The Southern Baptist Convention 2021: Here and Gone

Just a quick note concerning the 2021 Southern Baptist Convention in Nashville, Tennessee.

While it’s obvious there remains both a serious and major division among the 40,000+- churches (nobody can offer an official number, unfortunately) affiliated with the Southern Baptist Convention (SBC), the meeting held in Nashville was relatively quiet given the large showing of messengers (17K+), indeed the largest perhaps in the last two decades at least. By “relatively quiet” I mean there were no riots, little, if any genuine rudeness from any person I recall, and the floor activity (speeches, motions, amendments, etc) was verbalized almost always respectfully.

The presidential election indicated just how much the SBC has changed over the last 5-7 years. Al Mohler, for example, who, less than a decade ago, was hands down the single most influential Southern Baptist, could not garner enough votes to survive the first round in a run-off election between himself and three other candidates. The powerful pulpiteer, H. B. Charles, nominated Mohler, but glibly offered what some describe as a I-wish-I’d-never-agreed-to-nominate-this-man-for-SBC-president speech. Thus, it looks like an SBC icon who could have been elected by acclamation a few years ago will now be placed on the dreaded shelf of I-used-to-be as other power-brokers can perhaps now find little use for him.

The two nominees who made the cut–Georgia’s Mike Stone and Alabama’s Ed Litton–went toe to toe with Litton edging out Stone for the presidency 52._% to 47._%. Stone represented what may be called, for lack of a better term, the more traditionally-minded Southern Baptists while Litton similarly represented the more progressively-minded Southern Baptists. Thus, the presidential vote tallied may indicate, perhaps more accurately than any other single measure, where the convention of churches place their allegiance. And the way it appears, the SBC is roughly split down the middle with the edge going toward the progressively-minded Southern Baptists (Note: it’s not to be concluded that the election results determine where the allegiance definitively is. It must not be forgotten that only a sprinkling of messengers who could potentially be present ever are present at any SBC annual meeting).

With interest some young, progressively-minded Southern Baptists apparently view Litton’s election, coupled with a few other issues they interpret interpret as “wins” enough to imply that the 47._% of Southern Baptists that showed up to vote for Mike Stone as SBC president to be the “divisive group.” For example, Tennessee’s progressively-minded Southern Baptist pastor, Grant Gaines, suggests that Stone supporters (47._%) are a “divisive group of people”:

I want everyone following Timothy’s thread to hear this. It is not divisive to rebuke a divisive group of people. Right now that’s what the CBN is. If left un-rebuked you will continue to divide our convention. I won’t stand by silently and let that happen.

— Grant Gaines (@DGrantGaines) June 17, 2021

The strange illogical nature of such a “rebuke” remains apparent and certainly merits no substantial reply. It hardly follows that almost half of any collective gathering constitutes the “divisive group.”

What the election does seem to indicate is a split in the SBC–a real split…a significant split.

And a significant split should surprise no one. It’s been simmering for years.

Personally I see little, if any, way to compromise on some of key issues of cooperation among Southern Baptists.

To this, progressively-minded Southern Baptists supporting Litton might just suggest, “Then why don’t you get out?” to which the traditionally-minded Southern Baptists supporting Stone might rightly reply, “Back at cha, dude. We were here first.”