#SBC24: The Old Guard takes another big loss (but so do human rights)

The 2024 Annual Meeting of the Southern Baptist Convention (SBC), or #SBC24, just ended. Its attendees, called messengers, had a full plate this year: drilling down harder on the red herring of fetal personhood, condemning churches that dare to hire women as pastors, and generally posturing at each other about who’s the most Jesusy of all. They also held their normal elections, which has presented another stunning loss for their hardline Old Guard faction. Let’s check out what the SBC was up to this week—and explore why it matters to outsiders.

(SBC Faction Guide: Officially, neither faction has an official name. The Old Guard are hardliners to the core. They think the SBC’s civil war, the Conservative Resurgence, didn’t go nearly far enough. Their solution to the SBC’s sex abuse megascandal is to ignore it and Jesus harder—and take over the SBC/archive, of course! Their hated enemies, the Pretend Progressives, act like they totally want to reform the denomination so sex abuse becomes less likely. However, given how their leaders behave outside of messengers’ eyeshot, it’s clear that they don’t really want to make any changes to the denomination/archive.)

(From Segue: the “Dark Academia” fashion trend/archive; Info about the Nicene Creed/archive; Time is a flat circle.)

(This post went live on Patreon on 6/14/2024. Its audio ‘cast lives there too and is available now!)

Setting up the Thunderdome for #SBC24

Like almost every single flavor of Christianity, the SBC faces a great number of challenges. For decades, they’ve been in a freefall decline. And since the pandemic, that decline has only worsened.

So this year, the messengers at #SBC24 have a lot to talk about. But they don’t have nearly as much as they should.

Right now, these are the biggest issues in the denomination—as SBC leaders present them. I’ll add in parentheses how each faction responds to the issue (OG = Old Guard; PP = Pretend Progressives):

• Women pastors
  (OG: 100000% against. PP: Trying hard to avoid the question, or saying a new explicit rule forbidding it isn’t really necessary.)
• Sex abuse
  (OG: What sex abuse crisis? Just Jesus harder. PP: Vote for us and we’ll totally fix this.)
• How to handle the SBC’s decline
  (OG: Jesus harder, plant more churches, push harder for personal evangelism. PP: Deal with the scandals first.)
• SBC-lings’ ever-growing immersion in extremist right-wing politics
  (OG: What? Who says? We’re not extremist enough yet! PP: We need to be nicer as we try to rip people’s human rights away. That’ll totally work.)

What doesn’t make it into the #SBC24 Thunderdome, however

This list includes some notable omissions, of course. These are problems that the SBC’s leaders cannot fix without making absolutely huge changes to how the denomination operates, so everyone’s just ignoring them.

For a start, racism is a big issue. It always has been, too. But after a big kerfuffle over it around 2021, SBC leaders began ignoring it. I can see why. SBC leaders know well that if they want to stabilize their decline, they need to look outside the white population of America and the world. Thus, the last thing they want to do is call attention to their incredibly awful racism problem.

As well, we should see pastoral burnout on that list. For many years, it’s been a big problem. It only got worse with the pandemic. In the 2024 Book of Reports (p. 89), we see mention of there being more pastors leaving ministry than entering it—and of pastors skewing ever-older. But this issue is absent too.

How to handle conspiracy theories should most definitely be on that list as well. Ever since the pandemic began, the sheer gullibility, rage, and belligerence of evangelicals has become a serious division line in churches. But I can see why it’s not on the list. Once someone learns how to critically evaluate conspiracy theories, they might just turn those newfound skills on their own indoctrinations.

You’ll hear about other political concerns that don’t rise to the level of dealbreaking black-or-white issues in the SBC. I’ve seen both factions’ members advocate for greater financial transparency, for example. That’s fine. It’s perfectly safe for either faction’s members to want that.

Six men enter the #SBC24 Thunderdome. One man leaves.

First and foremost, #SBC24 elections were lit. This year, six people ran. We talked about five of them here, but a sixth guy, Dan Spencer, threw his hat into the ring.

The SBC’s factions don’t have official names. Moreover, their members and candidates don’t tend to announce who their cronies are. As a result, it can be difficult sometimes to place SBC leaders. One must gauge their positions on the current critical issues in the denomination, who their associates are, and who supports them.

On May 29, Baptist and Reflector offered a Q&A article featuring all six candidates (archive). Articles like this offer about as close to a faction identification card as we’re ever going to get. Once you see the patterns for each faction, you’ll know exactly where to slot a given SBC leader.

