Lies, Lies and More Lies; Talarico's Church Pushes Back Against False Accusations

Baptist News Global: Talarico's Pastor Pushes Back Against Daily Wire's Claims 

Whatever there is to be known about the Daily Wire, and it's not really all that much, Ben Shapiro is good at something.  He's good at playing on people's prejudices and biases, and if he tries to confirm something, there's a 100% chance it is a misconception or an outright lie.  The fact that it depends on social media to spin its misinformation underlines the fact that it isn't credible news or information or commentary.  

So when they attacked St. Andrews Presbyterian Church in Austin, Texas, the church where Texas Democratic nominee for the US Senate James Talarico is a member, the information they put out was clearly innuendo that counted on ignorance of the church, the denomination, and lacked proof or evidence of anything in the accusations.  The article, written by Lief LeMahieu, made a list of standard, tired, inaccurate accusations.  

And it got a response from the church's pastor, who compared it to the silly ignorance that spread around when false accusations were made about public schools doing sex change operations and putting litter boxes around for kids who identified as feline.  What amazed me about all of that idiocy, when it was being spread, was that people were actually stupid enough to believe it.  I am also amazed when people are stupid enough to believe anything in the Daily Wire, or that Lief LeMahieu or Ben Shapiro has to say.  

The Accusation that St. Andrews is a "Woke Church" is Accurate

The whole idea of Christian redemption, which relies on things like repentance, grace, loving God with all your heart, soul, mind and strength, and loving your neighbor as yourself is the very definition of "woke."  In spite of the right wing use of the term as one of derision, what is now defined as "being woke" is exactly the kind of spiritual awakening that is at the very core of being Christian.  It is, in fact, not possible to be Christian with any genuine sincerity of repentance that is exactly what being woke means.  And when the Daily Wire accuses St. Andrews of being a "woke church," it is stating the very obvious fact that St. Andrews is a genuinely and sincerely Christian church.  

So thanks for that. 

Anchoring Christianity on the Actual Teachings of Jesus

Jim Rigby, senior pastor at St. Andrews, gave an outstanding summary of exactly what has happened to American Christianity as a result of right wing political extremism when he said, "Now anyone may be called a heretic if they presume to anchor Christianity on the actual teachings of Jesus instead of the rantings of televangelists and political moralizers."  

The primary, foundational core belief of Christianity is rooted in Jesus' declaration that the first and greatest commandment, leading directly to redemption and eternal life, is "to love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind, and with all your strength.  And the second is like it, to love your neighbor as yourself."  That's found in Mark 12 and in Luke 10.  Matthew, who records the primary, core teachings of Jesus in one segment, known as the Sermon on the Mount, starts off with a list of the core values of Christian faith, in the Beatitudes.  

It's the legalistic, literalist interpretation of specific select passages from the Bible, missing the required filter of interpretation through the teachings of Jesus Christ, that forms the foundation of the highly politicized version of Evangelical Fundamentalism that is the real heresy.  In his parable of the Good Samaritan, in which Jesus defined the term "neighbor" for the lawyer who asked the question, he deliberately chooses a man whose ethnicity was despised and hated by those to whom he was speaking, to exemplify the characteristics he was defining.  What that means is that "neighbor" is anyone with whom we come in contact.  It is all of humanity, without qualification.

So how does this parable apply today?  Would the Levite and the Priest represent the conservative Evangelical, who wouldn't help the person wounded from being robbed if they were gay or atheist, or Muslim?  Or black, or a woman?  Or would the wounded man represent the conservative Evangelical, and the Samaritan be of some social group or ethnicity he despised, such as someone who was gay or lesbian, or a Muslim, or a black man?  The analogy here would work in any of those cases.  

Let's Put This in a Clear Perspective

If right wing extremists want to make James Talarico's faith, and the church where he worships, a political issue, then so be it.  Look who he's running against.  His opponent fits the defintion of "an ungodly person who perverts the grace of our God into a license for immorality" as the Apostle Jude defines in his epistle, verse 4.  If that is the issue that is being pushed, and those are the standards that are being used, then no sincere, faithful Christian can cast a vote for Ken Paxton without completely violating the core principles of Christianity.  

And I think that's as clear as it gets. 

Attempts by Southern Baptists to Amend Their Constitution to Exclude Women Pastors Isn't Rooted in Historical, Traditional or Biblical Christianity

It's rooted in the unorthodox, distorted theology and doctrine that emerges from the combination of nineteenth century fundamentalism with the distorted interpretation of the sixty-six books of the Protestant Bible subjected to the doctrine of Biblical Inerrancy.  It is complicated further by the push of Evangelical conservatives into right wing politics as a result of the pressures that come from white Christian nationalism creeping into the churches. 

There's a power vacuum among Southern Baptists now, more than forty years after a movement tagged as the "Conservative Resurgence" was launched in 1979 with the dual purpose of bringing the denomination into full support of right wing Republican politics, using the theological and doctrinal claim that it was sliding down the "slippery slope" of liberalism, requiring restoration of the belief in the sixty-six books of the Protestant Bible as inerrant, and infallible, the sole authority for the faith and practice of the church.  

