The Southern Baptists are fighting over a resolution condemning the so-called alt-right.
A national meeting of Southern Baptists will consider condemning the political movement known as the “alt-right” amid an uproar over the denomination’s commitment to confronting prejudice.
Leaders of the faith group initially refused to take up a proposal that they repudiate the political group that emerged dramatically during the U.S. presidential election, mixing racism, white nationalism and populism. Barrett Duke, a Southern Baptist leader who led a committee that decided which resolutions should be considered for a vote, said the resolution as originally written contained inflammatory and broad language “potentially implicating” conservatives who do not support the “alt-right” movement.
But the decision caused a backlash online and at the gathering in Phoenix from Southern Baptists and other Christians, especially African-American evangelicals.
Hoist on their own petard, et cetera, et cetera. Couldn’t happen to a more deserving bunch.
It needs to be borne in mind that ‘Southern Baptist’ is not merely a theological/denominational identification; it is more significant as a tribal/cultural identification. I very much doubt, in fact, that the average Southern Baptist could even identify the denominations three most important distinctives. But that sweet old lady who hasn’t missed a Sunday since that glorious day 65-years ago when she was saved? You don’t, you mustn’t, ever say a word against her — and never mind that as a young wife and at Pastor Bubba’s urging she carried picnic baskets of sandwiches to the brave menfolk standing at roadside and throwing rocks at the black freedom marchers.
Every church in the south has a few; they are cultural icons — and the resolution is a slap at her, a slap at a failed and dying culture.
The (amended) resolution will probably pass, and when it does the denomination will probably shrink some more as old white people mutter and shake their heads and complain, with some justification, that the denomination has left them. If it doesn’t pass, the denomination diminishes the likelihood of ever attracting the non-white believers they so desperately need if they are to survive in a more ethnically diverse America.
And hanging over all that, of course, is that most millennials have too much sense in the first place to believe the SBCs Jack and the Beanstalk make-believe.
I don’t mind admitting that I enjoy watching their slow-motion disintegration. The Southern Baptist Convention was founded on an evil ideal, and has never authored anything but misery. Good riddance.