by Sandy » Fri Mar 30, 2018 3:49 pm
A couple of observations. One, this particular post has absolutely nothing to do with the New Baptist Covenant. So I took the reference to the NPR interview and moved it over to the thread on Baptist faith and practice, to which it seems more relevant.
Second, this particular topic area has become more of a place for Stephen to drop random topics than it is to discuss anything of relevance to the New Baptist Covenant, if there is, indeed, anything of relevance to discuss about it. From personal observation, the NBC, like so many other Baptist alternatives to the ministries and programs of the Southern Baptist Convention's good old days when the moderates were still in charge, has faded fast, and slipped into relative obscurity except for the few activists who got caught up in the original excitement and believed it would come to something more significant. Bill Clinton, who was a major, generating interest, has devoted most of his time to his own global initiative, the Clinton Foundation, which, in spite of the election time rhetoric, is quite successful, and is making a difference. I believe he is still a member of Immanuel Baptist Church in Little Rock, but has hung out with Methodists since his White House days. Jimmy Carter was the real Baptist face behind the NBC, which drew in the CBF moderates, the Alliance of Baptist liberals, a couple of state convention leaders and individuals here and there, and more or less put them in the same room with some of the more progressive African Americans. But Carter has had other interests, too, and age has slowed him down. The grand vision for some kind of Baptist unity, which was never realistic as long as more than half of the Baptists weren't interested, has become yet another tiny faction and organizational structure using terms like "unity in diversity," "productive dialogue" and "re-visioning" as self-descriptive, and is relatively obscure.
I would suggest changing the topic title to "New Baptist Covenant and Miscellaneous Baptist Minutia" so that some of Stephen's topics have a place where they are relevant.