundational Protestant principle of authority for faith and practice in the church does not free us from the Great Tradition but for it as a treasure trove of Christian wisdom, experience, faithfulness and yes, error that, when recognized as such, also serves faithfulness to the gospel and Christian witness to the world. Ironic but true, we benefit greatly from how Montanus, Marcion, Pelagius, Arius, Apollinaris, Nestorius, and Eutychus got things wrong. The great Baptist theologian John Gill’s (1697-1771) serious and happy engagement with patristic authors compares with that of the great Reformers and, far from posing a threat to his Baptistness, deepened and enhanced it.

Great Tradition engagement should also help the church to distinguish primary, secondary, and tertiary (adiaphora) convictions among believers in the interest of Christian unity. Every denomination should strive to make good on Christ’s prayer for unity in John 17. The Apostle Paul provides an example of such theological triage in the guidance delivered to the church at Rome over the contentious issues swirling around observance of holy days and consumption of idol meat (Romans 14-15). Obedience to our Lord’s call for unity among his followers in keeping with Paul’s instructions will surely profit from engagement with, not neglect of, the entire history of our Lord’s dealings with His people and the world.

To Liturgize with Abandon or Trepidation 

Given Barrett’s own highlighting of attraction to Anglican liturgy as a significant factor precipitating his exit from the SBC, the case of Frank Schaeffer’s repudiation of evangelicalism seems pertinent. The son of the renowned Francis Schaeffer of L’Abri fame and author of books that gained widespread distribution among evangelicals, “Frankie,” who himself ministered among evangelicals into his adulthood, lapsed into atheism and agnosticism, eventually finding his way to Eastern Orthodoxy.

Still Orthodox, at least by his own estimation, today Frank calls himself an atheist who believes in God. In contrast to the evangelicalism that formed him from his youth, Frankie commended the deployment of a more elaborate liturgy in worship, mainly in order to avoid the weakness of weekly worship that “depends too much on the cleverness of one man.”

Having preached myself for no less than forty weeks per year since 1977, Schaeffer’s insight immediately struck me as perceptive and needed. More reading of Scripture and solid liturgical additions to worship do, in fact, ensure that, even on the preacher’s worst days, the congregation is fed or at least exposed to Scripture and great theological truth from across the ages. But neither elaborate nor limited liturgical practice guarantees much of anything in the way of spiritual fruit because all is vain unless the Spirit of the Holy One comes down.

If Barrett or any Southern Baptists prefer more liturgical elements for this or other valid reasons, they can have it. The freedoms local church autonomy affords guarantee that—a fact no one who has worshipped at the First Baptist Church of Charleston at various times in that historic church’s history can deny. Burning candles, responsive readings, antiphonal singing, weekly celebration of the Lord’s Supper, the Doxology, banner-wielding processions? Whatever you fancy—go for it.

But breaking covenant with our ecclesial family, our brothers and sisters, with our church home? Do the thinning trip wires of ecclesial dissatisfaction, prompting seekers to bolt, producing multiple abandonments of those we called brothers and sisters, serve anything biblically recognizable as Christian love? Surely not. 

Between Charleston and Sandy Creek, Not So Great a Gulf was Fixed 

Having been with myself every time I’ve preached, I can tell you that, in my opinion, and I suspect even more so in God’s, the congregations I addressed often received far less substance and quality of Biblical truth than I owed them and they needed. What a comfort when sermons are surrounded by liturgical elements such as readings of Scripture, recitation of great and time-tested creedal and confessional statements, frequent celebration of the Lord’s Supper, or biblically faithful responsive readings.

Indeed, Baptist history bears witness to the inclusion of such liturgical elements in worship, although they never achieved the level of permanence and widespread practice observed in higher church settings.

Multiplication of liturgical elements in worship has not only periodically proliferated within the more formal Charleston tradition of Baptists, but the Sandy Creekers could also compete in their own way.³ They of education-wary and Holy Whine fame who, notoriously, and un-Baptistically, allowed Shubal Stearns (1706-1771) to gatekeep ordination among the church’s “Arms” (church plants of Sandy Creek (North Carolina) that belonged to the Sandy Creek Association) as tightly as any Roman Catholic or Anglican Bishop could ever dream of doing.

