The Southern Baptist Convention has been in the national news (again) this month, and I am reflecting here upon that denomination with which I was directly connected for sixty years.
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The Southern Baptist Convention (SBC) was formed in 1845 at
a gathering in Augusta, Georgia. It was founded by Baptists who disagreed with the antislavery attitudes and activities of Baptists
in the North.
In 1967, the SBC became the largest Protestant
denomination in the U.S., surpassing the Methodist Church. Its peak membership
of around 16,300,000 was reached in 2006.
I began attending an SBC church in 1945, exactly 100
years after its founding. I didn’t know anything about the SBC’s beginning for
a long time, and I wasn’t happy when I finally learned about the reason it was
organized.
Still, I was happy to be a Southern Baptist during the ten
years I attended the SBC church in my northwest Missouri hometown. I was happy
with the vibrancy of the SBC as I knew it in the 1950s and remember well the
nationwide membership drive for “a million more in ’54.”
And I was happy to graduate from two Southern Baptist
colleges in my home state (Southwest Baptist and William Jewell)—and then go on
to The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary (SBTS) in Louisville, Kentucky.
During my years as an undergraduate and then as a graduate student
at SBTS (1959~66), I was happy to serve as pastor of two small-town Southern
Baptist churches in Kentucky, Ekron BC (1959~63) and Clay City BC (1964-65).
Further, June and I were happy to be appointed in 1966 as SBC
missionaries to Japan, and during our 38 years there we greatly appreciated the
support of SBC churches through the Cooperative Program and the Lottie Moon
Christmas Offering.
A strong shift to the right in the SBC began in 1980. As
a result, I increasingly became an embarrassed Southern Baptist,** and in the
1980s and early 1990s many respected SB professors and pastors, including some close
friends, left the SBC.
Disgruntled Southern Baptists formed the Alliance of
Baptists in 1987 and the Cooperative Baptist Fellowship in 1991. One of the co-founders
of the former was Dr. C. Welton Gaddy, who died on June 7 at the age of 81.
Gaddy and I were graduate students at SBTS at the same time,
but I didn’t know him well (he was three years younger than I). But I remember
him as a bright, talented young man.
The sub-heading of a June
16 New York Times article about Gaddy states, “He started out in the Southern Baptist Convention, but when
that group took a sharp conservative turn he became a voice for tolerance and
diversity.”
Gaddy was known
nationwide because of serving as president of the prestigious Interfaith
Alliance from 1997 to 2014. Had it not been for that “sharp conservative turn”
in the SBC, he could have served in that position as a Southern Baptist.
The 2023 annual meeting of the SBC was held earlier this month, and there was much that needed attention, such as last year’s half-million decline in membership. (Unlike “a million more in ’54” they could have talked about “why so few in ’22?”.)
But the action that garnered the most interest in the news
media was the SBC’s renewed objection to female pastors. Rick Warren, the retired
pastor of Saddleback Church in California, made an appeal for that megachurch
to be restored to membership in the SBC.
Not only was Warren’s appeal rejected, opposition to female
pastors even intensified. On June 22, The Washington Post published an opinion piece
by Warren. It was titled “Expulsion
of female pastors will only speed the Southern Baptists’ decline.”
The nationally known SB pastor remarked that the votes at
this year’s annual meeting “helped ensure that the once great SBC will be known
as the Shrinking Baptist Convention.”
Even though I’m glad not to be a Southern Baptist now, I
still am sad because of the recent decline in the SBC and the likelihood that
there will be even greater decline in the decade ahead because of its stance on
women pastors—as well as because of its being a hotbed for the MAGA Movement.
_____
** In my book Fed Up with Fundamentalism, first published in 2007, I included a short section titled “An Embarrassed Southern Baptist” (see p. 5 in the revised/updated 2020 edition).
