Of Mice and Ministers: Southern Baptists and the State of American Christianity, Part 1

The Berean Gadfly's been neglected for many months now. I sincerely apologize for that. The demands of law school were all-consuming for much of the past 6 months. I will post regularly for at least the rest of the summer, and we'll re-evaluate the time commitment after that.

"That's gay!" When I was in middle school, it was the one-size-fits-all insult. The kid in school you didn't like? Gay. Algebra teacher assigned a ton of homework? Gay. Your favorite punk band sold out to the man? Flaming homosexuals. In the sixth, seventh, and eighth grade we had our own version of the Salem witch trials, only the subject of our inquisition was anything that "batted for the other team." There were gay things under every rock and tree. It was always especially bad at PE, when physical prowess was the only sure-fire proof that you were straight. The poor kids at school who were just bad at sports got called "gay" more often than Elton John.

Fortunately, when I entered high school, my insult repertoire grew enormously, as did my understanding of how sensitive a topic sexuality is. I've often wondered, though, if many in leadership at the Southern Baptist Convention ever quite moved on from middle school: prominent SBC ministers have made plenty of headlines over the past few decades for things like accusing tele-tubbies of being queer or starting a new boycott of Disney every other day for some new non-hetero infraction. The news media has never failed to pick up on one of these stories, and over the years there's been plenty of opportunities for journalists to make Christianity out to be a never-ending scene from my eighth grade gym class.

I thought about all of these things this afternoon when I read a story MSNBC has posted on their website: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/31447763/ It seems there's a decline in Southern Baptist membership. In addition, stats like "new baptisms" are down. This is leading to a bit of an identity crisis in the nation's largest protestant denomination. Some members are wanting to eschew politics, others want to stay the course, still others just want to invest more money in foreign missions.

In some respects, the SBC is just late to the party: Episcopalian, Presbyterian, and Methodists denominations have been in decline for decades. But in other respects, things are different for the Baptists: this wasn't supposed to happen to them. Baptist thinkers such as Al Mohler for years have claimed that the decline in the so-called main line denominations was due to liberal theology. The reasoning went something like "if people don't see their own sinfulness, they won't see a need to keep coming to church." If only Baptists stayed faithful to orthodoxy, they would continue to grow. Thus in the 80's and 90's there was a purge: moderates and liberals were forced out of SBC leadership as Mohler forced them out of professorships at Southern Seminary in Kentucky, the denomination's flagship ministry school. Things were looking good for the ol' boys down south.

So what happened?

Continued tomorrow.

Urbi et Orbi,
TBG