The Blue Voice

Monday, June 12, 2006

The Southern Baptists are electing a new president

The Southern Baptist Convention (SBC) is having another internal contest over who should be the next president of the SBC: Southern Baptists Prepare for Presidential Showdown Christian Post/AP 06/11/06.

Why should anyone but Southern Baptists care, you may ask?

Jimmy Carter explains that at some length in his excellent book Our Endangered Values: America's Moral Crisis (2005). Carter is interviewed on the topic in Mother Jones 06/02/06 issue and addresses that general question:

Mother Jones: In your book, you talk about the intersection in recent years of religious and political fundamentalism. What is the origin of this merger?

Jimmy Carter:, I think it was in 1979, when future fundamentalists took control of the Southern Baptist Convention, which is a very important religious and political factor in this country. After that, the Southern Baptist Convention had almost diametrically opposite basic principles than it had previously followed, and there's been an evolution within the Convention toward a more and more rigid and strict creed that embodies the fundamentalist principles that I mention in the book.

Now, I don't think there's any doubt that the elementary principle of fundamentalism has existed for ages, and it obviously permeates other religions as well, such as Islam and Hinduism and others. But this trend continued and, parallel to it, there was in effect a merger of the fundamentalist Christian leaders and the more conservative elements of the Republican Party. And for the last 25 years or so, that merger has become more pronounced and more evident.

The "moderate" campaign in this week's contest ("moderate" is a dirty word in SBC politics) is Frank Page.

The Christian Post/AP report says:

The differences among the three candidates may appear insignificant to outsiders, since all oppose abortion and gay marriage and believe the Bible is the literal word of God.

But the areas in which they differ — including how much money from an individual church's offerings should go to the SBC, and how the denomination should handle internal disagreements — are indicative of larger forces dividing the nation's 16.3 million Southern Baptists. ...

[Frank] Page also is at the forefront of a group of pastors, some from a younger generation than the current SBC leadership, who have stirred controversy with their calls for more open dialogue on administrative and theological issues within the convention.

They quote Page supporter Wade Burleson, who has (of course!) his own blog:

In an e-mail interview, Burleson ... said the SBC has long been home to disagreements over doctrine, styles of worship and church structure.

"What is new is the attempted suppression of any disagreement or principled dissent," he said. "The idea that Southern Baptists must walk lockstep with each other is contrary to Baptist history, Baptist polity and Baptist reality."

This is polite talk for saying that the dominant leadership is authoritarian and narrow-minded.

Burleson's blog is Grace and Truth to You.

In the interview linked above, Carter also says:

MJ.com: The definition of fundamentalism you provide in the book includes the unwillingness to cooperate or negotiate with others. Where do you see that tendency as most dangerous at the moment?

JC: The danger comes when those kinds of principles are applied on the international scene. That brought about a whole gamut of things. One, obviously, is the unprecedented preemptive war that President Bush has declared to be a policy of our country. Another is the total abandonment, and often the derogation, of every nuclear-arms agreement that has been negotiated by previous presidents, beginning in the time of Dwight Eisenhower.

At home, it brought about the deterioration of our commitment to environmental quality. Another [effect] is the enormous preference that has been given in tax laws recently to the extremely rich at the expense of working-class and poorer people. Then there's the implied melding of science and religion, where even the president himself has expressed the opinion that religious beliefs should be taught in scientific classrooms. That's unprecedented. And there is a unique and special emphasis—which is a recent development too—within the religious community, an obsession with the condemnation of homosexuality. Now, in the bible homosexuality is condemned, but along with divorce and greed and callousness toward poor people. So its elevation to a highest priority among some religious groups has been very disturbing to me.

posted at 3:06:00 PM by Bruce Miller

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