The Southern Baptist Church Is Going to Hell in a Handbasket

[Galraedia]

A generation ago, hard-core conservatives took over the largest Protestant church denomination in the U.S., the Southern Baptist Convention, and birthed what we now call “the Christian right.” They overcame a tradition of congregational and state-convention autonomy to impose biblical inerrancy, the subordination of women in the pews and at home, and aggressively traditionalist views on sexuality and abortion as litmus tests for seminaries, clergy, and members. The SBC was a mainstay — perhaps the mainstay — for the Christian right, with leaders like Jerry Falwell (senior and junior) and Franklin Graham joining actual politician (and ordained Southern Baptist minister) Mike Huckabee in the vanguard. The ancient Baptist commitment to strict church-state separation was one casualty of the self-proclaimed “conservative resurgence,” as the new leadership of the denomination was ready to enlist its allies in the Republican Party to smite the wicked and bring closer the Kingdom of God.

By the 1990s, the Southern Baptist Convention’s reported membership had more than doubled since the 1950s; in 1967, their numbers outstripped Methodists for the first time. After an intensive period of consolidation of power that paralleled the conquest of the Republican Party by the conservative movement, a highly self-conscious group of religious ideologues had achieved domination of the SBC. It had become a loud, proud, and supremely confident bastion of religious, cultural, and political conservatism.

Now the edifice of Southern Baptist confidence is eroding. SBC membership has dropped for 13 consecutive years, with the sharpest drop occurring most recently. No longer can Baptists mock “liberal” mainline Protestants for membership declines allegedly attributable to their moral and theological laxity, such as their tolerance for feminists and gays. The conservative evangelical lurch into right-wing nationalist “populism” has become more fraught than ever thanks to the Christian right’s full surrender to the pagan cult of Donald Trump. And now the willingness of Southern Baptists to scornfully attack other churches for sexual impropriety has been exposed as hypocritical thanks to horrifying allegations that church leaders covered up sexual assaults and pedophilia by clergy and other church employees.

The crisis in this supremely self-righteous religious grouping is now being dramatized by challenges from some of its best-known public figures. In March, famed Bible teacher Beth Moore, who has supported sexual-abuse victims and expressed frustration about the limitations placed on women in the SBC, told Religion News Service she is “no longer a Southern Baptist.” In May, the renowned head of the SBC’s public-policy arm, Russell Moore, stepped down from his post after nine stormy years, and he soon separated himself from the denomination entirely while bitterly charging its leadership with defending white supremacists and suppressing sexual-abuse allegations. (The Moores are not related.) And now the denomination’s largest congregation, home of perhaps the most famous Southern Baptist preacher of them all, Rick Warren, is directly challenging the SBC’s doctrine of men-only clergy by ordaining three women as pastors at his Saddleback Church.

Read more: https://nymag.com/intelligencer/2021/06/southern-baptist-convention-is-going-to-hell-in-a-handbasket.html

[fantase56]

1. fuck-em, they can all go to hell.....

and they don't deserve a handbasket.....

[dalton99a]

2. Good.

[stopdiggin]

3. Can't happen soon enough! -(nt)-

[DURHAM D]

4. Not going to bother reading this drivel.

The Southern Baptist Church exists because they broke away in the run-up to the civil war because of their belief in slavery. Screw them.

[csziggy]

9. The SBC goes back a bit farther than that

And their dedication to the cause of slavery was part of their founding. And it all goes back to an ancestor of mine, Charles Crow.

Crow was ordained at the Bush River Baptist Church in Newberry County, South Carolina during the revivals of the early 1800s. About 1818-19, the church decided that their deacons and other church representatives should not be slave holders. Crow left for Alabama soon after that.

Crow founded a number of Baptist Churches in Central Alabama in the years after he arrived with his family and his slaves.One was the Ocmulgee Baptist Church to which he returned as he approached retirement.Some of the preachers he had trained began the Alabama Baptist Convention with Charles Crow as president and later started the Southern Baptist Convention in 1845. The first convention was held at Ocmulgee Baptist Church in Perry County, Alabama so Charles Crow could attend. Crow died soon after the 1845 convention.

Slavery, the great divisive issue of the day, came to the surface again in 1840 as it had
earlier in 1835. In that year, a convention of 110 Baptist delegates from thirteen northern
states met in New York City in what was called the Baptist Abolition Convention. These
delegates prepared a circular letter addressed to Southern slaveholding Baptists condemning
slavery as a sin. They further resolved that no slaveowner, or person connected with
slavery, should be allowed to serve as a missionary.

This circular letter reached Ocmulgee Church in August 1840 and was laid before the
congregation. Not everyone at the church owned slaves, but the leaders were mostly
slaveholders including Charles Crow, his sons in law and his children. The church
appointed a committee to draft a response to the letter for consideration by the church at the
September meeting. The committee was composed of Charles Crow, Abner G. McCraw,
George Everett, George Hopper, John E. Prestridge, Providence McAdams, Matthias
Dennis, Robert Melton, Solomon Smith and Abraham W. Jackson. These men were the
usual leaders of the church, mostly deacons, and were all slaveholders except Matthias
Dennis.

