by Sandy » Thu May 22, 2014 8:15 am
I've been reading Stephen's theories regarding the conservative resurgence in the SBC here for a long time. The evidence doesn't support his theories altogether, though there are a few accurate observations in them, here and there.
There's no way that the conservatives could have sustained long term control of the officers, and thus the key to trustee appointments, without a supportive majority in the churches. While only a small fraction, about 8-12%, of the churches in the convention are represented in any given year, over the course of a decade, according to the records between 1979 and 1989 (per the SBC annual report published by Lifeway), messengers from over 22,000 churches attended during that time. A significant majority of churches and the messengers they sent had to be informed, and in agreement with the aims of the new leadership in order to pull that off and sustain it over time. Worthen points this out, BTW.
As it turned out, by the facts, those within the SBC who were representative of the "other side" were a relatively small fragment of the membership. Even among the largest splinter group, CBF, which still has a substantial majority of churches within its ranks that support the SBC financially, the view that you represent is not held by the majority. It required repeated attendance by the same small clique of messengers year after year to keep control, and as long as there wasn't an organized effort among conservatives, they could hang on based on the provincial, backward way the convention operates. But once the conservatives pulled together, they were doomed.
Likening this to the way churches in Germany responded to Hitler is offensive, and is not even a reasonable comparison.