‘Take the Ship’: Conservatives Aim to Commandeer Southern Baptists
…an ultraconservative populist uprising of pastors from Louisiana to California threatening to overtake the country’s largest Protestant denomination.
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Like the Trump movement within the Republican Party, a populist groundswell within the already conservative evangelical denomination is trying to install an anti-establishment leader who could wrench the church even further to the right… For three days [next week at their convention] thousands of delegates known as “messengers” — most of them white men — will fight over race, sex and ultimately the future of evangelical power in the United States.
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Russell Moore, the denomination’s influential head of ethics and public policy, left on June 1. The popular author and speaker Beth Moore, who is not related to Mr. Moore, announced in March that she is no longer a Southern Baptist, citing the “staggering” disorientation of seeing the denomination’s leaders support Donald J. Trump, and lamenting its treatment of women. Some conservatives triumphantly celebrated both departures.
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The rebellion in the Southern Baptist Convention both reflects and forecasts what is going on in broader society and the Republican Party, said Jemar Tisby, assistant director of narrative and advocacy at the Boston University Center for Antiracist Research.
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The denomination has about 14.5 million members but has been steadily shrinking for the past decade. In 2014, about 85 percent of Southern Baptists were white, 6 percent were Black and 3 percent were Latino, according to the Pew Research Center.
Southern Baptists split from their northern counterparts in 1845 in support of slavery…the denomination repudiated its role in slavery in the 1990s…
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The Conservative Baptist Network, an increasingly influential group founded last year, released a recent video urging Baptists to “stop the drift” by coming to Nashville.
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[In] audio recordings of meetings [among leaders]…debating how to handle [sexual] abuse [claims]…another high-placed leader, Ronnie Floyd, sa[id] his priority was not to worry about survivor reactions but rather to “preserve the base.” (In a statement, Mr. Floyd apologized and said his remarks were mischaracterized.)
