At what age should a church member be allowed to vote?

Ok, please help me understand your thoughts on the matter. Thank you!

 

The fact that the age selected coincides with the US voting age proves nothing about how our pastor made the decision. (I've never asked him; perhaps I will, though expecting details on one's thinking 38 years ago is asking a lot.)

 

I bet it is no coincidence that it is the same as the voting age.

 

Why? We following the lead of the State?

 

Very difficult question

As some have stated, do we really want 7 yr olds voting on a budget or in other matters ie calling or dismissing a pastor or fellow members?

I would think questions regarding who will be their specific SS teacher, would be within their realm of understanding which IMO is the question

 

Or.

Urim and Thummim

 

On what basis is he acceptable to God and worthy of the presumption of the indwelling of the Holy Spirit to guide him, but unworthy to attend to the affairs of the Body? If you question his ability to understand and be led by the Spirit, then why is he a member?

Should there be an IQ test for “voting membership”?

 

From the SBC archives:

http://media.sbhla.org.s3.amazonaws.com/464,01-Jun-1956.pdf

"the youngest messenger to the Southern Baptist Convention this year [1956] was Johnny Upchurch, 5"

 

been there, done that...............

Hebrews 13:17 Obey them that have the rule over you, and submit yourselves: for they watch for your souls, as they that must give account, that they may do it with joy, and not with grief: for that is unprofitable for you.

 

Clipping from a Texas newspaper, 1941:

 

70, according to Isaac Watts: "Our age to seventy years is set."

Ok, I admit that might be a little out of context.
Our age to seventy years is set;
How short the time! how frail the state!
And if to eighty we arrive,
We rather sigh and groan than live.

 

Of course, there were a lot of kids being registered as messengers when the fundamentalists were trying to take over the SBC. From a Baptist Press article from 1988:

http://media.sbhla.org.s3.amazonaws.com/6616,12-Jun-1988.pdf

"children designated as messengers to the 131st annual meeting of the Southern Baptist Convention came ready to vote. 'I had never been to a convention before,' said Cory Pepiton, 13-year-old messenger from Fairway Baptist Church, Wichita Falls, Texas. 'I had no idea what to expect. I knew voting would be going on.' 'Messengers vote for president and listen to reports,' said Gideon Moore, 12. Gideon is a messenger from Crossroads Baptist Church, Hillsborough, N.C. This is the third year Moore has been a messenger. 'We just sat down, listened and voted,' said an eight-year-old first time messenger from South Carolina."

 

That depends on how long your memory is or how good your knowledge of history.
The first Baptists were General.
The Pilgrims were Particular.
Around the Civil War, the Holiness Movement brought General Baptists back into the majority.
Recently multiple seminaries (including the Southern Baptists) have experienced a resurgence in Particular/Reformed Theology.

If I knew more details on Baptist History over the last 100 years, I suspect that there have been minor ebbs and flows between General and Particular during that period.

 

James G. Harris at the 1957 Southern Baptist Pastors' Conference:

http://media.sbhla.org.s3.amazonaws.com/863,27-May-1957.pdf

"We have no definite tenure, and should not have. I am happy that my tenure is determined by the leadership of the Holy Spirit, and the wishes, within his leadership, of my people in my church....ours is a spiritual democracy, where everybody is somebody, and where the ten-year-old boy has as much a vote as the chairman of the deacons or the charter members."

 

I was speaking of the USA one, so 18 years of age...

 

13 -- right after their Bar Mitzvah.

 

Some gentile males are more likely to object to the requirement for circumcision! :eek: