Southern Baptist Convention Membership Continues its Long, Steep Decline
Still calling itself the "Nation's Largest Evangelical Denomination," the Southern Baptist Convention posted an eighteenth straight year of declining membership, with just under 260,000 church members leaving the rolls of the church to which they once belonged, one way or another.
The nation's largest Evangelical denomonation reached is peak membership in 2006, at 16.3 million. Since then, membership has declined, with the sharpest and steepest declines occurring after 2016, when there were years when nearly half a million members disappeared from the rolls. The decline has slowed, somewhat, over the past three years, but even with annual losses falling below the 300,000 mark, over three quarters of a million members have been subtracted over the past four years. While weekly worship attendance has slowly crept back over the 4 million mark, since dropping during COVID, membership continues to drop sharply.
The attendance figure, averaging 4.3 million this past year, is still a much lower figure than the 6.2 million who sat in the pews prior to 2006. What's actually causing the "bounce" right now is the returning of those who didn't attend during the COVID pandemic. That's about over, as the increase over the past year was fairly insignificant. And the same study that shows this membership decline also points to the fact that 69% of the church membership is 50 years of age or older. Only 10% of Southern Baptists are under 30.
What that indicates is that a high percentage of those individuals who grew up in a Southern Baptist church, and likely participated in its children's ministry and youth group, have left, deciding that raising their family in the same church offers little in the way of value to them and their life. That's a big decision. It's interesting that the decline corresponds directly with the increased intrusion of right wing politics that started with Jerry Falwell, Pat Robertson and their baiting by the GOP back just prior to the 1980 Presidential election.
Involvement in Extremist Right Wing Politics is Key to Understanding the Decline
The correlation between Southern Baptists' rapid membership decline, and the increased involvement of mostly Caucasian, conservative, Evangelical Christians in far right extremism, a political perspective that is anti-Christian in both its means and ends, is pretty easy to see. There's no other demographic study that shows anything else coming along in the early part of this century that would find a big enough presence in the church to cause membership to drop so subtstantially, especially the rise of a worldly, morally bankrupt, failed businessman, Donald Trump, whose public behavior is completely antithetical to the values of Christianity. With many of the denomination's pastors preaching a form of white, Christian nationalism in place of the biblical Christian gospel message Jesus revealed, and the intrusion of Trump's licentious lifestyle, many faithful church members have said, "no thank you," and have left.
If you ask a hundred Americans between the age of 55 and 75 which of the Presidents in this modern era of American History best characterized the values, theology, doctrine and practice of the Christian faith, 75 of them would say "Jimmy Carter," without hesitation. In the whole stretch between Franklin Roosevelt, and the present time, there's no one else that comes close. There were two other members of Southern Baptist churches who have occupied the White House since Roosevelt, Harry S. Truman and Bill Clinton, but they weren't known for their faith practice like Carter. No one else in the Presidency since then comes close to that.
But Carter's brand of Christianity was sincere, committed to practice of the core values of the Christian gospel without exception, and that always includes a depth of understanding of Jesus' interpretation of the greatest commandments--to love God with all your heart, soul and mind, and to love your neighbor as yourself,--neighbor being defined as fellow human beings and illustrated by Jesus as a Samaritan, which takes a strong stand against any kind of racism or ethnic prejudice and which promotes the value of equality. The kind of biblical Christianity Carter believed and practiced contrasts with the dark, legalistic brand of the fundamentalists and Pentecostals who make up the political Evangelical right.
Carter further angered the Falwell-Robertson fundamentalists by refusing to impose his own personal religious practices and convictions through his Presidency. Carter may have been the first Evangelical President in American history to prove that it was completely possible to be a sincere, faithful Christian, and not feel compelled to use the power of the Presidency as a means of imposing convictions on the consciences of Americans who enjoy freedom of conscience under the first amendment. Carter understood that Christian nationalism, especially with its white supremacist element attached, was heresy to Christianity, and unconstitutional to American idealism.
