In the shocking passage of a resolution, Southern Baptists slap down MAGA Christian nationalism.

[lees1975]

https://signalpress.blogspot.com/2024/06/in-shocking-passage-of-resolution.html

Meeting in Indianapolis, Indiana, about 10,000 delegates representing the 45,000 churches of the Southern Baptist Convention came up with a couple of huge surprises that were somewhat unexpected, defying predictions of this author about the outcomes from their two-day convention meeting. I'm still looking over the media reports, both secular and Baptist, checking for insights and explanations into what is clearly a move away from the influence of Christian Fundamentalism, rooted mainly in independent Baptist congregations (think Jerry Falwell) and from the Christian nationalism that has blended itself into the MAGA movement of the GOP.

Some of the arguments put forth by those who were seeking to alter the resolution proposed by the Southern Baptists' resolutions committee are based on false assumptions and mis-interpretations of what Baptists consider to be inspired scripture. They were infused with the rhetoric of the heretical Christian nationalist movements, and lacked supporting quotes from Jesus or any of his Apostles. They also represent the influence of Trumpism, and the MAGA cult's views. Trump himself has rejected the premise of Christian conversion for himself, but has set a system in place to use it for his own political purposes. Those within Evangelical Christianity who hold this view are demonstrating a very stilted and distorted view of the Christian gospel, ignoring the fact that there's no support or suggestion that Christianity be linked to political power.

The leadership of the Southern Baptist Convention is to be commended for recognizing this creeping, illegitimate threat to its own religious liberty, and to acknowledging free will expression of one's conscience as a gift from God. The rhetoric in the arguments made against this resolution during the convention sessions is clearly influenced by MAGA politics. The passage of this resolution is as strong a statement against Christian nationalism and in support of religious liberty as Baptists have come up with for a while now, shows that there may be quite a few more Evangelical pastors and church leaders, who make up the majority of the messenger body at a Southern Baptist convention meeting, who are not part of the MAGA cult than we might think.

[brewens]

1. Bullshit and too late! They are only seeing backlash and know it will get worse. They were fine with all this

Christin nationalist crap until they saw it wasn't going to fly. Now they just want to try and cut their losses. Hopefully they keep emptying their churches out.

[lees1975]

6. Christian nationalism has gained a foothold among Southern Baptists because of right wing politics

and the influence of the Fundamentalism of the 1920's that brought about interpretations of the Bible based on King James English, and without historical or cultural context to understand the language.

One of my regular assignments to seniors in high school in my civics classes was to have them point to all of the evidence they could find, in the Constitution, Declaration of Independence, and in the commentary written down and left behind from the speeches and books written about America's foundational principles that were authored by the founders, that they intended for the United States to be a Christian nation. Those students who get on the ball and get going with these kinds of assignments would be at my desk in just one or two days, complaining that, while there were some expectations and references to having some kind of state religion, there was almost universal opposition to doing so.

Then, of course, I'd have a handful of angry parents to deal with to whom, in most cases, the truth didn't matter. And that explains a lot of what is going on now.

[GreenWave]

2. Time to binge watch?

[Aristus]

3. Interesting that they're meeting in Indiana.

Indiana is the South in all but location.

[lees1975]

5. They met in California two years ago.

They first met in Indiana in 1992. But their meetings are not restricted to the South. Over the last two decades they've met in Indianapolis 3 times, in Phoenix 3 times, St. Louis, Baltimore, Columbus, and Anaheim, all outside the south, and in 2027 they are meeting in Salt Lake City.

When they met in Las Vegas in 1989, over 20,000 delegates showed up. The average since 2000 is abot 7,000.

[FakeNoose]

4. I don't want preachers telling me how to vote ... nor do I want politicians telling me how to pray

Is that too much to ask?

[Elessar Zappa]

7. Traditionally,

Baptists have been big proponents of separation of church and state. The reason why is because when they formed, the Anglican Church was entwined with the English crown and it led to persecution of the Baptists and other groups.

[Scruffy1]

8. Its just a word salad.

They put a little lipstick on the pig. Still fascists and misogynist bastards.

[lees1975]

9. Many of them are still fascists, Trumpers, bigots, and ignorant of Christian truth.

But at this point, reading between the lines, some leaders in this particular denomination are growing alarmed at the fact that the greatest loss of membership and attendance in the denomination's history has occurred directly in correlation with the rise of Trump and the MAGA cult. All across American Evangelicalism, there has been a sharp drop in the participation in church worship services each week, and on church membership rolls. The Southern Baptists try to glance past their statistics, but they've lost 3.5 million members out of a peak membership of 16.2 million, since 2006, and a whopping 2.5 million of those have left since, you guessed it, 2016. I've always found it interesting that their membership is way higher than the actual weekly attendance in the churches, which, until 2016, was somewhere around 5.5 million. That fell to 3.8 million in 2021, though some of that was a result of COVID, and it bounced back to 4.3 million this past year. But both of those figures are getting close to a 25% decline in the Trump years. They don't see the direct correlation, but almost anyone objectively observing it outside the denomination does. And it's consistent with the declines in the number of self-identifying white Evangelicals in virtually every other denomination, as well as among non-denominational churches.