Matthew Barrett and the SBC: Questions on the Falling Pillars
Considering one theologian’s exit and what it means for the rest of us
Welcome to the inaugural post for Baptist Academia! These posts can be anything from news to opinions on Baptist schools, highlighting Baptist academics and works, and a whole lot more! Contrary to popular belief, there are great depths to the work of professional Baptist academics.
Believe it or not the idea for this section of the Substack came late at night on July 22. This is significant because fewer than 24 hours later I heard the news that Dr. Matthew Barrett, formerly of Midwestern Baptist Theological Seminary, had joined the faculty of Trinity Anglican Seminary and had likely become Anglican as well (since he was reportedly already serving at a local Anglican church).
Then, on July 24 Barrett posted that he was leaving the SBC and becoming Anglican. The point of this isn’t to be critical of anyone or anything directly. It is instead to voice some questions that I have. No one owes me any answers; I’m just curious. Some answers I provide. The questions proceed in whatever order I felt like at the time.
1. Did the SBC reject the Nicene Creed?
No, they did not. However, Barrett didn’t claim they rejected the Creed per se, but that they “officially rejected” the Nicene Creed from being adopted into the Baptist Faith and Message 2000. It’s unclear why the failure to adopt the Creed, rather than merely affirming it, functions as a decisive fault line. I myself wanted the Creed to be adopted, but understood for some the concern was being confessional over being creedal. I wrote a post addressing this objection, but I still get it. I also get how it would bother a person subscribing to creedal authority. However, the SBC passed a resolution affirming Nicene orthodoxy this year. It says in part,
“WHEREAS, From our confessional beginnings, Baptists have identified ourselves with the historic Christian tradition, especially on the doctrines concerning Christ and the Trinity as exemplified, for example, by the Nicene Creed, which was adopted 1,700 years ago this year;”
2. Is there an inherent problem within SBC polity that allows for unorthodoxy to go unchecked?
Many would agree with Barrett in saying yes. Southern Baptist churches are autonomous, and the Convention does not hold authority over any of them. At best, the Convention (which just is the group of cooperating local churches) have control over which churches they will cooperate with. That is the only real sense of control. So you can see how someone might think, “See? They can’t control abuse behavior or orthodoxy!” And they have surely evidenced some failures. But it’s unclear that it’s the polity doing the failure. For example, why are some churches drifting away from orthodoxy or covering for spiritually abusive pastors or what have you? How is it occurring? The answer isn’t first and foremost “Because the SBC is choosing not to remove them from a group of cooperating churches!” It’s first because the congregation, including the pastors, isn’t doing its job. I’m not interested in arguing which polity is better or more faithful to Scripture. I’m just saying the idea that congregationalism is the reason for unorthodoxy is probably not correct. After all, as Denny Burk noted, aren’t Anglicans in fellowship with LGBTQ-affirming churches? Of course, the answer is a bit nuanced. If part of the ACNA, the answer is no. Even where the same episcopal polity is preserved, as in TEC and ACC, doctrinal collapse has occurred. This suggests the polity structure alone isn’t sufficient to preserve orthodoxy, making Barrett’s critique of Baptist polity incomplete. It’s not polity; it’s people.
3. Is the SBC’s view of baptism too modern and individualistic?
It’s not 100% clear what Barrett means here. However, the idea may be something like “Since the Enlightenment, Baptists have taken on an individualistic view of baptism, where it’s something to check off a list rather than an ordinance joining you to a particular body of believers.” And some may indeed have viewed it that way. But that’s not inherent to the SBC, its polity, or its theology. The Baptist tradition comes out of the Reformation and its concerns on the nature of saving faith, not modernity. Additionally, asking himself if the church was wrong for 1500 years makes sense for a Catholic view, but not an Anglican one. In other words, if that’s the criterion, and the answer is implicitly “no,” then you may as well become a Catholic (which it doesn’t look like he’s doing). Of course, Barrett may respond that, in fact, proto-Protestants can be traced back to Aquinas, et al., so that the church always believed these kinds of things. But in addition to that being highly critiqued, it looks like viewing the universal church as authoritative, which isn’t what Anglicans even believe, technically.
4. Why is Barrett a professor at Trinity Anglican Seminary? And why is he already a leader within the local Anglican church? How long has he been Anglican?
The charitable thing to do with the last question is assume the following: Barrett began to realize he no longer aligned with Baptist beliefs in the middle, or near the end, of the past spring semester. He then was connected with TAS and they chose to hire him. Fair enough, I suppose. But then this means he is employed as a professional theologian and involved in theological leadership in a church where he has been an Anglican for approximately three days (or maybe since Easter season given the content of his blog post).
He wrote that the SBC cares most about who teaches theology over what is written. But I find this bizarre. Barrett just got through saying he dealt with “angry fundamentalism in the SBC,” and that “publishing in classical theology brought on no little harassment.” I believe it. On the internet in 2025, some really rude people exist. I hope this kind of harassment is far in the rearview mirror for him now, and that he’s able to move forward in spiritual growth in his church body. When I examine the content, this line of criticism makes little sense. If they didn’t so much care about affirming classical theology because they cared about who was writing it, this entails they really just didn’t like Matthew Barrett. But he doesn’t claim that this is what brought along the problem. The claim is that it was because he believed in classical theology (whatever exactly that is). But then we can say that the SBC does in fact care most about what is being taught, and they just don’t agree with your theology. That’s a fine enough reason to move on; no need to say that somehow everyone’s just disingenuous.
He also makes little attempt to find any redeeming people in the SBC. Does Midwestern really not care about classical theology? On the contrary, they seem to love that general move. Barrett doesn’t seem to think his PhD students (who are now likely faced with finding another supervisor at a small [compared to public universities] department or else trying to start over) care most about who is doing the teaching (see some of the last lines of the post). Finally, perhaps most telling is that this area of the critique of the SBC has only vague ideas rather than specific instances. I don’t doubt that we can find some. It’s just that his broad characterization reads like someone who is unfamiliar with Southern Baptists (and we know that isn’t true); it would have been better supported by specific claims within the highest levels of the SBC, especially within academia.
Here, I have to speculatively wonder: TAS knows that Barrett is a very recent convert. Why place him in a place of prominence like this so early? Perhaps they don’t focus on having only Anglican professors (I don’t know). But if they do, it might suggest they hired him because Barrett is a big name who has scholarly projects both under his belt and coming out in the future. In other words, the care in this instance was about who was doing the teaching. Interesting.
In any case, I do wish him and his family well. He doesn’t know me from Adam and has no need of my approval. I’m also not trying to convince him to come back to the SBC. My encouragement to him would be the encouragement I give to those involved in science-religion discussions: find a way for the two sides to be reconciled. In science, great damage is done both to religion and science when one or both sides insist that you must pick one or the other. When people pick science, religion is harmed. When people pick religion, science is harmed (ask any scientist if they like being told they’re part of a vast conspiracy). When people like Barrett say they want the Great Tradition, and study it, and while leaving the SBC imply or state that people in the SBC aren’t interested in such a Tradition, it suggests, if not entails, that the two are incompatible. Perhaps this is fine with everyone. But I worry that the result will not be droves of people leaving the SBC for Anglicanism. The worry is that they won’t think church history is very important; in fact, they’ll think it to be detrimental to the faith. And whenever that happens or increases, it’s a net loss for everyone.