As you know, I too was an active Southern Baptist after my born-again experience in 1964 in a small fundamentalist, Baptist congregation in St. Louis County. Of course, at the time, I had a faith of sorts, having attended a Missouri Synod Lutheran school until sixth grade. In any case, I did not know Christianity was not synonymous with a fundamentalist perspective. As I studied and began reflecting critically on religion and life, I soon got into trouble and had to switch to a moderate evangelical Baptist congregation, and ultimately left entirely for the United Church of Christ, although I was also ordained a Southern Baptist clergyman. I have to be appreciative of my beginnings in both the Lutheran and Baptist churches as the places where I early came to a sensitivity to the reality of God and to the grace of God working in the world and even my life.
ReplyDeleteI suppose I'm in some kind of grief at this time regarding Christianity overall. Your blog today gets at part of the reason. As I mentioned in comments regarding your last blog, "The most "woke" denominations are shrinking, if not dying, and the three largest contingents in the world are Roman Catholicism, evangelical Christianity, and Eastern Orthodoxy, none of which is showing much predilection for leading humanity into a greater age of equality, peace, and justice." So much of my own life has been poured into promoting Christian faith, and yet....
I would only disagree with your sadness at the decline of the SBC. I'm on the other side on this issue. I no longer view Christianity as so favorable for humanity that I'm glad when it thrives in numerical growth. In fact, I'm pleased to see its authoritarian, patriarchal, and reactionary contingents decline, just as I am pleased whenever some nation moves away from regimes of autocracy and oppression of minorities.
Thanks for your candid comments, Anton. In spite of our similar backgrounds, I think my experience in Southern Baptist churches was much more positive than yours. Yes, there were some problems and some disagreeable people, but many of the best people I knew in my hometown and in the small Kentucky towns where I was pastor were Southern Baptists. And the SB seminary professors I had in th 1960s were generally men (and, sadly, I didn't have any women profs) of high character who were, to varying degrees, interested in "leading humanity into a greater age of equality, peace, and justice."
DeleteI am not surprised that you felt some disagreement with my closing paragraph, and I wondered about saying that, too. But the decline is not because of "authoritarian, patriarchal, and reactionary contingents" leaving. Rather it is people who want there to be equality of men and women, who want there to be acceptance of LGBTQ people, who want greater racial justice for the POC in the nation who are leaving or not joining. The overall membership is declining because of the younger generation not wanting to be identified with the conservativism that has for so many years now held the leadership of the SBC.
And I am especially grieved that U.S. Christianity as a whole is not "so favorable for humanity," as you put it. But I am happy that there are Christian churches that continue to uphold the teaching of Jesus Christ, the teaching of love for all human beings and for the world of nature--churches such as the Kansas City United Church of Christ where you attend and the Rainbow Mennonite Church that I am a member of.
If the SBC was, as is, as vulnerable to a mixture of hubris and misplaced priorities, its history makes clear. Like you, Leroy, I was not pleased to know the origin story of the convention, but in the remaining glory days of the seventies and eighties, it seemed to me we were past that history. But no, even then the evidence of Baptist triumphalism (things were exciting and exhilarating at times) contained the seeds of envy and enmity alongside that internal struggle for power, the crisis of authoritarian lust for control. And so it went.
ReplyDeleteThat is what the world saw, and sees, no matter the continually stressed and correct emphases to share the gospel.
Why must actual objectives, revealed in actions and words, be in conflict with God's Cause? Jesus' words run through my mind frequently: "in so far as you have done this to the least of these . . ."; or "you tithe mint, dill, and cumin, and have neglected the weightier matters of the law: justice, mercy, and faith." There's more, of course.
I mourn the public image of Baptists in general. Some of it is deserved, most of it is not. Baptists have been their own worst publicists, perhaps because, wanting to clean up the world through influence, we neglect to bring our assigned weapons and eagerly, even aggressively, use political and social weapons--most culturally conditioned-- such that Baptists were and are cultural captives, just as they had been in 1845? (I refer to Rufus Spain's book on the topic, along with that of John Lee Eighmy.) I know that is not true of all, but "a little leaven" alone sets the loaf. I pray the right leaven is present, always. That explains the historical familiar Baptist tradition of "dividing and growing" since 1979.