• David Allen: Odiously Old Guard. He doesn’t mention a word about the sex abuse crisis—aside from whining that it results in a “lack of trust” in pastors’ leadership and pastors getting “pestered to death with a constant caustic spirit of unverified accusations.” Also takes the Old Guard party line on all other issues. The SBC’s systemic cover-up of that abuse—and the utter dysfunction required for that cover-up to operate for decades—doesn’t matter at all to him.
• Bruce Frank: I’d initially pegged this guy as a Pretend Progressive. However, the Q&A sounds a lot more Old Guard. He spent a long time campaigning for sex abuse reforms (archive), but he whispers not a word of this in his Q&A. Instead, he gives answers designed for the Old Guard’s itching ears.
• Mike Keahbone: Absolutely Pretend Progressive. Possibly one of the very few SBC leaders who walks the talk. Lowkey, I kinda like him.
• Jared Moore: Old Guard to his fingertips. He does want financial transparency, but again, that’s not really a big dealbreaker issue in the denomination. However, he is rabidly anti-abortion/pro-forced-birth. Who wants to bet he also rabidly opposes all the stuff that actually works to lower women’s need for abortion care, like easily obtained contraception, less stigmatization of sexually-active women, more support for laws protecting women from rape and domestic violence, and comprehensive sex education in schools?
• Clint Pressley: Overall, Pretend Progressive. In recent news, his church discovered that a well-respected, longtime member and youth volunteer of theirs was sexually abusing his daughter. They handled it about as well as anyone could ask, including fully disclosing the situation to the congregation. But he doesn’t talk about the sex abuse crisis at all in the Q&A. It all makes one wonder if some sort of agreement got made here to make him more palatable to the Old Guard. If so, their big names clearly hate him regardless, as we’ll see shortly.
• Dan Spencer: The sixth candidate I mentioned. I suspect he’s Pretend Progressive, simply because of his negative position regarding the new explicit rule proposal about female pastors (the “Law Amendment”). The Old Guard’s been using it at as an in-group marker and purity litmus test.

So this year, it seems like we got an equal mix of factions.

PS: Here’s what Bing’s AI did when I asked when the last time was that the SBC had six presidential candidates:

I had to pussyfoot around the question to get it to answer. Eventually, it gave me a link (archive) saying the last time this happened was in 2008. I’m not surprised.

How the election went at #SBC24

On June 11, messengers voted on the full slate of six candidates. As has been happening for years now, none of those six received 50% or more of the votes. Pressley earned the most votes there, but even that win was a bare quarter of ballots cast.

So the SBC held a runoff for the three who got the most votes out of 8,970 total cast: Pressley (25.52%), Spencer (17.67%), and Allen (21.14%).

That runoff eliminated Spencer by an extremely narrow margin of less than 1% of the votes (30.46%). Out of 8537 total votes, Pressley got 39.01% of them, while Spencer got 30.46%.

In the runoff, Pressley ran against Allen. A total of 7562 ballots were cast. There, Pressley won with 56.12% of the votes. Spencer got 43.71% of them.

So Clint Pressley will be the President of the SBC for the next year at least.

It is terribly interesting to me that with each set of votes, we have fewer and fewer ballots getting cast. Perhaps the people voting for their favorite candidate stop caring once their guy lost in the earlier votes.

I’m sad that Keahbone earned the least votes at 9.68% in the first round. But as I’ve said for years now, nobody except a very, very small number of Pretend Progressives really want to do the work needed to truly resolve the sex abuse crisis. When someone shows up who might actually want to do that work, the whole denomination seems to come together to shut them out of the discussion.

And the other elections at #SBC24

The SBC always elects two vice presidents. That’s so if something happens to the president, the first one steps in and then there’s still a vice president behind him. This year, Jared Moore nominated someone for the First Vice President role, but his guy lost. Instead, Brad Graves won the election with 69.04% of the votes out of 5898 ballots. I don’t know much about him, but given his opposition, he may be Pretend Progressive.

Nor do I know much about the winner of the Second Vice President vote, Eddie Lopez. However, I do find it interesting that we had three candidates for this role, but only two for the First VP.

SBC-lings also re-elected their incumbent Registration Secretary (Don Currence) and Recording Secretary (Nathan Finn). Well, sort of. Both men ran unopposed, so it was really more a matter of confirming them in their existing positions. Amusingly, Currence cast “the ballot of the convention” for Finn, and Finn returned the favor for Currence.

The important issues messengers decided this time around the merry-go-round

Besides voting for officers, another big important function at Annual Meetings involves motions. These function a lot like “new business” and “old business” in high school clubs. Of note, only messengers—the attendees of the Annual Meeting—can raise or vote on motions.