The resolution resulting from this committee's deliberations took the position one would
expect it to take. It characterized the circular letter of the Baptist abolitionist as attempting
to " . . . effect a revolution in society and discord among Christians . . . " The committee
resolved that " . . . the institution of slavery has existed since the days of Abraham . . . and
is recognized by the Constitution of the United States . . . We believe that neither Northern
fanatics or any other combinations have any right either moral or civil to interfere with that
institution." The committee went on to suggest that southern Baptists develop another
system to fund missionaries outside the Mission Board located in Boston and controlled by
northerners. This controversy cooled down only to rise again four years later leading to the
formation of the Southern Baptist Convention in 1845.

From "Sketches from the Life of Charles Crow 1770-1845 by J. Hugh LeBaron, 1995. self published book.

[Buckeye_Democrat]

10. Methodists were strongly anti-slavery initially too, but...

... it's "interesting" how that position became more relaxed as it spread more throughout the South.

Many Methodists remained abolitionists, of course.

Makes me wonder what would've happened if the Quakers had similarly expanded as strongly in the South.

[csziggy]

11. Charles Crow's wife was from a Quaker family

Sara Harlan's ancestors bought land from William Penn and arrive din Pennsylvania in 1682 - before Penn got there. The branch she descended from, though, was not as pacifist as the Quakers liked. Her father, Aaron Harlan, left Pennsylvania by 1753 and only ten or so years later was one of the Regulators who objected to paying taxes without representation. (https://www.britannica.com/topic/Regulators-of-North-Carolina) So Aaron left the Quakers and later was a North Carolina militia man during the Revolution.

I think that happened to a lot of Quakers who moved South - they either left the Quaker Church during the Revolution, or left bowed to the local economy and became slave holders. Aaron Harlan did not own slaves according to the records we have, but his daughter did not seem to object to her husband and children being slaveholders.

[Buckeye_Democrat]

15. Many of my colonial ancestors lived in PA and...

... the surrounding area. And one of them was a very early Quaker living on Long Island, which not even the nearby Dutch in their religious-tolerant "New Netherlands" colony easily tolerated.

I shudder to think what might've happened if they'd ever moved deep into the South instead of a general westward direction. They might've become more tolerant of those norms in the South too, or even felt compelled to participate in order to "compete" in the marketplace.

[csziggy]

16. Yes, my husband has Quaker ancestors who took the Northern route

And ended up in the Midwest, Minnesota to be exact. They were much more liberal throughout their history than my Quakers who moved South. One even moved to one of the states to fight the compromise over slavery - Missouri or Kansas, I think.

His family was Universalist Unitarian while mine was Baptist and Presbyterian (Southern variety) - quite a difference!

[Buckeye_Democrat]

19. That whole period should serve as a warning against...

... the "Libertarian" ideas -- in the modern USA meaning of it -- about free markets. Once exploitation gets a foothold, markets can cause it to keep spreading. And it finally took government action, and a very deadly Civil War, to try to reverse course.

Today, we have business owners who complain they can't compete if they pay their workers more. Well, sure, that makes sense if the government allows that owner's competitors to terribly underpay their labor!

And several of those business owners would gladly pay their labor NOTHING if it was legal. Governments must at least set some basic moral guidelines, obviously.

[Tanuki]

12. Interesting... thank you!

[csziggy]

14. I've grown up with this history

My Mom was big into family history and actually provided materials to Mr. LeBaron for his Sketches. It was hard to realize during the period of the Civil Rights Act and desegregation that my ancestors were directly responsible for so much of the abuse that made those necessary. I am so proud of my mother for leaving that tradition and leaving the Southern Baptist Church - many of her ancestors were ministers as well as both her brothers. But she was a much more fair minded person than her brothers and wanted to live a different life.

[hunter]

5. What can I do to help them on their way?

[ShazzieB]

6. I skimmed through it.

It's of interest to me because I grew up in that denomination. Back before the religious right came along and everything got all political. I was heading in a different direction by the time I finished high school, but I still have fond memories of the church my family attended when I was a child, because it was warm and loving and I felt safe and comfortable there.

Of course it was completely segregated, but so was everything else in my world back then (1950s and early 1960s), and I didn't know anything else, at least until my family moved to Illinois in 1962.

Memories or no memories, I'm glad I got out of that type of fundamentalist Christianity when I did. I would have left anyway, as soon as they started telling me how to vote, but fortunately for me, I was already long gone before that happened.

[Buckeye_Democrat]

7. Yep, and it's their frequent Dominionist attitudes...

... about government which galls me the most.

I'd feel the same way about Catholics if they tried to place our government under the thumb of the Pope, like in old Europe, but nearly none of them behave that way anymore.

All of the superstitious thinking irks me somewhat, but it's the people who try to impose it on others who really draw my ire!

[SharonAnn]

13. The Catholics want to place government under the Opus Dei cult.

[Blue Owl]

8. Satan will welcome his own with open arms

[NBachers]

17. They are leaving the Church and filling the graveyards at an accelerating pace.

[Progressive Jones]

18. It's a sick death cult bent on bringing about "The End Times" so they can meet Jesus in the sky.

These are very dangerous people. They have to be prevented from controlling our government and our society.
I'm glad so many are seeing the light.

[vercetti2021]

20. It needs to die

These people are far from being anywhere near good people. They are awful humans that love control and power.