I agree with Anton Jacobs: we can say the Lord is working to reshape and reform the SBC in its decline and dissension, and I hope that changes allowing greater freedom of the Spirit for everyone do continue. Many of those SBC "millions" have found or made new homes. I agree with you Leroy, about MAGA and the Christian Nationalist emphasis. Can that be God's cause? I do not think so. It is, on a shocking scale, another instance of misplaced focus, the slogan itself glorifying a mythical, distorted narrative of the past, and denying the right present focus for practicing believers.
I was relieved to note that a minority at the SBC Convention at least did not vote to exclude the Spirit's work through women.
Thanks for your perceptive comments, Jerry, and there are several things I could easily respond to, but I am going to mention only one matter: your reference to John Lee Eighmy. For those who do not recognize that name, Eighmy (1928~70) was the author of "Churches in Cultural Captivity: A History of the Social Attitudes of Southern Baptists" (published posthumously in 1972). John Lee was from my hometown and my home church. He was ten years older than I, but when I was a boy, I held him in high esteem. He was probably the first "preacher boy" to come out of my home church (at least the first since the 1940s) -- and I was the second. His parents were good friends of my maternal grandparents, and when my mother was a teenager, she sometimes would babysit John Lee when he was a young boy.
DeleteI offer this link as a commentary on John Lee Eighmy and his work responding to the cultural omissions of Southern Baptists (finished out by Samuel Hill after Eighmy's death). It has to do with a Baptist fault to pick on society's very human moral failures while neglecting (not entirely) the greater problems such as racial and economic justice, issues of war, and so on.
Deletehttps://southernchanges.digitalscholarship.emory.edu/sc11-6_001/sc11-6_006/
Leroy, I tried to resist responding. I failed.
ReplyDeleteMy wife, Candy, was ordained by her home church (SBC) in 1982. She was encouraged to become ordained by the pastor of the United Methodist Church where she was music director. In the mid-1990s she received standing in The Christian Church (Disciples of Christ). In 2021 she resigned her position at a Baptist congregation. As “Acting Pastor” [due to the pastor’s resignation] her leadership decisions concerning ‘Covid Worship’ were not supported by the lay leaders. She is now appointed [as a minister from another fellowship] as part-time Visitation Pastor in a UMC congregation. She is also Minister of Music (not appointed).
I wish the people of SBC congregations well, but I do not think the small proportion of full [?] diversity embracing SBC-ers will significantly move the denomination. Thus, I confess to desiring the continued reduction in persons participating in SBC congregations. My hope is that they will find other fellowships in which to continue their learning of the Way of Jesus.
Candy and I spent our first ten years together living on the campus of SBTS. [1980-1990] We still mourn its loss!
At the risk of overlooking several women at SBTS, I will mention that Dr. Judith King encouraged my love of Biblical languages as an instructor in Hebrew; and that Dr. Molly Marshall was gracious to serve on my doctoral committee. [I did not complete the dissertation 😊]
My mother and the people of the start-up Baptist congregation in Ormond Beach, FL loved me into the Way of Jesus. I wish I did not feel now that church is so often an impediment to that love.
Hoping for a better future,
Shalom, Dick
Thanks for sharing your and your wife's experiences in the SBC, and at SBTS. I hear what you say about "desiring the continued reduction in persons participating in SBC congregations," but I am sad that the SBC leadership and most SBC churches have become such that you (and I) welcome their decrease. And I am sad that the SBC and most SBC churches are not as they were in the 1950s~'70s and even up to the beginning of the 1990s. I had two delightful years as a visiting professor at Midwestern Seminary (in 1986-87 and 1991-92), the latter year being just before the change of leadership and the strong shift to the right. And even though I now live (since retirement from Japan) just 15 minutes by car from MBTS, I haven't been to the campus there for years now. So, I understand some of what you mean by mourning the loss of what once was so meaningful and enjoyable--and that is part of the sadness I feel now for others who are feeling that same sense of loss.
