Rev. John Killinger Responds

Back in June, the Rev. John Killinger caused quite a ruckus with his remarks during the THREE workshops which he led at the annual General Assembly of the Cooperative Baptist Fellowship.

I won't rehash that here. But here is the column by SBC Baptist Press reporter David Roach titled "CBF Presenter Questions Christ's Deity"

A week after Roach's column, James Smith wrote an op-ed for Baptist Press which concluded that "there can be no doubt the Cooperative Baptist Fellowship is now un-Christian and un-Baptist."

Three weeks after the original Baptist Press story, Daniel Vestal, Executive-Director of the CBF, responded to Killinger's remarks and James Smith's ridiculous column in this article with the Associated Baptist Press. According to ABP reporter Jim White, Vestal "denounced the theology Killinger expressed" and "regretted allowing Killinger to challenge such christological views at a CBF event." Referring to James Smith's op-ed, Vestal was quoted as saying "for some editors to write and insinuate that we are not Christians is very painful for me."

Shortly after Killinger's remarks were made public Keith Noren, a Baptist layman from Alabama, e-mailed Rev. John Killinger and asked: "Do you in fact 'deny the deity of Christ?'"

A few days ago Killinger responded to Noren's e-mail and gave him permission to post it online.

Here is Killinger's response:

Dear Keith,

Sorry to be slow in responding. We were in Canada for several days and since returning to NY I've been swamped with engagements and assignments.

I'm amazed at the hullaballoo over what I did or didn't say and did or didn't mean at the CBF conference in Memphis. The curious thing is that I have not been asked a single time, except for your e-mail, either at the conference or since returning to NY, what I said or what the context of anything I said actually was. It's almost amusing to see all the church politicians scrambling to score points or defend their goal posts. And it's a bit dismaying to me to see that the people at the top of the CBF ladder are just as touchy about defending their orthodoxy as the old SBC leaders were. I thought CBF stood for Christianity Beyond Fraudulence or something like that.

Without intending any comparison of myself to Jesus, I can imagine that the leaders of the Sanhedrin and the Pharisees scrambled in similar fashion over things Jesus was saying or reported to be saying in Jerusalem.

I'd like to see a full text of what I did actually say at the conference so I could respond more accurately. For some reason, the CBF chose not to post my remarks on the web site. Nor did they post those of my son Eric, who was doing a couple of breakouts on ministers' emotional and spiritual health. I think a lot of the ones who were in my group should have been in his.

As well as I can recall, though, my remarks were in the context of answering a question about biblical literalism and how most Christians have now grown up enough to understand that the Jesus of the synoptic Gospels is different (humbler, less divine, certainly not transcendent) from the Jesus of the Gospel of John, who is clearly pre-existent, omniscient, and transcendent. While I didn't agree with all the decisions of the Jesus Seminar, I applauded the intent of their work, which was to get back as nearly as possible to what were the original teachings of Jesus and what were the additions of the early church for either bureaucratic or propaganda purposes. I myself am committed to knowing and understanding all I can about who the real Jesus was and what he intended for his followers, as opposed to who the church's press-release Jesus became. I happen in my elder years to believe that's very important, and I shall continue to press forward in that direction.

One of the things I've noticed across the years is that many people who crow the loudest about other people's heresies and misdeeds are not themselves very convincing proof that God is love and that his self-proclaimed children are unmistakably chips off the old block.

Thanks for caring and for writing.

God's best, John

BDW: Note that Killinger never actually answered Noren's direct question. I think it's safe to read between the lines.