Sandy Creek worship and church life, owing to its restorationist leanings, was packed with practices unabashedly recognized as sacraments that many Southern Baptists have not encountered at all or associate with non-Baptists. They washed feet, exchanged the Holy Kiss, celebrated the Love Feast, and multiplied opportunities to deploy the laying on of hands. The most widely visible component of Stearns’ legacy for contemporary Southern Baptists may be child dedication, which Stearns probably invented. He called it a “dry christening.”    

We would do well to recall also the early and mutually beneficial interactions between the Sandy Creek and Charleston traditions. Utterly secure in himself, Stearns invited the Charleston stream church planter John Gano to address the first meeting of the Sandy Creek Association in 1758. Noting the absence of the “Holy whine” that more than once prompted Stearns to deny ordination to a ministerial candidate, the assembled Sandy Creekers booed Gano. Embarrassed, Stearns asked Gano to step out of the assembly for a moment, after which he admonished the assembly, mostly pastors, to treat the guest preacher with respect. The sermon Gano then delivered so positively impressed the pastors present that they considered themselves unfit for ministry. In subsequent years, many university and seminary-trained Charleston stream pastors took Sandy Creekers under their wings to educate and mentor those who lacked the means to pursue formal education. 

The Sandy Creek-ish church of my South Carolina Piedmont childhood, an upwardly mobile blue-collar congregation, was conflicted about education. They reflexively “amen-ed” put-downs of book-learning from the pulpit, but spared no effort or expense to provide as much education to their children as humanly possible. They eventually robed the choir, recited the Lord’s Prayer in unison with some frequency, rose unprompted once the offering was received to sing the Doxology as ushers placed the now-full offering plates on the communion table. They also occasionally used responsive readings they found in the Broadman Hymnal itself. Christmas and Easter meant candlelit evening services. 

A smidgen of ecclesial memory might not completely undo the stereotype of Baptists as unswervingly low-church worshipers, but a bit more digging into the Baptist past exposes a vast spectrum of liturgical expressions across their four centuries of life. The influence of seeker and non-denominational postured strategies for church growth has seen the rise of many a believer with less than a thimbleful of knowledge of their own tradition’s past, Baptists included.

Our own combination of ignorance, indifference, and even hostility to the Baptist past communicates that denominations do not matter—only a generic, mere Christianity gospel does. We are delivering and nurturing indifference to covenant bonds with local congregations and to SBC affiliation.

We should not be surprised when church members believe us and act on that message by leaning into the church-hopping and shopping mode that the seeker and non-denominational strategies breed. 

Liturgy and the Making of a Continent-Wide Baptist Church Home

Coinciding with the global public career of Billy Graham in the mid-20th century, a widely practiced liturgical expression gained prominence among Southern Baptist Churches. This development facilitated a continent-wide explosion of Southern Baptist vitality and cultural influence, prompting University of Chicago Church Historian Martin Marty to declare Southern Baptists “the Catholics of the South.”

In 1958, a family could travel south and southwesterly from Maryland across a wide and ever widening swath of the continental United States all the way to Arizona, New Mexico, with geographical fingers penetrating north into Southern California, stop at most any SBC church, and encounter pretty much what they practiced at home—instrumental prelude, opening prayer, congregational singing of two to four selections from the Broadman Hymnal, special music (solo, duet, trio, or choir special), offertory hymn, sermon, invitation hymn, and instrumental postlude.

The rise and dominance of this basic structure, along with myriad other components of predictable SBC church practices, served to form, nurture, and fuel the rise of a powerful and now enviable national denominational esprit de corps without which the SBC would never have become the largest denomination in the nation.