The two men who used their personal connections, power and influence to orchestrate the political activity in order to bring about this resurgence, Dr. Paige Patterson, then president of broken down Criswell College, a fundamentalist school operated by First Baptist Church of Dallas, where the power-broker pastor W. A. Criswell still occupied the pulpit, and Paul Pressler, a Texas Appeals Court Justice and Republican Party community organizer and operative, revered among Southern Baptists as the "architects" of this movement, are both out of the picture, disgraced by their own involvement in the sexual abuse scandal that the denomination's leadership can't seem to resolve.  

Patterson was involved in the negligent mishandling of abuse and rape accusations at both Southeastern Baptist Theological Seminary in Wake Forest, North Carolina and at Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary in Fort Worth, Texas, under his presidency at both schools.  He was ultimately dismissed from Southwestern for this reason, and not for his gross mismanagement of the seminary, leading to an almost 70% decline in enrollment and financial resources.  Pressler passed away two years ago, after charges of sexually abusing young men in the churches where he served as a youth pastor and Sunday school teacher, and in association with his law firm.  You can click this link to Baptist News Global to read about all of that scandal. 

Will Persistence Pay Off? 

This is the third time an attempt to amend the constitution with this specific requirement has been attempted.  The first time it was introduced, by Virginia pastor Mike Law, is was approved, but it failed to get the two thirds vote it needed at the subsequent convention.  The following year, a Texas pastor, Juan Sanchez, introduced it again, but it failed to get the required two thirds vote to be brought back the following year.  So this year, Dr. Al Mohler, noted Southern Baptist pontificator, commenter, influencer and President of the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary in Louisville, Kentucky, made the recommendation to place the amendment in the constitution.  

Mohler's motion to amend the constitution passed 6,028 to 2,026, just under a three to one vote.  It should be noted that 11,692 messengers were registered for the convention which means that when this vote, billed as the most important thing the convention was doing  this year, was taken, 3,638 messengers did not cast a ballot.  However, under the SBC's parliamentary rules, non-voters do not count in the total.  Having almost a third of the messengers not vote on an issue isn't all that unusual at an SBC meeting, especially not in Orlando, where this denomination has now met four times since boycotting Disney.  

Complimentarianism, the name given by conservatives to the ideology which claims that the Apostle Paul laid down authoritative comments restricting women from preaching or serving as a pastor, the "episkopos", bishop or elder as the Greek term in I Timothy 3 would suggest, runs very strong among Southern Baptists.  That is due largely to the anti-educational bias that infected the formation of hundreds of Baptist churches along the western frontier, and in the south, due to a lack of educated, seminary trained pastors and leaders mostly as the result of the Second Great Awakening, a movement that produced as many cults as it did new Christians, by the way.  

There is also a whole lot of what I can generally call "Southern American culture" that is part of this errant theological perspective, stemming from the same kind of faulty, literalist, "word for word, verse by verse" interpretation of the Bible that convinced Southern Baptists to separate from the Triennial Convention in 1845, in full support of the belief that the black man was inferior to the white man, and that this belief was an unassailable truth, in the words of Andrew Stephens.  That same literalist, fundamentalist approach, treating every verse separately as its own command and nugget of truth is exactly what has produced complimentarianism.  

Baptist churches, unlike most of the other branches of Christianity that have developed over the 2000 year history of the church, are independent and autonomous.  Each one is a local body, with no formal or ecclesiastical connection to any hierarchy, so a church is the highest level of authority when it comes to interpreting and applying scripture, the church determines its own leadership, including who will serve as its pastor, and ordination of ministers is determined by the leadership and congregation of the local church alone.  When the churches in the Southern states formed their own denomination in 1845, they separated not only from cooperation with other Baptists, but also from the colleges, universities and seminaries where ministers were educated.  

I'll say it here, because it's true.  It's not possible to understand the Christian gospel revealed by God through Jesus, if all that's available is a King James Bible and a man with a 6th grade education who has been taught to read, and interprets it literally, verse by verse.  It's a disadvantage to start Bible study without even a basic understanding that verses and chapters are reference points and not the outline of the original text.  

The Bible is Not Equally "Inspired" 

The statements of faith adopted by the Southern Baptist Convention over the course of its history reflect influence and change when it comes to specific theological issues.  In the 1963 Baptist Faith and Message, under the section which defines the denomination's belief regarding the sixty-six books of the Protestant Bible, the last line very clearly states, "The criterion by which the Bible is to be interpreted is Jesus Christ."  

While much of that paragraph states beliefs that have been determined by common agreement, this last statement is the key to any hope of achieving an accurate interpretation of the Bible, if such is actually possible from a 2000 plus year old text that has been undeniably filtered by, influenced by and altered by culture.  Christians ultimately concluded that Jesus Christ was both fully human, and fully divine, the incarnate word in the flesh, a direct and thorough revelation of the nature of God himself.   This doctrine, called the Supremacy of Christ, establishes the words and the life work of Jesus as the Christian gospel.  So everything else must be interpreted through the filter of that belief, and all of the implications involved.  

So it's not possible to consider the works of the Apostles, or the Prophets, or any other Biblical authors as being equally inspired and equally authoritative with the words of Jesus, even if we're at the point of acknowledging that what we read in our modern English translations is a relatively accurate rendering of the original manuscripts in ancient Hebrew, Greek and Aramaic.  

