Member-only story
Southern Baptists Give Signs of Hope in Reelecting Their Current President
It’s a rare case of good news for the denomination
It’s been a year of bad news for the Southern Baptist Convention (as it has for many denominations); just a little over a year ago, a bombshell report exposed a decades-long cover-up of sexual abuse by SBC pastors and other staff members across the country, and just last month a report from Lifeway Research showed an alarming decline in their membership (Paul Walker wrote about that issue here). And that doesn’t even touch on the internal battles going on within the denomination between the far right and more moderate members/churches.
That last line may surprise many of you, but there are indeed moderate voices in the SBC that have not succumbed to a MAGA mentality. They are still conservative, but conservative in the way the word was defined pre-Donald Trump, back when we could disagree on important issues and while having civil debates over those issues still remain friends. The presidential election yesterday at the SBC’s annual convention showed that those sane voices have gained in strength over the past year as well.
Incumbent president Bart Barber was elected to a second 1-year term yesterday with 68% of the vote of convention attendees (called messengers) to 32% for more…
