Reading Time: 7 minutes 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.
Southern Baptist Convention
Posted inLeaving Religion
The Ones Who Walk Away from Ocabos: What #whySBC really means
Reading Time: 7 minutes With a clamor of church bells to set the blood pumping, the Annual Festival had come to Ocabos, that glorious city of gleaming gold and pristine white spires. The festival began with a clamor of car radios and headphones, the jovial fuss of parking, and rental vehicles and taxicabs ferrying their smiling passengers past restaurants […]
Posted inReligious News
Bart Barber easily re-elected Southern Baptist president
Reading Time: 12 minutes The 2023 Annual Meeting of the Southern Baptist Convention (SBC) is now receding into the rearview mirror. It enjoyed some huge crowds and copious drama, as usual. And one of the biggest bits of drama to occur there involved their election of a new president for the denomination. Their incumbent president, Bart Barber, coasted to […]
Posted inReligious News
Southwestern Seminary: The newest battlefield for Southern Baptist faction warfare
Reading Time: 12 minutes The battles raging around Southwestern Seminary in recent years give us a potent clue about what’s happening behind the scenes at this embattled denomination. They also tell us exactly what happens when any authoritarian organization becomes dysfunctional.
Posted inReligious News
Faction warfare looms at Southern Baptist 2023 Annual Meeting
Reading Time: 14 minutes As the Southern Baptist Convention approaches its 2023 Annual Meeting, its two major factions are already at each other’s throats. Each faction seems to sense that this meeting will be an especially important skirmish in their war for control of this struggling denomination. Let’s examine the trenches they’re digging ahead of the meeting—and the strategies […]
Posted inReligious News
The Southern Baptist Convention had its worst-ever membership drop in 2022
Reading Time: 14 minutes The 2023 Book of Reports contains several key takeaways: a devastating membership drop, huge losses of member churches, and nowhere near enough bounceback in their baptism metrics.
Posted inReligious News
The drama continues over this Southern Baptist plum role
Reading Time: 9 minutes Recently, I showed you the drama around the selection of a Southern Baptist Convention (SBC) leadership role: the President and CEO of their top-ranked Executive Committee (EC). Previous Chairman Jared Wellman had thrown his hat into the ring. But in a stunning upset, he failed to get enough votes from their larger voting committee to […]
Posted inReligious News
Are Southern Baptist traditionalists losing their main stronghold?
Reading Time: 9 minutes A years-long Southern Baptist feud between two powerful factions approaches the end of its middle. Can the beginning of the end be far off?
Posted inReligion
How Southern Baptist pastor Heath Lambert is leaving nothing to chance
Reading Time: 14 minutes If I’m right, then it doesn’t matter at all how many people Heath Lambert loses over his demand.
Posted inReligion
Trust in pastors is dropping, and Southern Baptists think they know why
Reading Time: 10 minutes Misplaced trust makes Christians say “Oh no, my pastor would never do that!” It grants pastors a shield they do not deserve.