Much of the basis of the Christian nationalism we see among Evangelical conservatives is based on Old Testament theocracy, and the old covenant which God made with Israel, through patriarchal heritage.  However, if Christians believe that Jesus is the criterion by which all scripture is to be interpreted, he makes a comprehensive statement in the Sermon on the Mount which puts the perspective of the Old Covenant in its place.  He declares an end to it, in Matthew 5:17.  

"Do not think that I have come to abolish the law or the prophets; I have not come to abolish, but to fulfill."  

And how did Jesus fulfill both of these things?  

He did not establish a theocratic kingdom with himself as the political and spiritual head.  He separated the spiritual kingdom from the literal kingdom, giving the spiritual kingdom a much different identity and purpose.  Declaring the old covenant, and the prophets, fulfilled, Jesus taught a salvation that involves acceptance of his sacrifice on the cross as the penalty for violating the law, to which obedience once represented the same kind of salvation.  And he established a spiritual kingdom, the Christian Church, which transcends the political authority of a theocratic state, and repreents an accessible kingdom made up of those who are spiritually redeemed from sin.  

The Christian gospel is simple, not complicated.  It is founded on the principles and values taught by Jesus.  If you want a quick and easy to understand look at exactly what that involves, the gospel writer Matthew recorded what is known as the "Sermon on the Mount" in Chapters 5, 6 and 7, starting off with the Beatitudes.  I've actually been a member of two churches which understood this as the foundation of Christian faith and practiced, and which actually worked because there wasn't some kind of ulterior motive to control or to use faith as a means of wielding some kind of power.  

I'll Cut to the Chase

Constructing theological systems like complimentarianism, and then putting it up against egalitarianism, is an attempt to gain power for the purpose of control.  It's simply fallling for the third temptation of Jesus, when he was offered rule of the world in exchange for his loyalty.  Many of the older Southern Baptist congregations hold on to some of the last vestiges of antebellum Southern culture, remnant social order of the old Confederacy, and, seeing what they label as "militant feminism" as a threat to that culture, they've tried to package it as satanic evil influence, and use the churches they control to fight against it.  

Jesus, however, wasn't concerned with the social order.  He was concerned with revealing the nature and character of God to humankind.  That concern is characterized when he asked a young lawyer to look at the law, which he fulfilled, and tell him what it said.

"Love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind, and with all your strength," responded the lawyer, "and love your neighbor as you love yourself."  

"You have answered correctly, Jesus replied.  "Do this and you will live."  [Luke 10:27-28, NIV]

And without a debate on complimentarianism, or on the purpose of the law, that was it.  

Right Wing Politics Are a Heavy Influence in Southern Baptist Convention Vote to Include a Ban on Women Pastors in Their Constitution

Over the course of the past three years, the messengers from the churches to the Southern Baptist Convention have defeated attempts to place a restrictive ban on women serving as pastors in its affiliated churches, though the denomination's statement of faith, the Baptist Faith and Message 2000, has allowed its credentials committee to sever ties to several churches considered to be in volation of this provision.  The difference between this being a committee decision, as opposed to being included in the constitution and bylaws of the denomination is that doing the latter would automatically exclude any church which has, on its staff, a female in the role of a pastor who interprets scripture, teaches, or preaches to the church.  

In order to be included in the Constitution, the amendment must pass with a two-thirds majority of the messengers in favor of it at two subsequence convention annual meetings.  Mike Law, a Virginia pastor, introduced an amendment three years ago, which passed the first convention, but which failed to get the two thirds approval at the subsequent meeting to be included in the constitution.  Juan Sanchez, a Texas pastor, introduced a similar proposal at the following convention meeting, but it, too, failed to get the two thirds majority required to advance.  It should be noted that this proposal has been supported by the majority of messengers in attendance, but not enough support has carried it to the two-thirds threshold.  

This proposal, made by one of the denomination's self-appointed inner circle, Al Mohler, President of Southern Baptist Theological Seminary in Louisville, Kentucky, got 75% of the messenger's votes at a convention being held in Orlando, attended by a relatively small number of messengers, just over 11,000.  It's been convention meetings with higher attendance where the two-thirds threshold has been more difficult to meet.  

Implications of This Vote Against the Backdrop of the Denomination's Failure to Effectively Deal With a Significant Sexual Abuse Crisis Among Its Clergy

Many messengers were shocked by revelations of significant sexual abuse allegations against church pastors and vocational ministers, including some of its missions personnel and high ranking committee members and trustees, which came out after an expose by the Houston Chronicle in 2019.  Many of those who heard the allegations demanded immediate action, and took the responsibility for doing something about it out of the hands of its moribund Executive Committee, placing it with independent investigators.  

What resulted, however, was a disgraceful display of antagonism toward the victims, and sympathy for the abusers.  Ultimately, in spite of messenger directives, the bureaucrats failed to do anything at all to resolve the crisis, and got away with the inaction as interest died down.  The fact that a so-called Christian denomination not only took no meaningful action to prevent further abuse, but also did not reach out to provide any kind of ministry to the victims, and treated them as if it was their fault, is a disgraceful testimony to the huge gap which exists between the presence of the Spirit of God and the Southern Baptist Convention.  

"Ichabod" is written over the door of the Southern Baptist Convention as a result of their handling of this crisis. 