DeleteFairly early this morning, a Thinking Friend in southwest Missouri sent an email with these brief comments:
ReplyDelete"I withdrew from membership in a SBC church in 2016 when the overwhelming majority of fellow members embraced the Donald. A deacon's wife posted a meme on FB which implied one could not vote for a Democrat and be a Christian."
I think you did the right thing. What you wrote reminded me of our first year back in Missouri after serving as Southern Baptist missionaries for 38 years. It was the fall of 2004, and we were living in Bolivar, Mo., where my wife's mother lived. As it was a presidential election year, we visited the unimpressive Democratic headquarters for Polk Co. When we introduced ourselves to the woman working there, she expressed surprise, remarking, "Around here most people think you aren't a Christian if you are a Democrat."
DeleteI wonder if you can vote for a democrat and be a Christian. There are a remarkable number of anti Christians and outright atheists in that party.
DeleteOswald, I don't know who you are or what kind of Christianity you believe in, but I am a Democrat because I think that overall the policies of the Democratic Party are nearer to the teachings of Jesus Christ than that of the Republican Party.
DeleteHere are comments (gleaned from a longer email message) from Thinking Friend Andrew Bolton in England:
ReplyDelete"Very interesting Leroy. Thank you.
"I am glad the Anabaptists provided you with a warm welcome!
"Martin Luther’s emphasis on the priesthood of all believers is biblical (I Peter 2:9 and I Corinthians 12) and early Baptists celebrated its practice. In Community of Christ, we express it by the phrase, 'All are called…' that goes back to 1887.
"Thomas Helwys must be turning in his grave. English Baptists were born as a non-creedal movement; creeds they thought were oppressive of conscience (but you will know Baptist history better than me!) The first ordination of women among English Baptists was I think in 1926, nearly 100 years ago.
"Patriarchal order was not intended in God’s first creation, it is a further sin that resulted from the Fall. All humans, male and female are made in the image of God!"
Thanks for your comments, Andrew. I always appreciate hearing from you. I do know some about Baptist history, but not so much about the Baptists in England--such as the first woman being ordained in 1926. It was not until 1964, when I was still in graduate school, that the first Southern Baptist woman was ordained. The first Mennonite woman to be ordained to serve as a pastor was in 1973, 50 years ago, and in spite of the objections of some traditionalists, the percentage of women serving as pastors of Mennonite churches has continued to grow. My wife and I are very pleased with Pastor Ruth, whom you know, who has been our pastor for nearly ten years now.
DeleteLocal Thinking Friend Ed Kail writes,
ReplyDelete"It is a sad turn of events. The Church as we elders have known it is passing away. If God in Christ is the one who always 'make all things new,' what 'new thing' awaits the Church — and those who have left it?"
I was half through with a comment when cyber technology erased what I was doing. I'll get back later and hopefully finish the somewhat long comment. It's been quite some time, gationsforty plus years, since I have been officially a part of a Southern Baptist Convention church. I was an American Baptist pastor for 15 years, and did a couple of interims in ABC congregations after retirement in 1999. We were in a UMC church as laity in Tulia TX for a number of years. Currently very happy with our membership and association with Broadway Baptist in Ft. Worth, formerly a flagship SBC church. Kicked out of SBC a number of years ago over LGBTQ+ issues. Very diverse in leadership and in membership, active in peace and jreustice issues. More later.
ReplyDeleteThanks for posting comments on my blogsite, Charles, and I am sorry you lost what you wrote previously. It is later now, and I hope you will write more. I am happy you now have a good church home at Broadway Baptist in Ft. Worth.
