by Sandy » Wed Jul 19, 2017 3:10 pm
Stephen, while you have, from time to time, found and posted some great articles which show how evangelicals and conservatives have completely abandoned any semblance of Christian faith and values in their support for Trump and his agenda, including the sanctity of human life, I think you're wasting cyberspace on attempts to reconstruct the history of the SBC conservative resurgence, and you're not hitting very well on the theme of their connections to the religious right, either to solicit help to gain and retain control of the denomination, or to use its influence on behalf of partisan politics.
Many of the players are now dead. Pressler is almost 90, and according to a friend of mine who attends the same church, has to be helped in and out of his car on the rare occasions he shows up for worship. He's no longer on the bench. Patterson is still around, but well past 70, and presides over the shriveled, depopulated, still shrinking Southwestern Seminary, which is now selling off physical assets to pay bills. Control of the SBC has shifted to a whole new lineup of leaders, starting with the selection of Frank Page as executive director, who have a whole different set of problems to deal with, mostly having to do with how to restore the SBC's relevance, and handle accelerating declines in attendance and membership. The SBC of the 60's and 70's was inevitably headed for the kind of conflict it experienced, because its educational institutions and some of its leaders tried to get too far ahead of where the membership was doctrinally and theologically, and it didn't really matter who, or how, the adjustment would come. None of that matters now, anyway, if it ever really did even back then. Outside of the people who lived and breathed "Southern Baptist life," it didn't matter and no one cared. Not even a lot of Southern Baptists did.
Until we moved up north, my wife and I had never been members of any other kind of church, other than a Baptist congregation that severed its ties with the SBC (but not the state convention or association) about a year before we moved away. We both went to state convention related colleges, and I graduated from Southwestern, so all of that denominational loyalty was ingrained, and difficult to get used to thinking in terms of belonging to a church of another denomination. Our membership in the Alliance church had run its course back during the fall, and as we've moved on, there hasn't been a thought given to finding and joining an SBC church.
Keep finding those articles which point to the hypocrisy and abandonment of values of those who claim to be Christians but who have bought into the empty, worldly philosophy of the Trump buffoon. Those are great. As far as ex-SBC stuff goes, trash it and go find a nice Methodist or Lutheran church to attend, or better yet, Society of Friends.