He was personally opposed to both abortion and to homosexuality as a lifestyle. But he understood that the Constitution protects the rights of the minority to the free exercise of their own conscience, and that the establishment clause forbids imposing religion as a means of legislating and governing. Frustrated by their own failures to eliminate these practices by "winning the lost," and failing to fulfill what they believed was their own destiny from God to bring social reform to the United States, to prepare the world for the second coming of Jesus in their warped, heretical theology, they turned to the Republican party, and New Ager Ronald Reagan for leadership.
They have not had a political leader who shares their Christian convictions, doctrine and theology since then. The religious right, conservative Evangelical wing of the GOP, whatever you want to call it [I call it pseudo-Christian fascism myself] has had to accept political leadership that does not accept or agree with their religious doctrine and theology.
Delivering a Conservative, Evangelical Denomination to Right Wing Republican Extremism as an Inside Job
The problem that Falwell and Robertson had in getting full support of Evangelicals was that the leadership of the Southern Baptist Convention at the time shared Jimmy Carter's perspective on keeping secular politics out of the denomination and its churches. A group of conservatives, bent on subverting the mission and purpose of the Southern Baptist convention to bring it into alignment with right wing extremism, and with a more Christian nationalist perspective, began a movement in 1979 to take over leadership of the Southern Baptist Convention's six seminaries, its executive board, radio and television commission, publishing house and mission boards, for the purpose of using its resources to support conservative right wing extremism, specifically the Republican party.
One of the two "architects" of this movement, known as the "Conservative Resurgence," was a Texas appeals court judge, and Republican party activist named Paul Pressler. He teamed up with a Bush administration ally, Richard Land, to tighten the grip of right wing conservatives on the Southern Baptist Convention's leadership. And that's when the denomination began to die.
It took them about ten years to get a majority of the seats on the executive committee and all of the trustee boards, and then another six or seven to make sure there were no "moderates" left anywhere, after purging seminary faculties and the professional staffers at Lifeway publishers, and at the executive committee offices. Then, because the various state bodies affiliated with the denomination had not all caved in to the political pressure, another six or seven years to try and get control at that level, making sure pastors in the churches became political activists crossing the line and preaching right wing extremist politics as Christian theology and doctrine.
And that brings us to somewhere in the early 2000's, as membership and attendance peaked, and then started to decline, seminary enrollment began to drop, baptisms, which represented new members and converts, tanked, and the money machine that ran all of this operation began to be starved for contributions.
There were a whole lot more Southern Baptists who were more interested in a genuine faith practice than in Christian nationalism and right wing politics than the leadership of the Resurgence thought there would be. At least three of the 37 state conventions affiliated with the SBC refused to go along with the turn toward right wing politics, including the largest one, the Baptist General Convention of Texas. And at least two denominational groups have split churches off from the Southern Baptist denomination, including a group known as the Cooperative Baptist Fellowship, with about 3,500 churches, and the Alliance of Baptists, which has about 300 churches. These groups have been committed to keeping the Christian gospel at the center of the mission and purpose of the denomination, and are fighting against the influence of Christian nationalism and the racism that has infiltrated the Southern Baptists.
Since 2006, when the drops in membership, attendance, financial giving, seminary enrollment and baptisms started to be felt, more than 3.5 million people have left the denomination, including entire congregations at one time. The weekly average attendance in the denomination's churches has dropped more than 2.5 million, not counting the losses it has recovered from the pandemic. And as this year's membership decline of 260,000 was reported, the exodus is still happening. That's 38% of the average attendance, and 22% of the total membership, with 75% of the decline occurring since 2016, the year Trump was first elected President.
It Doesn't Take Research to Figure This Out, It's a Logical Conclusion
Participation in any form of organized Christian practice in the United States has been on the decline for some time now, and it has reached a point where there are now two generations of Americans in which the majority of members have no church affiliation. There are multiple reasons for why Southern Baptists, who experienced growth in numbers across the board until the mid-1990's, have gone into a steep decline that is worse than most of their mainline Protestant counterparts that they like to criticize.
A lot of chickens have recently come home to roost. Not all Southern Baptists, especially those in churches outside the south where most of the growth was occurring during the 70's and 80's, are white, or Republican. The political leadership that denominational leaders were supporting did not share their fundamentalist doctrine, theology and practice, especially Reagan, who practiced New Age religion, or George H. W. Bush, a devout Episcopalian. Even George W., a Methodist, wasn't an overboard religious conservative.
