Baptist Identity Movement Self-Defeating?

I live and study at a secular university that has little or no connection to the outside world, especially the world of Southern Baptist insider politics. I try to keep up with developments in my denomination via the Baptist Press and various blogs that I read. The question of Baptist Identity has been lighting up the web this week, so I thought I’d add my humble thoughts to the question at hand. Here’s what I know:

1. A lot of people don’t like Mark Driscoll (but some do)

2. There are two groups up in arms over this issue (Baptist Identity and Great Commission Christians who also happen to be Baptists)

3. The Identity people are concerned with the continuation of the historic Baptist church (and thus have some issues with cooperating with other denominations) while the GCR people have less of a problem. This includes church planting issues.

Here are some recent remarks made by SWBTS President Patterson about the issue at hand, with particular reference to church planting (taken via Les Puryear’s blog):

“There a lot of things that we can do, even with others who aren’t Great Commission Christians,” he said, referring to standing against abortion or for family values with Roman Catholics. “[However], I am constitutionally opposed to doing church planting with anybody other than Baptists. Baptists are paying for it so it ought to be a Baptist church that is planted. That ought to be true in Kenya, and it ought to be true here; it ought to be true everywhere. If we’re going to pay for it, and we’re going to put the people out there to do it, we ought to plant Baptist churches.”

Now I only know what I’ve read from Tom Nettles about SBC history and a little about the Anabaptists from history class, but it seems from Dr. Patterson's (a BI leader and avowed Anabaptist fan) claim that the BI cause is self-defeating. One of the most important and historic Baptist ecclesiological principles is that of the autonomy of the local church. There are many diverse distinctives within the Baptist camp, but this one tends to unite us all. The local congregation is to be ruled over by its own elders and deacons and not by anyone from outside it. In light of that, wouldn’t it be more in step with SBC identity to let each individual congregation that our church planters start (albeit in association with other GC Christians) determine the denominational (or lack thereof) structure within which they wish to participate? To do any other would be to violate our own cherised principle of autonomy, and that is self defeating.

Why should new local churches that we start be forced to become Baptist? Certainly we hope that they would join with us. I’m a proud Southern Baptist and I want our denomination to grow and expand just as much as the next. But we can’t force other congregations to join with us unless they agree to do so as a congregation, no matter if we started the church. That is the essence of the congregational form of church government, and that is the essence of Baptist identity. Again, I don’t profess to know too much about this whole issue and its implications, but I think at the least we should be open to working with others in church planting. Of course, what matters most is that Jesus Christ is glorified in everything that we as a denomination do. We would do well to remember that.