DeleteI had a rather long "later" comment, and suddenly it was gone and I can't find it. I think I need to divide my comment into two or three comments, but I'm tired of it for right now. I'm doing a kind of overview of our history since leaving SBTS in 1968.
DeleteWhen we were dismissed from Campbellsville College, we moved to Louisville, where I had secular work with unemployed people, mostly African-American, asGsisting in finding and keeping employment. Also did fixer-upper real estate. Our kids said "Mother and Daddy buy ugly houses, but they don't stay ugly." Patricia had jobs in child care, and completed her college work, receiving the BS degree with major in child development from Spalding College (Roman Catholic). We were members of Crescent Hill Baptist Church, a good SBC experience.
DeleteWhile we were in Edmonton, we went back to Tulia once every summer. Those trips took us through Colorado Springs, and we decided we would like to live there someday. In the spring of 1979, we went under contract to sell our residence in Louisville, with closing in early summer. I told Patricia that if we were ever to move to Colorado Springs, this was an opportune moment. I arranged a flight to CS to scout for a new home. Patricia stayed in Louisville and kept her job with the family and child development center in West Louisvile. I called from CS, "I've located this house on Patrician Way that we can buy. I think it's a place that we can improve and make it a good home for us." She said, "Go for it!" So I did and we moved to Colorado Springs in July, 1979. We looked for a worship home, and visited First Southern Baptist Church of CS. It was on the opposite end of the SBC spectrum in comparison to Crescent Haill in Louisville. We visited First Baptist (American Baptist) and found it much more attuned to our understanding of the Gospel. The church welcomed us, and helped us to heal from our disastrous experience at Campbellsville.
I have strayed far from the "Southern Baptist Then and Now" post. As I grew up Methodist and became Baptist after beginning educational preparation for ministry, my experience with SBC has been mostly at SBC educational institutions. SBTS was decidedly "then" then. Ditto for Wayland Baptist. I was student pastor at a rural SBC church my senior year at Wayland. The leadership of the church was pretty well conservative, but not mad about it. After I retired, we attended FBC Tulia, conservative but not mad about it. They were mad at us, for our involvement in undoing the Tulia Drug Sting, so we went to the Pres. church for a time, but returned to the Methodist fold until we moved in with our daughter and son-in-law and joined Broadway Baptist, a former flagship SBC and TBC church, kicked out of both of those due to a welcoming and affirming policy in practice. BTW, the Methodist church in Tulia has disaffiliated from the United Methodist Church, much to my dismay. I have warm feelings, except for Campbellsville College, of the "then" SBC with which we were affiliated. Not much hope for the "now" SBC. This will conclude my response. I deleted a lot of post SBTS personal history since it was off target. If anyone is perchance interested in the things we have done and the places we have been, my autobiography, "Haunted by the Holy Ghost" provides a pretty comprehensive picture up to the date of its publication, 2013. Still available through Amazon.
DeleteAs we SBCers (yes, I am still one) may yet come to realize, while the Convention is shrinking, the Church in its committed core may be growing. Believers seeking to live the crucified life are often the ones leaving the institutional church while the cultural members remain. The SBC congregation of which I am a member is quite to the right of me, but is led by a pastor who has an openness of spirit that accepts my more left wing positions such as women in ministerial leadership roles. Perhaps we need to see a cleansing of denominational membership to clarify the requirements of convention membership versus Kingdom of God membership.
ReplyDeleteDr. Marshall (Molly to me) and I were in the same graduating class at SBTS. Not only was she a brilliant student and well deserving of her academic career, she was also one of the most pleasant and attractive girls on campus! We single guys noticed that.
Tom, thanks for sharing this. And, yes, the "problems" in the SBC are much more of the national leadership and the "prominent" pastors, denominational leaders, and seminary presidents. I am sure there are many good, faithful, local SB churches that keep doing, and doing well, what most SB churches have done well through the years.