The anti-woman stance of this denomination is clearly present in their way of handling this issue.  Many of those who attacked victims claimed that they were evil, intent on ruining the ministry of many "good" men.  This is an attitude and a culture that emerges from being completely misinformed theologically and doctrinally.  The inherent belief is that women are inferior to men, in spite of scripture which clearly teaches otherwise.  And this comes directly out of the fundamentalist theology that is now widely accepted among Southern Baptists, based on the belief that the whole of the 66 books of the Protestant Bible are equally inspired and equally authoritative because it is inerrant and infallible in its original autographs.  

So what is known as the doctrine of Biblical Inerrancy, a fundamentalist invention out of 19th century ignorance, codified by the Southern Baptist Convention in its doctrinal statement known as the Baptist Faith and Message 2000 is the underlying support for the second-class treatment women get in the churches of the Southern Baptist Convention, enforced by ecclesiastical authority of a denomination that goes against the foundational beliefs expressed in the gospel of Jesus Christ.  Equating the Old Testament covenant with the Gospel is a grave theological error that distorts Christianity, and leads to beliefs and practices that are completely out of line with what Jesus revealed.  

Christian Nationalism is the Vehicle Which Helps This Backward-Looking False Theology Work Its Way Into Right Wing Politics

White supremacy, the subservience of people of dark colored skin, goes hand in hand with the subjugation and inferior status of women.  It's this same fundamentalism, based on the literal interpretation of scripture that is not equally inspired, nor complete in its prophetic revelation, from which the idea that white Europeans have been destined by God to rule the world and were gifted with the resources of the untouched North American continent in order to do so.  

On the surface, the SBC has had to accept the presence of blacks in pastoral ministry, in leadership, as members of trustee boards and committees, though not nearly in the percentages of numbers that actually exist within the denomination.  But they've been able to hold down the rise of women in leadership, and claim literal interpretations of verses taken out of context in support.  There are actually just three specific references in the New Testament to which these people refer in order to claim that "the Bible" instructs churches against the practice of calling women to be pastors, the "episkopos" as described in I Timothy 3:1.  

One of the long time, defacto leaders of the Southern Baptist Convention, the now deceased Paul Pressler, considered one of the two "architects of the Conservtative Resurgence," took on the responsibility of linking the denomination to Republican partisan politics.  If there was any doubt at all as to the real intention of this movement, disguised as "theological reform" when it started in 1979, Pressler's work, and the place where the denomination has ended up, has removed it.  While his partner, Paige Patterson, began working to make sure trustees of the six theological seminaries were hard line fundamentalists, who removed good, solid professors, replacing them with like minded Bible college flunkies, Pressler, a former Texas Appeals Court Justice and a Republican party inner-circle operative, used his executive committee influence to make the SBC a right wing political action committee.  

Pressler is a good example of how this denomination is willing to ignore the principles of the Christian gospel in order to gain the political power and leverage it wants.  This "architect of the Conservative resurgence" and long term unelected influence and leader in the SBC had a record of grooming teenaged boys under his influence, some from a church where he served as a youth pastor, others from contact with him through his law practice, and sexually abusing them.  This was known by his church, First Baptist Church of Houston, Texas, after a letter from their leadership surfaced, removing him from his positions in the church and warning that if word of his sexual abuse got out, it could potentially destroy the cause, which they obviously valued over doing the right thing.  

Isn't that a familiar sounding theme among conservative politics these days.  

 The Importance of Understanding How This Religious-Political Connection Works

I think it is vitally important for those who are working hard to oppose the fascist dictatorial tendencies of the sitting President to understand exactly how right wing conservative Evangelicalism works.  Undermining this pseudo-Christian cult is a solid strategy in providing the kind of opposition necessary to prevent further damage and to motivate voters to get to the polls and make sure anything and anyone associated with Trump is defeated.  

There are those who think it is futile to try and provide a reasonable argument for people to get out of this right wing religious-political mess, but I disagree.  In the decade since Trump first ran for the Presidency, the Southern Baptist Convention has lost just over four million members, 25% of what it had in 2016, and has seen a 30% decline in the weekly attendance at its affiliated churches.  Something is causing this massive exodus, and it is sure not the weak excuses being offered by its apologists.  I tend to think that the sincere Christians among their ranks, those with a deep understanding of scripture, and Christian history, and the ability to discern the cultural and historical contexts of Christian faith and practice are deciding to get as far away from an apoostacy 

There is, in fact, a growing group of podcasters and bloggers who are pointing out the grave theological errors of the SBC and their impact, and are showing people how it is possible to be a practicing Christian and an American Patriot and a Democrat at the same time, three representations of religious and political identity that are fully compatible with each other.  

 

 

On the Eve of the Southern Baptist Convention, the Waning Power of Evangelical Conservatives Shows Itself

For a group that has been vocal about its disapproval of Disney, and has passed resolutions encouraging its members to boycott Disney parks, the Southern Baptist Convention is meeting in Orlando, Florida, with the convention itself opening tomorrow in a convention hall owned by Disney.  This annual meeting, like others that have been held in Orlando, will draw approximately 20,000 delegates known as "messengers" from the denomination's 45,000 churches.  Southern Baptists first met in Orlando in 1994, then again in 2000 when they adopted the Baptist Faith and Message 2000, then again 10 years later in 2010, and planned to meet there in 2020, but no meeting was held because of COVID.  So this 2026 meeting will be the fourth one in the Disney paradise in about three decades. 

