An Ideological Pandemic

Since the closing gavel of the 2021 Southern Baptist Convention in Nashville almost three weeks ago, social media has lit up with a firestorm of posts in a raging ideological, political and social war going on. between groups of pastors and lay leaders who lined up behind a couple of candidates for the demomination's presidency.  The fireworks are being set off by supporters who joined an organized group that billed itself as the "Conservative Baptist Network," CBN as it became known, and who nominated Georgia pastor Mike Stone, a former chairman of the SBC Executive Committee, as President.  They are aimed at the rest of the SBC, including supporters of Ed Litton, Pastor of Restoration Church in the suburbs of Mobile, Alabama and the candidate who won the SBC Presidency in a second-ballot runoff.  

Theological conservatives gained control of the SBC presidency when they elected Dr. Adrian Rogers, Pastor of Bellevue Baptist Church, a mega-congregation in Memphis as President of the SBC.  The president has appointive powers that allow him to determine the makeup of the trustee boards and committees that run the convention's entities under its multi-million dollar "Cooperative Program," and beginning with Rogers in 1979, conservatives occupied a majority of board seats by 1989, and now completely dominate the convention.  Virtually none of their opposition, labelled as either "Moderates" or "Liberals" holds any seat anywhere within the denomination.  

So why is the SBC now engaged in a denominational war that threatens to fragment, splinter and split the denomination in a way the original "Conservative Resurgence" did not do in 1979?  

I call it "An Ideological Pandemic."  

This is far more about positioning on social justice issues and figuring out how to use churches and the denominational apparatus itself to move people to vote for conservative Republican candidates than it is about theology.  Being theologically conservative in the Southern Baptist Convention means acknowledging a specific set of doctrines known as the "Baptist Faith and Message 2000."  It includes belief that the 66 books of the Old and New Testament, without the Apocrypha, are infallible in their doctrinal and spiritual guidance and that the original manuscripts are without error.  It also includes believing that the eternal destiny of a human being is determined by whether or not they acknowledge that Jesus was God's divine son and that his execution at the hands of the Romans was a sacrifice bringing about a "substitutionary atonement" that is the only means of forgiveness of sin and reconciliation between human beings and God.  

But that's not conservative enough to qualify someone to hold a position of authority or leadership in the SBC any more, according to those who founded CBN.  In order to do that, you must disavow Critical Race Theory and Intersectionality because it has Marxist origins, stop using the term "Social Justice" because it is a code word for "Progressive Liberalism", take a stand against Black Lives Matter, again because of the alleged philosophical roots of their ideology,  completely avoid acting or sounding "woke", and drag your feet when it comes to allegations of sexual abuse by women because of their spiritual inferiority.  You can read between the lines and figure out the origins of this "ideological pandemic", how all of this infiltrated and influenced the SBC, and easily see how it is behind what has become the denomination's most divisive controversy since 1979.  

The issues have been amplified by a sexual abuse scandal involving pastors and staff members of SBC affiliated churches exposed by the Houston Chronicle just prior to the 2019 annual meeting in Birmingham two years ago.  The viral pandemic cancelled the subsequent meeting during which plans had been put in place to deal more comprehensively with the issue of clergy sexual abuse but the Executive Committee, which is responsible for taking care of denominational matters when the annual meeting is not in session, dragged its heels and made virtually no progress.  The committee, chaired at the time by CBN's presidential nominee, was far more occupied with punishing Russell Moore, the head of the SBC's Ethics and Religious Liberty Committee, because he was vocally anti-Trump, and because he and the entity he led was doing something about SBC clergy sexual abuse. 

Moore resigned just prior to the 2021 convention meeting.  Following his departure, some of his supporters within the SBC managed to get their hands on a couple of letters he had sent which detailed the heel-dragging of the executive committee under Stone, and which. may have generated enough support to keep Stone from winning the presidency.  

Mixing secular politics and support for political parties and politicians with the mission and purpose of the church, whether a local congregation, the whole body of Christians, or as in the case of the SBC a denomination, never turns out well for the church or denomination.  History is filled with plenty of examples of the complete corruption of the church when it got pulled into the politics of the state and became its agent.  It's tempting to want to use the political power of the state or of an educated intellect to accomplish its mission and purpose but only God can empower the church.  

What's happening now is a good example of what getting too close to secular politics can do.  It's taken literally a hundred years for African American pastors and churches to trust the SBC enough to cooperate.  The progress was slow, but it was steady.  An African-American pastor from New Orleans, Fred Luter, was actually elected President of the SBC for two terms.  Inclusion of African-Americans, and Latinos who also have a growing fellowship within the SBC, in high-level leadership or executive positions has been very slow, but in recent years, there have been a few.  Then the issue of CRT/I came crashing in and the lack of trust has justifiably and understandably returned, undermined by a weak and ill-advised resolution in Birmingham in 2019 and by a subsequent statement by seminary presidents that didn't take anyone else's ideas or thoughts into consideration. 

As it turns out, the pressures put on Moore, leading to his resignation because his trustee board was fully supportive of his presence at the ERLC, were more related to his activity pushing for the SBC to do something about clergy sexual abuse than they were to his open opposition for Trump, though that was still seething beneath the surface.  Moore simply pointed out the inconsistency of "making a deal with the devil" when it came to the Trump presidency.  Nobody talks about it, of course, but that's the biggest pressure that now exists in the SBC for those whose livelihoods depend on a denominational salary.  The sharp drop in membership that the SBC has experienced, almost a million in just four years, is directly tied to this issue.  

I don't wish the SBC any ill-will.  I know many Southern Baptist church members, pastors and church leaders from having grown up in an SBC congregation and most of them are dismayed, grieved and disgusted by what is going on.  Those behind the controversy, mainly those who didn't get their way when the ballots were counted, are on a rampage.  It might be hard to put the lid back on this and stuff the garbage down into the can.  Some people didn't get their way, so instead of doing the honorable thing, they're burning down the house on the way out the door.  If they can't run the SBC, then they're going to try their hardest to make sure there's not an SBC for anyone to run.  Or for God to use for his glory, which is really the bottom line.