Naturally, the SBC has strict rules about who can attend. Only members of churches that donate a meaningful amount of money to the Cooperative Program (CP) can be messengers. Starting on page 163 of this year’s Book of Reports, you can see the rules about attendance.

By the way, it’s interesting that fewer and fewer churches are donating to the CP over time. Some SBC leaders are claiming that about half of the SBC’s member churches donate, while other sources say 60% (archive). Either way, that’s dismal. And the churches that do give are giving less and less. This reality leads to about half of SBC churches deciding the future of the denomination for the other half. Then SBC leaders give surprised Pikachu face when churches keep leaving their ranks.

Last time we met up, I mentioned that Bart Barber, the newly-gone president of the SBC, offered official tips about how to raise motions (archive). That advice seems to have worked: Dave Miller at SBC Voices (archive) seemed very surprised at how smoothly the new-motions part of the Annual Meeting went:

We just heard 17 new motions in 20 minutes. It was actually less silly than usual. As usual, there were the calls for the head of the leader of ERLC, for financial audits of NAMB, and not one, but TWO calls for remote voting at the Annual Meeting. This has been going on for 25 years. [. . .]

Gotta hand it to our President! Somehow, he got through to the messengers. There was not a single person who gave a long preamble to his or her motion.

That said, one guy wants the SBC to formally adopt the Nicene Creed. Seriously. The ultimate Catholic creed. He not only suggested this as an official motion, but he recited the whole thing at the meeting.

Hardliner evangelicals are getting closer and closer to just dissolving into Catholicism.

Love and unity at #SBC24

I can understand why that guy at SBC Voices (relink) seemed so exhausted with the politics at Annual Meetings. He isn’t kidding or exaggerating when he sounds frustrated that every single year, messengers raise motions to disband the Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission (ERLC, largely the domain of Pretend Progressives) or the North American Mission Board (NAMB, which in my opinion is hopelessly corrupt, ineffective, and inefficient).

That happens. Every year.

In fact, in 2021 Randy Adams ran for SBC President on the sole platform of disbanding NAMB!

Motions this year were no different (archive), but the sheer animosity and the hardliner purity spiral were something to behold.

Someone else raised a motion to unseat messengers from a Virginia church because they were suspiciously egalitarian. That one passed, and the messengers were unseated.

Messengers rejected a motion to stop reciting the Pledge of Allegiance at SBC functions. They also rejected a motion to set up yet another “fact-finding committee” to review the fact-finding committee set up to figure out what to do about sex abuse. (If we wait long enough, though, these guys might just come up with more committee seats than the Earth has actual people alive on it.)

Messengers also raised dozens of motions that are going to the Executive Committee (EC) this year. I fully expect them to reject or memory hole almost all of them. One of these, incidentally, asks the EC to publish messengers’ names on both sides of Annual Meeting badges. That one might happen.

And the huge “explosive” issues at #SBC24

Of all the motions, a few stand out:

Someone moved to abolish the ERLC. It failed a vote. As the SBC Voices guy wrote, that comes up almost every year lately.

Another messenger wanted to formally censure Al Mohler, who runs Southern Baptist Theological Seminary (SBTS), Ben Mandrell, who runs Lifeway Christian Resources, and Bart Barber himself. The cause: In 2023 and on behalf of the SBC groups they represent(ed), they all signed an amicus brief in a statute of limitations case in Kentucky (archive) that decidedly favored sex abusers over their victims. The censure motion eventually was ruled out of order.

Messengers this year also had to decide upon the so-called “Law Amendment” to their official slate of doctrinal beliefs, the Baptist Faith and Message 2000 (or BFM2k). This amendment would formally forbid any SBC member church to allow women to be pastors.

It narrowly failed. It needed 2/3 affirmation from messengers, but it only got 61.45% of 8298 votes cast (archive). However, it seems unlikely that this is going to be good news for SBC women. As Baptist News Global put it so well (archive), the fight “is between super conservative people and super-super conservative people.”

You know what I didn’t see much of, though? Talk of the sex abuse crisis. One person—a woman, no less—asked the ERLC to help churches deal with abusive ministers. The Sex Abuse Task Force’s mandate expires this year, so I guess that’s that.

And hypocritical, abusive, misogynistic wingnuts decide to treat women’s bodies like their own property, yet again

One of the very most explosive issues at #SBC24 involved abortion. Well, more precisely, it involved a common assisted fertilization technique that felt too abortion-y to the SBC’s uptight, control-hungry, abuse-hiding hypocrites.

The motion forbids SBC-lings to use in vitro fertilization (archive; IVF).