Southern Baptists Will Ignore the Sexual Abuse Problem Among Its Pastors and Church Leaders

The moribund bureaucracy of the Southern Baptist Convention has failed, over the past five or six years, to follow directives given from the floor of the convention by the messengers to find ways to deal with the sexual abuse problem that exists among its pastors, church staff and missions personnel.  The problem is larger than was originally exposed by the Abuse of Faith  series in the Houston Chronicle and San Antonio Express News in 2019.  

One good thing that happened, when an independent investigator was hired, was the resignation of a number of executive committee members who were upset about not being able to control and strong-arm the investigation.  Some baggage that needed to be shed was gone as a result of that.  But when it has come to really essential things that needed to be done as a result of the manner in which this scandal was handled by SBC bureaucrats, including actually giving the appearance of being Christian when it came to the known victims of abuse, nothing has happened.  Victims, in fact, have been further victimized by the harsh and unforgiving manner reflected by the convention's national leadership. 

The bureaucrats have, in fact, hidden behind what they claim is a core doctrinal principle of the Southern Baptist Convention and the way it is structured as a denomination, and that is the independence and autonomy of the local church.  Churches affiliated with the SBC are independent and autonomous, according to the polity that has developed among Baptists, therefore, the denomination cannot assume a measure of ecclesiastical authority to put measures in place which prevent sexual predator pastors and church staff from moving to another church.  And they can't seem to find a way to establish a database that will provide churches with a list of adjudicated offenders.  

So, in spite of demands from messengers that the convention bureaucrats do something about this problem, very little has been done, none of it effective in helping curb this problem.  "It's a local church issue," say the bureaucrats.  

But, Let a Woman Be Called to Serve a Church as Pastor, and the Independence and Autonomy of the Local Church Gets Thrown Out the Window

Messengers to this year's Southern Baptist Convention will be voting on a third proposal to change the denomination's constitution to disfellowship, a.k.a. "kick out," churches which have a female pastor, either as a senior pastor preaching from the pulpit, or on their staff in a role with the title "pastor" defining their duties.  This is a blatant violation of the independence and autonomy of the local church, which, according to the Biblical interpretation of church polity Baptists have held for centuries, is not consistent scripturally.  

So they won't interfere by helping churches avoid calling a sexual predator with a criminal record as their pastor, but they will tell their churches to hit the exit door if they decide to call a woman to serve as a pastor.  It can't be possible to demonstrate more hypocrisy than this.  

So far, they have tossed a few churches, including the largest and most evangelistic Baptist church in the denomination, Saddleback Valley Community Church in Mission Viejo, California, out the door for having women in a pastoral role where they were teaching and preaching to the congregation.  Other churches joined with those being kicked out by stopping their contributions to the denomination's Cooperative Program, and also hitting the exit door.  No church has been coerced into changing their polity and complying with the ruling which, if the amendment passes two consecutive conventions with a two-thirds majority, will result in the dismissal of any church deemed not to be in friendly cooperation because they have a female in a pastoral ministry role.  

But this denomination has yet to come out and act like they care about the thousands of sexual abuse victims who have suffered at the hands of one of their pastors or church leaders.  The general attitude has been that the women who are victims of the abuse are some kind of destroyer of a good pastor's ministry, tools of the devil aimed at bringing good, godly men down.  There are even those who claim that this is simply the result of the creeping influence of radical feminism into "western culture," aimed at disrupting the work of good, godly people.  

Well, don't act too surprised.  This is a denomination founded on the false, unbiblical and inherently evil belief that slavery was justified by white supremacy.  It took them 150 years to refute that grave error and apologize for their mistake.  So it might be a while before they admit their error on this one, too.  

Still No Admission or Acknowledgement of Fallen, Failed Leadership

The Southern Baptist Convention's messengers, gathered at a convention in 1979, made a decided turn to the right, out of conservative Evangelicalism and into a much more fundamentalist approach.  The movement, known as the "Conservative Resurgence," took a decade to stack the trustee boards and committees with fundamentalists before removing seminary professors, missionaries and denominational employees who did not adhere to the strict doctrinal guidelines that included required acceptance of the fundamentalist version of the doctrine of Biblical inerrancy.  

The two men who led this movement became ultimately powerful in the denomination,  Paige Patterson, who had been the President of run-down Criswell College in Dallas, got himself hired as the president of two of the six SBC seminaries, where his authoritarian style leadership put him in position to call all the shots.  He was the theologian-in-chief of the resurgence movement.  Paul Pressler, a Texas Appeals Court justice, was the leader with the designated role of bringing the denomination into secular politics on the side of the Republican party.  

Pressler saw to it that any denominational employees who didn't tow the political line got the boot.  He was especially effective in getting the Baptist Press made into a right wing political propaganda organization.  Patterson named individuals for trustee board appointments and then began the process of getting rid of professors who weren't hard line fundamentalists.  While neither individual was actually elected to their position, the power they were given by those who were was virtually unlimited and they ran the denomination for 20 years.  

But there were problems.  Patterson, in his role as seminary president, mishandled multiple reports of rape and sexual assault on both of the seminary campuses, moving to protect perpetrators by encouraging female victims not to report to law enforcement but let the seminary handle their claim.  Pressler, as it turned out, had a long history of grooming young men and then luring them into physical encounters.  It started when he was a youth minister in an independent church in Houston.  He had settled abuse charges out of court, but ultimately, lawsuits revealed what had been going on for a while. 

