Pilgrim
Puritanboard Commissioner
Maybe I'm just too much of a fundamentalist (from a separatist standpoint) to fit in long term with the SBC as it is at this point with the vast diversity of views on nearly every side.
No, you sound more like a former Presbyterian who finds it hard to shake the "warrior child" mentality, even as a Baptist!
That's actually pretty accurate except that I came into Presbyterianism with the "warrior child" mentality fully intact! To cut a long story short, the "warrior" mentality was actually a hindrance to me joining a congregation of the Only Perfect Church in the first place. The justification controversy was raging at its hottest then and the report on that issue was still a couple of years away.
With regard to how I view evangelicalism (including the SBC) the second volume of Iain Murray's biography of Martyn Lloyd-Jones had a profound impact on me. By contrast, those who take their cues from Keller and others of a similar mindset identify a lot more with the late John Stott on the issues that caused the division between them. (And they disagreed on a lot more than just whether or not evangelicals should get out of the Church of England.) Not realizing the number of those of the latter mentality among younger SB's was one of the main sources of my frustration in having to don the warrior helmet again.
The Lloyd-Jones (and MacArthur, even if you take out the teetotalism and dispensationalism) brand of evangelical separatism is deemed "fundamentalism" by many Southern Baptists, including many of the "Young, Restless and Reformed." With some of them (and I'm referring to Calvinistic men) if you question anything that an apparently successful ministry is doing, especially a Calvinistic ministry, you're called a fundamentalist, (or some other label depending on the issue) which is often an attempt to dismiss the concern without addressing it. "Don't bother with that fundy."
I don't know that anyone who strongly identifies with the position Lloyd-Jones took with regard to Graham, Packer, etc. can be fully at home in the SBC or any other similarly broad based denomination. I know a good many men of that mindset who do make that their home from a denominational standpoint, but to borrow a term from our political discourse, they are basically SBINOS (in name only) who have little or no interest in denominational involvement beyond the local church or at best the associational level. Where I get hung up is "but the $$ I put in the plate is going to support such and such abomination." But that's probably inevitable to some extent no matter what your affiliation is if you support any kind of work beyond the local congregation.
With regard to the "New Evangelicalism" that Lloyd-Jones differed with (in a somewhat less strident way than American fundamentalists did) there's a good case to be made that the turnaround of SBTS (and the SBC in general) is their greatest triumph. Both Mohler and Moore have been strongly influenced by Carl F.H. Henry. With regard to cultural engagement coupled with orthodox protestantism (albeit somewhat less broadly evangelical, being a denominational school) they seem to be succeeding where Fuller failed.