Shakespeare has, on the lips of his Juliet, famously declared, “That which we call a rose, by any other name would smell as sweet.”  This, of course, is true enough.  However, if we called them “vomit blossoms” or “poisonous red buds of death” I doubt too many of us would venture to get a whiff.  The ancient pundits of India were going for something similar when they said, “God is one but theologians call him by different names” (Rg-Veda 1/164/46).  Again, there is an element of truth here as Christians certainly employ a variety of names in their worship of the Triune God.  He is Creator, Lord, Almighty, El Shaddai, YHWH, and more.  However He isn’t Krishna or Buddha or Oprah or you.  The tenor of Scripture suggests actually that Bill Shakespeare and company are fundamentally wrong if they are trying to claim that names and naming are irrelevant and insignificant.  Rather we read of God naming things from the beginning of creation (Gen. 1:5) and of the first man quickly following suit (Gen. 2:20), we see the Lord changing the names of key figures in salvation history to mark life-altering moments or to signal divine promises (e.g. Gen. 17:5, Jn. 1:42), we hear of God’s command that we should revere His name and not take it in vain (Ex. 20:7), and we cherish the promise that our own names have been written down in the Lamb’s book of life (Rev. 20:15).  Clearly, from a Biblical and Christian perspective, the substance of a thing and what you call it are linked – names indeed matter.
And so we come to the matter at hand.  Should the Southern Baptist Convention, the largest Protestant denomination in North America and my own denominational family, change its name?  With apologies to my many non-SBC readers who perhaps don’t really care, allow me to dig in.[READ MORE]