The Southern Baptist church in Houston where he was a member was aware of the litigation against him, and the accusations, and actually sent a letter to him notifying him that he was dismissed from all church offices he held, and that he needed to be careful to avoid any further activity, because if word got out, it could ruin the cause for which he was an advocate.  They preferred to let him continue to be one of the two conservative resurgence leaders, a totally hypocritical move given their stance on homosexual behavior, and keep the secret.  

So far, in spite of all that has been revealed, the convention's messengers haven't taken any steps to separate themselves from these two men, or to distance the convention from their actions.  They've been removed from positions of influence.  Patterson was fired from Southwestern, following revelations of what had been done there.  Pressler eventually rotated off the executive committee, and then off the last trustee board to which he had been appointed, and as the litigation against him by his victims increased, he faded out of sight.  Perhaps the rule about speaking ill of the dead now applies, but the silence of Southern Baptists, and their refusal to acknowledge the damage each has done speaks volumes to the lack of integrity in this denomination. 

An Evangelical Denomination Getting It's Priorities Straight

The Southern Baptist Convention annual meeting will take place in Orlando, Florida on June 8-9.  This denomination, considered the largest of American Evangelical and Protestant groups, with approximately 12.2 million members in 45,000 churches nationwide, has been dealing unsuccessfully with growing revelations of a clergy sexual abuse scandal that has been going on among its churches for quite some time.  The scandal, exposed by the Houston Chronicle and San Antonio Express News in an expose called "Abuse of Faith" published in 2019, reached into the denomination's highest levels, including the discovery of multiple cover-ups of reports received by it's national Executive Committee.  

When it was exposed, the scandal created an outrage among the membership of the churches.  In response, the delegates elected by the churches to the annual meeting, known as "messengers," enraged by the revelations, began bypassing the cumbersome, deliberately slow denominational bureaucracy, to demand action directly from the floor of the convention.  In spite of those demands, which resulted in the resignation of a dozen executive committee members and several personnel shake-ups at high levels, including the resignation of the executive director at the time, Frank Page, because of his own admission of marital infidelity, this convention body has been 100% ineffective at providing anything useful as a result.  

To understand this ineffectiveness requires knowing that the SBC is a bureacracy deliberately designed to favor the wishes of a few elitists who control it, while ignoring any kind of input from the churches that might not agree with the set agenda.  It appears to be democratic, with power invested in the messengers who show up to the annual meeting.  In practice, as this whole scandal has revealed, even when the messengers directly instruct the bureacracy to do something, it doesn't get done and there aren't any consequences for that not happening.  

One of the internal problems experienced when trying to get something done about this sexual abuse scandal has been the manner in which churches relate to the denomination.  All of the churches are, theoretically, at least, independent and autonomous, and the denomination has no ecclesiastical authority over any church.  Each church calls its own pastors, hires its own staff and preaches according to its own doctrinal and theological understanding.   So technically, the denomination can't force any church to do anything about an abusive pastor in one of the pulpits.  

But...If They Want to Exercise Ecclesiastical Authority, They Will

Local church autonomy is the excuse that works well for the SBC bureaucrats when they don't want to follow the directives of the messengers.  But they are willing to throw it out the window when they want to force a narrow doctrinal perspective on the churches.  For a denomination that claims it is not ecclesiastical in structure at all, and that each local church is its own authortity on all things, it uses the threat of removing a church's membership in the denomination if they are not in line theologically and doctrinally.  

By directive of its bylaws defining what is meant by "voluntary cooperation," all churches that are part of the SBC must have theology and doctrinal positions that are "closely aligned" with the Baptist Faith and Message 2000, the doctrinal statement of the SBC.  That means, among other things, that they must affirm the SBC's interpretation of the doctrine of Biblical inerrancy, and all interpretations of the Bible controlled by that, including placing restrictions on women serving in the church position of pastor.  And while there are some that say this only applies to the "senior," or "lead" pastor, others insist that women are restricted biblically from any pastoral role. 

They can't seem to get anything done about the sexual abuse running rampant in their churches, especially by those who have the title "pastor," but they are willing to entertain yet another proposal to make a permanent change to their constitution and bylaws denying membership to any church that calls a woman as a pastor.  One of the denomination's insider elitists, the President of the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary in Kentucky, Dr. Al Mohler, who fancies himself as the SBC's "chief pontificator", will bring a motion to add this restriction at this year's meeting.  

Making this kind of permanent change involves getting a full two thirds of the messenger vote total at two subsequent annual meetings.  The last time this effort was made, it was approved in the first meeting, then failed to get the kind of majority required the second year.  A lot of the success or failure of motions like this depends on how many people on the SBC payroll actually get elected as messengers from their church and go to the convention.  When the bureaucrats and employees of the bureaucracies outnumber the regular people from the churches, these things tend to do well. 

Ignoring Elephants in the Room

Membership declined by 390,000 in 2025.  And aside from the typical excuse-making, and the celebration of tiny gains in weekly attendance and in baptisms, which don't come anywhere near making up the difference, it doesn't appear that this crisis, which has led to a decline of 4.1 million members in a decade, staggering losses that are larger than most denominations have in total membership, will get nearly the attention that the ongoing rage over women serving as pastors is going to generate.  By contrast, no mainline Protestant denomination has lost that many members in a decade, not even the fractured and split United Methodists. 

