Update on the Southern Baptist Convention Meeting in Anaheim, California 5:45 p.m. Central Time June 15
A far right conservative faction in the Southern Baptist Convention, known as the "Conservative Baptist Network, CBN" has failed in its attempt to gain control of the denomination's officer positions and its executive committee leadership, and in its attempt to defund and dissolve its Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission.
The effort to defund and dissolve the ERLC, which goes back to a feud between a former Executive committee president and the former ERLC executive, Russell Moore, over Moore's outspoken opposition to Trump's candidacy and presidency, failed by an "overwhelming" margin, according to an afternoon report by The Tennessean. The CBN faction was also opposed to adopting the recommendations made by the Sexual Abuse Task Force, which was approved by the messengers to the convention on Tuesday by a 90% margin.
During the executive committee meeting on Monday, the officer candidates supported by CBN were defeated by sizeable margins. At the Pastor's Conference, also on Monday, the CBN candidate, a far right winger noted for his opposition to CRT, was defeated. CBN nominees for President, Recording Secretary and First Vice President were all defeated by non-aligned opponents. During the afternoon session on Wednesday, it appears that efforts to get a resolution putting the convention on record as supporting criminal penalties against women who get abortions will also fail to get to the floor.
This is not an indication that the Southern Baptist Convention is moving in a more progressive, moderate direction, either in its theology, or in its position on social issues. But what this may indicate is that the influence of Trumpism within the convention's churches may be waning. And, as the Salon piece indicates, may be an indication of the same thing occurring within constituencies of the GOP across the country. The SBC itself has succeeded in keeping the influences of Trumpism away from its entities and its operations, though many of its churches and members have been supportive of the far right agenda
Southern Baptists Turn Back Far Right Takeover Attempt
Salon: Southern Baptist Battle Goes Full MAGA
In a long first day of business, delegates, known as "messengers", to the Southern Baptist Convention annual meeting in Anaheim, California overwhelmingly voted to accept two recommendations from its Sexual Abuse Task Force (SATF) aimed at improving the way the denomination's entities, including its two missionary boards and six theological seminaries, handle incidents of sexual abuse by personnel. The SATF report and recommendations passed overwhelmingly, by a margin of 90% to 10%.
The convention also turned back efforts by a faction known as the Conservative Baptist Network to elect denominational officers sympathetic to their cause. The network, known as CBN, is a group claiming that the denomination's leadership was becoming "woke" and "liberal" and needed a new "conservative resurgence" like the one which occurred in 1979 that established the current pattern of leadership, implemented a statement of faith that was more fundamentalist, and replaced seminary professors, missionaries and entity executives with those who agreed to the more conservative doctrinal position.
The new network formed after the convention's messengers passed a resolution in opposition to Critical Race Theory three years ago which they claim did not go far enough in actually condemning it. They have labelled efforts at racial reconciliation, especially the appointment of an African American professor as Vice President for Kingdom Diversity Initiatives at Southeastern Baptist Theological Seminary, as indications of "wokeness" within the denomination. They were also highly critical of the executive director of the Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission, Dr. Russell Moore, who was an open and outspoken opponent of Trump's candidacy and presidency.
In the peculiar way the denomination is structured, the president of the convention has the keys to control the selection of all of the members of the trustee boards that run the mission boards, seminaries, Lifeway Publishers, the ERLC and the executive committee through his appointment of members of a committee which nominates all of the other committees including the one that chooses trustees. CBN has been organizing to get messengers to the convention meeting to elect an SBC president for at least two years now, and their candidate, Tom Ascol, a pastor from Florida, was soundly defeated yesterday by Texas pastor Bart Barber, who has been in the inner circle of SBC leadership for a couple of decades. Initially, there was a field of four candidates, in which Barber did not quite get to the 50% threshold required to win the election, but won the runoff handily, by a 60-40 margin.
Earlier in the week, both of the CBN-endorsed candidates for officer positions on the SBC executive committee were defeated, and their endorsed candidate for president of an auxiliary group known as the Pastor's Conference, was also defeated. The CBN-endorsed candidate for Recording Secretary of the convention was also soundly defeated just prior to the end of yesterday's business session. The convention will elect several more officers today, including first and second vice-presidents, and another clerical officer. Attendance usually dwindles on the second day, which allowed CBN's choice for first vice-president to be elected last year.
What Does This Mean?
While the denomination has turned back an effort at organized denominational politics, mainly aimed at pushing a closer alignment with secular, right wing political positions, and at punishing the ERLC and former executive director Dr Russell Moore for taking the initiative with victims of the sexual abuse scandal, and for his Never-Trump stance, these results are not an indication of "wokeness" or of any kind of liberal, progressive movement within the denomination.
Whether or not this is an indication of a waning of the influence of Trump and the MAGA mob is something I'll leave up to the political experts. What has happened in the SBC's last two meetings, and in the way that the influence of the CBN faction has actually declined since last year's Nashville meeting, may indicate some weariness and wariness of Trump's immorality, lack of ethics and his incessant lying, but not a waning of traditional, conservative Republicanism among Evangelicals. They are also losing members at an alarming rate, both the SBC and the Evangelical movement as a whole, and even though they won't admit it is related to their association with right wing politics, and especially with Trump, they know that it is and are taking steps to reduce the impact.
As a result of all of the shenanigans from conservatives, Dr Moore exited the ERLC and the SBC, landed solidly on his feet in a position at Christianity Today where he has far greater influence and a much larger profile among Evangelicals than he did at the ERLC. That includes influence as a respected authority on religious liberty issues and with a growing group of Never-Trumpers among Evangelical Christians. Moore's successor at the ERLC, and the staff he left behind, remain intact, headed in the direction in which he was leading them, and are well-supported by both convention messengers and their own board of trustees. The executive committee, which posed somewhat of a threat two years ago, has turned away from its hostile stance, after multiple resignations and new appointments related to the SATF requirement that its members waive privilege, and is no longer controlled by CBN's agenda.
The Southern Baptist Convention has finally taken steps that have been advocated for decades by victims of sexual abuse which occurred in its churches and entities. It now has a permanent advisory board equipped to handle complaints and reports of abuse on behalf of victims. And it will create an independent database, where credibly accused abusers are listed, to prevent their ability from simply moving on to another church. Victims have been asking for this for decades.
It doesn't appear that other big problems, mainly the denomination's shrinking membership, is on the convention agenda. The pandemic had a major affect on church attendance across the board, in all denominations and churches, including those that bragged about ignoring protocols. But the SBC has faced declining membership for a decade now, and the number of people who are leaving churches increases each year. From a peak of 16,306,246 in 2006, membership has declined to 13,680,493 in the 2022 report. It dropped by 409,000 in just this past year. Attendance has been affected by the pandemic, and maybe some people used that as an opportunity to change their church membership, but that's an indication of other, serious problems. That makes "the nation's largest Protestant denomination" also the "nation's fastest declining denomination," with statistics that show much deeper losses than mainline Protestants have seen over the past twenty years.
But, mainline Protestant denominations have not allowed themselves to be infiltrated by and used by political operatives or by a political agenda. In most cases, they don't allow secular politics to cross the threshold of their churches. But among Evangelicals, like Southern Baptists, not only has right wing politics infiltrated the churches, including into the preaching, but there is a growing awareness that it is also changing theology and doctrine to suit its purposes. That's not why people join a church or go to worship each week. And Southern Baptists, along with other Evangelicals, all of whom are seeing membership and attendance losses on a similar scale, need to be honest in examining their actions.
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