But Trump, who is the antithesis of Christian, a wealthy "man of the world" who reveled in his worldliness, moral bankruptcy and sinful behavior, and who openly denies his need for God's forgiveness (see I John 1:10 for what that does to Christian theology), a three time, publicly declared adulterer, business cheat and fraud, and pathological liar, was a shock to the system. His presence among those of Evangelical brands who have embraced him, has pushed a lot of genuine, faithful Christians out, and even though the Southern Baptist Convention stopped short of endorsing him, leaders like Pressler and Land, and high profile pastors who support him, like Robert Jeffress, have caused a lot of people to decide that faith and politics, with Trump involved, can't mix without destroying the faith.
I grew up Southern Baptist, and I'm one of those who left more than two decades ago, with an entire congregation that unanimously voted to separate from the mess. There's a lot more of that happening now, whole churches who see what a hypocrite Trump is, and do not want their church corrupted by an intrusion of "licentiousness." (See the book of Jude for an explanation of what that means.)
The theological and doctrinal heretics that those conservative Evangelicals who insist on continuing to support Trump must accept in order to get their political aims achieved betray their claims to being Christian as phony and insincere. And it's not just in the Southern Baptist Convention where this exodus of those who refuse to be bullied into accepting this immoral demagogue as part of their faith practice is happening.
Denominations that once seemed impervious to decline are now fracturing and splintering as the gap between those who believe in the Christian gospel and those who only want to use it for their politics grows wider. Across what church researchers identify as the whole spectrum of conservative Evangelicalism, including most independent, non-denominational churches, the attendance and membership of local churches has dropped by over 16 million since 2016.
And there's been no shortage of corruption among the Southern Baptist leadership who led the denomination down the right wing political path.
Paul Pressler, one of the two "architects" of the Conservative Resurgence, settled a long standing lawsuit prior to his death as allegations of homosexual activity surfaced, dating back to his days of serving as a church youth leader. In fact, a letter from the leadership of First Baptist Church of Houston, where he was a member just prior to launching the Resurgence, removing him from all of his volunteer positions because of allegations of his having molested young men he encountered in the church, came to light as it was revealed that there were leaders in the conservative movement in the Southern Baptist Convention who were trying to cover this up, in order to avoid a scandal that would derail the conservative political cause he was leading.
Paige Patterson, the other of the "architects" of the Resurgence, was investigated and charged with conducting improper investigations into sexual abuse allegations which occurred on the two seminary campuses where he served as President. It appears that Patterson tried to cover up the allegations, and attempted to protect the perpetrators while intimidating the female victims. One of those he allegedly tried to protect was one of his proteges and favorites among the student body at Southwestern Seminary, where he was President until being fired recently.
The denomination itself has been embroiled in a raging controversy over allegations of a cover-up of sexual abuse by pastors and church leaders. The tip of this abuse iceberg, which has yet to find a bottom, was uncovered in an expose published in the Houston Chronicle and San Antonio Express-News in 2019. After six years of wrestling with what to do, how to handle it, and how to respond to it, the denomination is stymied by its own inability to come to grips with the extent of the problem, or come up with a solution to the problem.
Worst of all, denominational leadership has placed its priorities on moaning, complaining and gnashing their teeth over the high cost of lawsuits resulting from this scandal which has cut into mission and ministry giving to the point where it has triggered a budget crisis. But they have done absolutely nothing to acknowledge the thousands of mostly female victims of this abuse, their attitude has been to resist, to blame, and to ignore, those who show up regularly at the annual convention meetings to make themselves heard.
Southern Baptists can trumpet their claimed correctness of theology and doctrine, including their belief in the "inerrancy and infallibility" of the original manuscripts of the Bible, and their conservative politics as loudly and long as they want. But their true colors as a pseudo-Christian political cult, with a lot of leftover, antebellum racism and white supremacy, misogyny and Christian nationalist heresy working in their midst, is showing.
And the true Christians, the followers of the principles and practice of the gospel of Jesus Christ, are leaving in droves.
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