This is part of evangelicals’ push to get “fetal personhood” recognized. It’s a red herring, of course. In reality, it doesn’t matter if the entity using someone else’s body is a fetus or an adult: the person whose body is being used gets to decide who uses it, and how, and for how long. Being very cute and little doesn’t give anyone the right to override another’s consent.

And that’s before we tackle the utter barbarity of forcing women to give birth to children who will quite possibly grow up knowing their mothers never loved or wanted them. That already happens way too often. It will happen far more often in a world lacking legal, accessible abortion care. Financially secure SBC women already count too much on having that care available somewhere. If it’s gone from everywhere, they’ll start dying just like poor women already are (archive) in states that are more draconian about abortion bans. Even if those women want their babies, they’re far more at risk of dying during pregnancy or delivery in those states.

(If you’re wondering why, it’s because abortion combines about a dozen human rights/archive. Where abortion is banned, all of the human rights associated with abortion tend to be curtailed as well. Robust protection of human rights leads to abortion being accessible, legal, and safe. And that’s why the more restricted the care, the worse that country/state does with human rights overall/archive.)

But the Christian Right has been hammering at their red herring for decades. Many people, even atheists, buy into it as a reason to seek the criminalization of abortion care.

And this motion passed. Messengers approved it. So now it’s official.

I fully expect this new rule to spark a lot of anger in the membership. Nowadays, churches skew older and more female every year. Many of those ladies still want babies, and many of them won’t ever have those babies without the help of modern science.

Sure, the new rule fits better with the red herring position itself. But it also really highlights the sheer overreach and nonsensical nature of forced-birthers’ entire ideology. The tighter forced-birthers draw their lines around what women in and out of the SBC may and may not do with their very own bodies, the faster I hope their entire movement collapses.

Why #SBC24 matters to normies and heathens

Whew. This was one hell of an Annual Meeting, friends. In addition to tackling a bunch of issues dividing the SBC, messengers also elected a Pretend Progressive president yet again. That election is going to continue the slow erosion of Old Guard power. If this trend continues, maybe one day an actual reform-minded person will be elected. Won’t that be a hoot? I hope I live long enough to see it. Hopefully that person survives their entire year or two, unlike a 15th-century reform-minded Pope who had far less luck there.

As we’ve explored today, though, lots of other stuff happened that’s of interest to outsiders. This Annual Meeting is important because the SBC is a bellwether of Protestantism itself. Because it’s so huge, it presents trends in Protestantism in neon colors and ten-foot-tall flaming letters.

And those trends are clear:

• The SBC is suffering further division and acrimony between the factions. I bet the ultra-right-wing conservative Baptist sites are already sneering and snarling about Clint Pressley’s election. (And yes. They’ve already begun to undermine him/archive.)
• Everyone in leadership seems sick of the entire sex abuse crisis. It barely got any attention at all this year. Even Clint Pressley opposes the idea of an abuse database to track ministers. If activists want to see justice fully served and the denomination safe for women and children, they have a long road ahead of them.
• However, ALMOST EVERYONE agrees that women’s bodies are property that religious wingnuts can and should control.
• Furthermore, ALMOST EVERYONE agrees that women should not be allowed anywhere near real power in the SBC. They may not agree about how that sentiment should be expressed, but the sentiment is definitely there.
• The aforementioned indicates that the SBC’s leaders understand that it is a rotting husk suited only for looting until it collapses and implodes under its own weight. Until then, they’ll keep it shuffling along by trying to eke out a right-wing extremist position that’s also middle-of-the-road.
• (And a little brown mouse furtively whispers from a corner: Nobody seems to have any idea whatsoever how to stop the SBC’s decline, much less get it growing again.)

It’s interesting to me, and I hope to you as well, that the largest Protestant denomination in America has given up even trying to reverse its decline in its ongoing quest for political power and authoritarian male control over women. They don’t just want that power and control over SBC-lings. No, we’re all at risk when a giant business like the SBC decides to grab for people’s human rights. That includes SBC-lings themselves, though they can’t recognize that truth yet.

What SBC-lings need to do now is the only thing anyone can do when a dysfunctional authoritarian group becomes this absolutely power-maddened: walk away. Nobody can fix the SBC. It’s way past fixing and has been for years. Its leaders know this already, and they’re just trying to keep the gravy train rolling. All anyone can do is escape it—

—and slap its leaders’ grabby hands away every single time they try to hurt others.

NEXT UP: So how does one tell if a miracle’s occurred when one’s entire worldview prevents critical analysis of coincidences and oddities? Recently, Catholic leaders slightly changed their answer to that question. Join me to find out how!

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