The denomination has already exercised, through its credentials comittee, the dismissal of churches with women in pastoral roles or leadership, including kicking out Saddleback Valley Community Church, the largest and most evangelistic church in the denomination, and in response to that, as many as a hundred other churches left in protest.  Saddleback Valley alone accounted for 40,000 of those members lost, and Elevation Church, with 26,000 members, left the same week.  That accounts for at least 66,000 of the 280,000 decline the SBC experienced in 2024.  

But the failure to bring the denomination up to its own messenger's expectations on the sexual abuse issue is also a huge elephant in the room.  Both of the men who are still revered by some as the "Architects" of the beloved "conservative resurgence" in the SBC were deeply involved in the scandal, and I still haven't heard any of the elitist leadership comment on it, or set the record straight.  One enabled abusers and rapists on two seminary campuses, the other was involved in abuse himself, with victims of the same gender.  

But then, giving this kind of deference to leaders who are deeply involved in licentious behavior seems to be an Evangelical characteristic these days.  The rapidly falling membership of the SBC could be the result of this infection of political and religious hypocrisy that has infected most of American Evangelicalism, because it is losing members across the board just as rapidly as the SBC. 

Will the Southern Baptist Convention Straighten It's Priorities, or Make Itself Irrelevant? 

It took the Southern Baptist Convention 150 years to apologize for its historic stance on slavery, a divisive and unbiblical position it took when it was founded in 1845.  That position, too, was based on belief in a literalist interpretation of the Bible, the same kind of fundamentalism that ignores and ridicules theological study and education and relies on a literal rendering of the King James translation.  It's the same kind of interpretation that leads to the faulty conclusion that women are forever and always restricted from being pastors, or that caused the SBC to remove what was known as the "Jesus criteria" from the Baptist Faith and Message.  

It appears that Dr. Al Mohler, who had a prior failed attempt at being elected President of the SBC, which he apparently considers his "due", will try to make himself relevant among the SBC elitists still left by codifying bad theology and denominational policy into its constitution and bylaws.  Perhaps there are enough Southern Baptists interested in keeping their denomination out of the abyss into which it is falling, who have abandoned the literalist fundamentalism that took control in 1979. 

It would be my guess, as a former Southern Baptists educated in two of the denomination's universities and seminaries, that there are not enough people left to get enough of a vote to keep this from eventually passing.  The professors who didn't buy literalist fundamentalism when it started its creeping attempt to control the denomination saw the handwriting on the wall, and they got out, along with many of the universities and colleges where serious theological study, rather than indoctrination, was the norm.  

The Southern Baptist Convention can't sustain the kind of loss it has experienced over the past decade and survive, and yet, it seems as ineffective at finding a way to arrest this decline and return to relevance as it has been in dealing with the sexual abuse crisis in its midst.  The revenue stream of support from churches, called the "Cooperative Program," is rapidly drying up.  The continued support it gives to corrupt secular politics, and its silence over the corruption of its own leadership speaks volumes about priorities.  That's not surprising for a denomination that took 150 years to decide slavery war wrong.  

    

Endorsing a Long-Shot: Rachel Anderson for the Senate from West Virginia

My parents grew up in West Virginia and the greater part of both of their extended families still live there.  From Weirton in the northern panhandle, to Clarksburg and Harrison County, and a few still scattered near my mother's home place in Doddridge County, down to Mingo County, Williamson and Matewan, I have a group of first and second cousins.  The younger generation on my Dad's side of the family has moved away from the coal mines and carbon plants that provided jobs for my parent's generation to being insurance agents, retail business owners, including one long-time Italian restaurant, and one West Virginia pub, quite a few nurses, nurse practitioners, one physicians assistant, and two dentists.  And I have one second cousin who is a university professor and an author.  

About half of my extended family no longer lives in West Virginia.  They've scattered to other places, one group to the Washington, DC area, mostly Maryland, and another group westward into Ohio.  The jobs just weren't there.  The half that remains, because of the transition they've made as far as their jobs go, have a decidedly more Republican outlook than my parents and grandparents generations, all of whom were union members.  

But that appears to be changing, especially among those who, like myself, are college educated and in a professional occupation.  Most of those with whom I still have contact started out by supporting Trump in 2016 and 2020, and then again in 2024, though a few of them had cooled off by the last election and I actually had some great conversations with a couple of cousins who saw the truth.  They'd basically dropped out of participation in politics, but since the indictments came down and reality set in, they have registered to vote and support Democrats.  

For months now, among the scattered social media posts and other communication in which I've been involved, there are several of us trying to talk the rest of our family into voting for Rachel Anderson for the U.S. Senate.  I won't be able to vote in West Virginia, but what I'm seeing in our conversations now is the realization that the senior Senator from there, Shelley Moore-Capito, has done nothing for the state, and has actually done nothing notable or vote-worthy for the entire time she has served in the Senate.  

Anderson, who is a member of the Morgantown City Council, and an attorney working in public interest and advocacy for 30 years, won the Democratic nomination.  In the state which Trump won by the largest margin, she is a long shot.  But maybe not as much of a long shot as might be imagined.  Moore-Capito, who is the least accomplished Senator out of a hundred, was not the overwhelming choice of her own party.  Even with Trump's endorsement, in a state he won by 40 points, turnout was underwhelming, and Moore-Capito picked up 66% of the Republican vote.  It cost her more in terms of campaign money than any of her previous primaries, and  it was the lowest vote total she has registered so far.  

