My mod/lib friends might appreciate this about SBC18

[William Thornton]

[Stephen Fox]

Is about to go up on this matter.
Look for it in a couple hours William, It's gonna be a doozey. Your name and Lee SAunders may be in it as well as a reference to SBC Voices and Rotten Theology.

A few minutes ago I was on the Facebook wall of Harvard PHD and Chattanooga bred Baptist Marie Griffith encouraging her to share my thoughts with Jon Meacham, Bush eulogist and biographer. We are about to get all the chickens home to roost.

Let's stay in touch and you counterblog as well cause somebody must get word to Jerry Vines and I am convinced he thinks more highly of you than he does me after our incident in 88 when he came over from Georgia to Roy Moore's church outside Gadsden.

[Stephen Fox]

Facebook wall.

Will see where it goes.

Also shared my blog with Marie Griffith who was written about the Parkland shooting as the faultline in america's faith community. Will see if that resonates with the new SBC president as framed in my blog. For certain if he takes up my reading list, he will end this year knowing more than he did say, last week.

[Haruo]

Thanks, William. Lots of mixed signals. But clearly "moderates" in SBC context doesn't mean the same thing it did in 1979. Of course, neither does anything else. Times have changed, and language with them. But it was heartening to see the moderate stance taken in resolutions on immigration and immigrants. I wonder if Trump took offense when Pence told the pastors in attendance that their pulpits and ministries were more significant that any that he or Trump might occupy or engage in.

[Tim Bonney]

Glad to hear of resolutions on immigration. Fellow Methodist Jeff Sessions is not too well liked right now by many of the rest of the UMC. Our Bishops released a statement this week calling for the ending of snatching children from their parents at the border. Sessions is actually in violation of the UMC Social Principles.

I’ve heard that some United Methodists are considering filing ecclesiastical charges against him. Lay people can be charged with violating the Discipline but seldom are and usually just leave the Church rather than be tried. So the act would be largely symbolic as a statement of extreme disapproval. Sessions seeking to use the Bible to argue for child imprisonment is not playing well in many Christian circles.

[Sandy]

An interesting choice of terms, there. Moderate in a secular political sense, perhaps. Theologically, maybe in that there is clearly a segment of the SBC that is a little bit further to the left than the complementarian leadership, or at least, the complementarian old guard.

Seems like what prompted the use of the term was what I would call a surprising negative reaction to the self-initiated campaign stump appearance of the VP. Trump's only real core constituency left is White Evangelicals. Lots of those in the SBC, clearly, white, from the South, past 60. But I've also seen reports, and heard from a friend who was there, that the minority representation was larger than usual, which would probably be expected in Dallas, in a state where the Latino and African American fellowship groups in the state conventions are larger than most state conventions outside the South. So while the SBC is an Evangelical denomination, it is not an all-white Evangelical denomination, and when you put Latinos, African Americans, and Asians into the mix, the percentage of Trump supporters falls quickly.

Christian denominations don't always work smoothly on a system of "majority rules." The older white crowd is still the majority, but it is certainly not the future.

[Tim Bonney]

[Haruo]

[Tim Bonney]

[Haruo]

[Haruo]

I think it helps that our Executive Minister ab initio was a woman, and that she has now retired and left her job to an Hispanic male, is helpful.

[Tim Bonney]

[JE Pettibone]

[Haruo]

Ed, I think you are writing as if I had written the words you ascribed correctly to Sandy and Tim, as well as my own. I didn't say anything about fear of immigrants, nor about the age of white male Baptists.

I'm not surprised that the consensus model hasn't caught on. And only part of the reason, I imagine, is related to entrenched white power issues.

[JE Pettibone]

[Haruo]

[Haruo]

I went to my first Korean church service yesterday. It was fun. I was the only non-Korean and the only non-Korean-speaking person present. A bunch of good praise songs (with the music on the screen! yay!) and my first chance to try to sing "Softly and tenderly" in Korean.