The 2024 Annual Meeting of the Southern Baptist Convention (SBC) looms right around the corner. Officially, it begins tomorrow. However, SBC leaders have been busy setting the stage for it for the past week. The day beforehand, as well, Southern Baptists hold a very special magic ritual. In Christianese, they Read more
Yet again, Southern Baptist Convention (SBC) leaders have revealed that with their sex abuse crisis, the rot goes all the way down to the roots and all way up the ladder of power. Recently, federal prosecutors discovered that several SBC seminary leaders deliberately concealed information about one of their students Read more
Recently, the Southern Baptist Convention (SBC) released a long report that functions as a referendum on their Conservative Resurgence. Most SBC-watchers already knew it was a failure, but now it’s official knowledge. Here’s why it was a slap in the face to that hijacking movement—along with some speculation about why Read more
Evangelicals like to pretend that evangelism is just a formality they perform. They think their god strong-arms people into belief, merely utilizing the evangelist as a conduit. But nothing could be further from the truth, as one denomination reveals in a lengthy writeup. Southern Baptists talk a big game about Read more
Because I’ve been following the SBC’s doings for years, I can spot places where things don’t line up at all. And this year, something is definitely not lining up.
Every year, the Southern Baptist Convention (SBC) holds elections for several important offices. Perhaps the highest-profile of these is that of the denomination’s president. As we close in on their 2024 Annual Meeting, five SBC leaders have tossed their hats into the Thunderdome to fight for that role. Five (or Read more
In a recent Baptist Press opinion post (archive), a Southern Baptist asserts the absolute necessity of his tribe’s product—but he keeps misspelling the name of it as ‘Jesus’ and other similarly-beloved evangelical buzzwords. This post illustrates a singular truth about his end of Christianity: Southern Baptists wouldn’t be able to talk Read more
Frank Page has a decades-long and well-established history of not wanting to investigate sex abuse in Southern Baptist churches or holding sex abusers fully accountable for their crimes. Then he got himself embroiled in a scandal of his own.
But never fear: Almost immediately, Page got a pastoring job in an SBC church. But the story wasn’t over.
This analysis contains some information we don’t usually see out of the Southern Baptist Convention, including an egregious example of goalpost-shifting to avoid dealing with the metric most indicative of decline.
Four high-profile Southern Baptist Convention group leaders quietly filed an amicus brief opposing a sex abuse victim’s lawsuit in Kentucky. This lawsuit had nothing to do with them or the SBC, but if successful it could drastically alter the scope and number of lawsuits the SBC faces from similar victims.