SBC avoiding an alt-right train wreck

[William Thornton]

While I was at the convention this year, I don't know that I have much insight into the matter. This is complicated in a parliamentary way but not so much on the core issue. Baptist Press reported it .

The SBC has an app for it's annual meetings which includes a button for "social media." I'm not much for Twitter but that button on the app gave users an unfiltered stream of tweets and before the convention the stream was dominated by vile racist white supremacists. This is what many younger and minority SBCers saw as the alt-right and were aghast that the SBC Resolutions Committee did not report out the previously submitted resolution against it. My conjecture is that older, white SBCers may have seen the label "alt-right" as including a broader segment of political conservatives and Trump supporters. The RC said as much ( without mentioning Trump, along with a couple of other reasons) in explaining why they didn't report the original resolution out to the floor.

Once the committee made that decision there was a parliamentary hurdle, a two-thirds vote, to overcome to get it to the floor of the convention. Twice votes were taken to do this and it failed twice to reach the required super-majority, not because any of the 5,000 or so messengers favored the alt-right but rather because most accepted the explanation of the Resolutions Committee that the resolution submitted was unnecessary, overly broad, and poorly worded. Once the committee and other leaders were convinced that the convention was headed for a train wreck on this they quickly moved to pass the matter. The RC chair was unusually candid in apologizing for the mess.

Resolutions at the SBC annual meeting are just opinions but are important in the sense that they are watched, as much as anything else that happens at the yearly confab, by the secular media and public. The main job of the Resolutions Committee is to be sure we don't screw up with them. They almost failed on this one.

[Sandy]

So, the SBC has a means to allow for an "unfiltered stream of tweets" prior to the convention conducting its business? Not a bad idea, since the appointed committees and officers are virtually all-powerful.

Is that social media button only available to messengers registered for the convention, to all Southern Baptists, or to anyone who happens to get on the website? That might be something that needs to be changed in the future. Since the SBC has some leadership that identifies with the political far right, having a means for conversation about convention business prior to the meeting might not be a good thing.

I tend to think of the alt-right as a political organization of vile, racist, white supremacists. The term indicates their organization into some kind of political structure, but the whole philosophical foundation is based on white supremacy. Trump is clearly part of it, having invited several recognized alt-right leaders into high positions on the White House staff, his last campaign manager was a key alt-right propagandist, his philosophy and his actions are openly sympathetic to them, and openly hostile to their opposition, and he's probably a major financier of their work, though we won't know that until we see his tax returns. Why wouldn't the resolutions committee, instead of hiding behind criticism of Dr. McKissic's proposal as "unnecessary, overly broad and poorly worded," immediately undertake to make sure the SBC wasn't associated with the alt-right in any way, shape or form?

I do have to say, that at least the resolutions committee, and convention leadership, listened, and then instead of stonewalling or ignoring the issue, dealt with it to the satisfaction of the messengers. That's not happened in the SBC in a long, long time.

[William Thornton]

It's not a matter of permission. The app just links the feed for the annual meeting: #sbc17

[Stephen Fox]

William Thornton wasn't on panel yesterday on 1a Program on NPR

http://the1a.org/shows/2017-06-19/big-t ... st-history

Serious, the give and take between him and the Duke Scholar, almost certain to be collegial with MOlly Worthen, woulda been fascinating.

[Stephen Fox]

http://www.thealabamabaptist.org/sbc-me ... -concerns/

Not much discussion to date on their facebook wall where link to my blog is posted

Also notice the 255 comments and counting on the 1a site I linked.

[Stephen Fox]

Not Christena Cleveland who was on panel but a facebook friend.

Wille Tee, Sandy and others will especially like his opening about My " wide ranging vision" which provokes "speechless" ness.

[quote] Stephen, your wide raging vision leaves me at a loss for words. All I can say is Danny Akin's last minute phone call and Russ Moore's guiding hand saved the SBC from a PR fiasco. A group of mostly white men saying to a black pastor, "No!" doesn't look good. And more than that it isn't good. Dwight McKissic's resolution referenced the curse of Ham, which is, spoken or unspoken, the theological justification of racism. They passed a watered down version that found the Hamite theology too hot to handle [quote]

[Stephen Fox]

http://religiondispatches.org/black-pas ... slam-dunk/

Video has a panel with McKissic

And history of Barrett Duke and Southern Trustees in the Honeycutt era may add value to this moment

[JE Pettibone]

[Tim Bonney]

Are you hoping Ed that they were kicked out because they were gay and Southern Baptist or because they were gay and not-Southern Baptist?

[JE Pettibone]

[William Thornton]

This is a BNG piece. I don't know that it is completely factual. They were members of the group that showed up to protest.

[Sandy]

The article states that they were registered as guests, and had received permission in advance to do so, and weren't protesting. There doesn't appear to be any perspective there from the convention leadership. I can't imagine, really, that anyone would be booted from the SBC just because they had been identified as being gay. I'd like to hear the other side.

Unfortunately, I will probably not be able to join in this discussion for a while. I'm off on a mission trip early in the morning, and won't be able to visit the board until the end of next week.