That voluntarily embraced quasi-uniformity is now gone with the winds of non-denominational, seeker-sensitive, generically Christian, and largely comfort-focused, praise team-led choruses and therapeutic messages. But the voluntary qualifier is important. Alongside the dominant liturgical expression were very low church, shouting, robe-less, King James only, anti- and wary of- and conflicted over-education Southern Baptists, among whom historical theologian Timothy George worshiped as a child in Chattanooga, Tennessee’s Hell’s Half Acre. At the same time, the candle smoke continued to waft, banners still flapped, and the first chord of the Doxology still prompted congregations to stand. Antiphonal readings and song prevailed from FBC Charleston to many other Baptists from sea to shining sea.

Matthew Barrett likely knows less about the liturgical practices and resources afforded by the Baptist tradition he repudiated in his bitter departure from the SBC than he thinks he does. Might Barrett have put leading and feeding the faithful a bit higher than feeding his fancies and done much good among us for the rest of his life? Very little of what Barrett says he wants in terms of worship proves inimical to Baptist practice.

But as James White points out in two podcast episodes dedicated to Barrett’s move, the truly substantive theological alarm raised by Barrett and others who take steps toward Rome center on the age-old sticking point Luther identified at the Diet of Worms—by what authority ought Christian faith and practice defend itself? Barrett’s answer proves incompatible with Luther’s confession of sola scriptura but “not with the Catechism of the Roman Catholic Church . . .”

Insofar as this is the case, the SBC ought not, must not, provide a safe space for Barrett to serve.               

Concluding Thoughts, For Now

Ultimately, does the retrieval of the Great Tradition per se lead its Baptist participants toward Canterbury, Rome, or Constantinople? I do not think so, not necessarily, not inevitably. I do believe that capitulation to tradition-neglecting, tradition-impugning, generic, mere Christianity, and non-denominational seeker-sensitive worship of the sort that has swept the SBC prepares the ground for emotional conversion-like “epiphanies” of the sort to which Barrett gives voice.

Many Baptists of Barrett’s age and younger have little or no memory of a far more Baptist-history-aware and denominational esprit de corps that nurtured a way of being Baptist. But I do. And because I do, the power of Anglican, Roman Catholic, or Eastern Orthodox liturgy to cast a Baptist-repudiating “ancient-universal” spell upon me is greatly reduced.

But if Southern Baptist churches remain blind to the shallowness of mainly therapeutic, theologically limited, spiritually anemic, historically amnesiac, generic, deliberately non-denominational “liturgies” adopted in order to be found winsome by blue communities and lost people generally, more Barretts shall surely find their way to the door.

A version of Southern Baptist ecclesial formation once thrived, resulting in many believers finding their spiritual home in local Baptist congregations and within the SBC. Unless and until Baptists give rise to something similarly potent, we’ll likely continue as the marketers of spiritual products and services to an unwarrantedly and sometimes cockily clear-conscienced population of church-hoppers—like Barrett. 

Resources for avoiding such a future are available to us. Several of the responses to Barrett have affirmed the Great Tradition in their critiques of his parting words. Southern Baptist Matthew Emerson of the Center for Baptist Renewal has identified an important distinction between the CBR’s project of retrieval and that of Barrett in this article. Also note this fantastic article by my former boss, Mark Coppenger, reviewing his long history of encounters and conversations with Roman Catholics and why it behooves Southern Baptists to welcome such interactions for our own sakes and for theirs.

In the second installment of “A Southern Baptist Reckoning, Part 2,” I’ll explore what I deem the deeper pathology at work in Barrett’s move, as well as in evangelical church life generally—namely, the now multi-generational abandonment of covenant models of congregational life for seeker-sensitive, attractional models.  

1. John Henry Newman, An Essay on the Development of Christian Doctrine (Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 1989), p.8. ↩︎
2. See in Eberhard Bethge, Dietrich Bonhoeffer: Man of Vision—Man of Courage (New York: Harper & Row, 1977), p. 42, and my own interaction with Bonhoeffer’s visit to Rome in my Bonhoeffer Speaks Today: Following Jesus At All Costs (Nashville: Broadman & Holman, 2005), pp. 6-8. ↩︎
3. For what follows about Sandy Creek, see especially Elder John Sparks, The Roots of Appalachian Christianity: The Life and Legacy of Elder Shubal Stearns (Lexington: The University of Kentucky Press, 2005). ↩︎