I'm not seeing any support for Moore-Capito among those relatives I have in the state who actually register and vote.  Several of them have indicated support for Anderson, and have not received, in response, the normal criticism and derision from the others that would have happened in the past.  Everyone knows where I stand, and I often get the standard Republican push back from most of them, but in the recent discussions we've had, anecdotal and limited for sure, but quite different, there's been no disagreement, and there has been some acknowledgement that a change might be needed, and in order.  

I doubt there are any political pundits who'd predict this would go any way except for the Republican.  On the other hand, among Democrats in West Virginia, Anderson is well known, and one of the interesting political aspects of the state is that the only counties where there has been population growth in the last six decades are the ones where Democrats actually outnumber Republicans.  And while Democrats had a relatively high turnout in their primary, Republican turnout was low.  Don't get me wrong, it's still a long-shot.  

West Virginia is one of the poorest states in the country, it is losing jobs and population regularly, and it has been since 1950.  It is one of the most ignored areas of the country by politicians, and I cannot fathom how misinformed and ignorant the majority of the population must be, when they continuously vote against all of their own interests every election cycle, electing patrician politicians like Moore-Capito who vote for legislation that helps increase the poverty, does nothing to decrease unemployment or business development, and which continues to contribute to people leaving the state in droves. 

I've been following the saga of the only hospital and emergency room in Mingo County closing as a result of the COVID epidemic.  I have relatives who live there, and several who worked at the hospital, Williamson Memorial.  Fortunately, they were able to find jobs at the regional hospital across the river in Kentucky, but a lot of the staff just lost their jobs, and the closure left the county without a functioning emergency room.  

The local physicians group worked hard to get the hospital back open, investing large amounts of money to purchase and renovate the facility.  They got a lot of help as a result of their sitting Senator, and former Governor Joe Manchin, who, as a Democrat, had some pull with the Biden Administration.  And the federal government did come through.  The new Williamson Memorial Hospital is open again, thanks to Democrats, including former Senator Manchin and the Biden Administration.  It does not appear that Senator Moore-Capito was involved at all, except for trying to steal credit on the end result.  

And yet, this is a crisis for a number of counties in the state, especially in the southern counties.  People living in poverty without transportation are living in communities where hospitals are at risk of closing.  But this is not a priority for the Republicans.  

Remember Trump's promise to do everything in his power to bring the coal industry back?  West Virginia is now a wasteland of abandoned mines and laid off workers.  And his endorsed and favorite Senator from the state is doing absolutely nothing about it.  There's not even a hint from her that she cares about this.  

So West Virginia, it's a long shot, but if you really think it is time to send an old school, ineffective, do-nothing Republican home, then turn out and send Rachel Anderson to the Senate.  

Evangelical White Christian Nationalists Back in the Headlines with "Rededicate 250"

There was some complaining about the fact that all of the speakers at this particular event except one were Christians.  

I would disagree with that assessment.  "Christian" is not a term I would use to describe most of the speakers in that lineup.  Pseudo-Christian, yes, in that many of them are Evangelical, which is more of a political designation these days than a doctrinal or theological branch of Christianity.  But using the definition of "Christian" established by several of the Bible's New Testament writers, and the very words spoken in testimony of the faith, theology and doctrine held by the Evangelical speakers in this lineup, the conclusion must be made that they are not, by their own testimony, Christian, according to the words of the Biblical authors.  

The Apostle John, in his first church epistle, defines being Christian as acknowledging that Jesus was the Christ, sent by God to reveal him and his nature to the world in a clear and redemptive way that had not been revealed previously.  And, the gospel writers, specifically Matthew and Luke, directly quote Jesus equating the first two commandments, loving God with all your heart, soul and mind, and demonstrating that you love God that much by the way you treat others, as the very core of Christian faith practice.  

That doesn't leave room for the kind of loyalty most of these pseudo-Christians give to a worldly, and demonstrably evil politician who doesn't acknowledge God or the deity of Christ.  And the idea of "loving your neighbor as yourself," combined with the definition of "neighbor" that Jesus revealed, is not something that can be found in the faith practice of any of the Evangelicals in that "Rededicate 250 lineup."  

Left to consider who these people are, and what they've done with regard to ministry, it would be my observation that they are very much in love with money, and have figured out how to convince their constituents to part with some of theirs, hoping to stimulate their own financial windfall which is the only salvation and blessing dispensed by the god they have invented.  That's what they preach  and teach.  The redemptive message of the Christian gospel, which includes repentance, submission to Christ, restoration and a lifestyle based on the practice of a set of principles can't be found among Trump's Evangelical sycophants.  Just listen to them. Not a single one of the Beatitudes provides a blessing of money, but all of the blessings of the Trump Evangelical heretics are measured by how much of it they have.  

And what to they have to say to any of us?  None of them worries about putting a roof over their head, or where their next meal will come from as their food costs and medication costs have surged because of the Iran war, and none of them cares about what price they will pay for a gallon of gas at the pump.  Nor do they care about the millions of Americans who live on a fraction of what they do, on a social security check or a tiny pension.  And because of that, they have absolutely nothing to say to me, or to the millions of other Americans like me.  

So go peddle your phony pseudo-Christian "gospel" somewhere else.