DeleteThanks for sharing that you and Dr. Marshall were seminary classmates. Since she was president of Central Seminary here in Kansas City when we retired in the area, I was able to get to know Molly personally, and I found her to be a delightful person as well as a good scholar and seminary administrator.
Yesterday evening, after the response I made above to Tom, whom I first met in 1959, I received the following comments from a man I first met when he was a college student in 1972. He has been a lifelong Southern Baptist pastor, and what he wrote harmonizes with the first paragraph I wrote to Tom. Here is what this friend wrote, whose name I won't mention here since he is still an active pastor:
Delete"I don’t consider myself a Southern Baptist. I didn’t leave the SBC, SBC left me. I continue to lead the church I pastor to support IMB missionaries through prayer and Lottie, but that is where my support stops. Our church supports 3 missionaries couples who are not IMB missionaries. I am embarrassed by the SBC. I am a strong supporter of Rick Warren."
Yesterday evening I received the following email from local Thinking Friend Allan Aunspaugh:
ReplyDelete"Thanks for sharing about Welton Gaddy. I heard him preach twice at his church in Monroe, LA. His book 'The Gift of Worship' (Published by Broadman Press) is in my opinion one of the best on worship."
And I thank you, Allan, for sharing this.
DeleteThinking Friend Jamea Crum of Springfield, Mo., who was at one time a missionary colleague in Japan, shares these candid comments:
ReplyDelete"I just finished reading Brian Kaylor’s comparison of the way the SBC handled the departure of the churches who had females pastoring from the SBC with the departure of many churches from the UMC over LGBTQ issues. I found myself crying while reading it and got goose bumps from his account of how the UMC and the Mennonite Convention had handled the departure of churches from their conventions. What a great example of how to handle differences.
"I at times become physically ill thinking about what the SBC has become. It was such a great influence throughout my life, and now I think of it as convention that has lost its way. It makes me sad to feel that I no longer have a desire to be a part of it. At times it feels as if a large part of me has been amputated."
Thanks for sharing these comments, Jamea. As I said at the beginning of the blog post, I was directly connected with the SBC for 60 years (from 1945 to 2005)--and I was a strong supporter of the SBC for nearly 50 years. But it wasn't long after the second delightful year I had as a guest professor at Midwestern Seminary that I realized that the changes in the SBC were so decisive and were likely going to be so long-lasting that I would no longer be able to support it. So, while I never expressed it in such poignant words, I can understand and sympathize with your feelings that a large part of you has been amputated.
DeleteThinking Friend Michael Olmsted, a retired Baptist pastor who served churches in the SBC and then in the CBF and who also lives in Springfield, writes,
ReplyDelete"My wife Nan and I were both blessed and found great joy in SBC missions she was a missionary in Hong Kong for two years and I participated in some overseas mission endeavors. But the SBC and the seminary that provided such a wonderful education for me is long gone ... with so much more that was blessed. We left when the takeover destroyed so many special people and gutted educational institutions that impacted the world. GRIEF!"
And then these pertinent comments from Thinking Friend Greg Hadley, who is from Missouri but has long lived in Niigata, Japan:
ReplyDeleteThanks for this posting. I followed the news some on the public statement and stance against women pastors. he thinking behind it reminds me somewhat of how Southern Baptists used the Bible to not only support slavery, but to see the bringing of many hundreds of thousands of slaves to the US as God’s providence, because in the US they could receive the Gospel.
I remember the Southern Baptist Church of the 1970s. I was in Denver, Colorado, and far from the Mason-Dixon Line. Some of my best memories of church life are from those days. I moved to Missouri as the 80s started, and while I felt things were different, somehow, I was shielded from a lot of it because of me being in a vibrant youth group, which was a church unto itself. It didn’t become apparent until I went to Midwestern [Baptist Theological Seminary] and saw more and more people having to leave because of not signing the convention’s statement of faith.
"Today, institutionally speaking, I am homeless. . . .
"Looking at what the Southern Baptists have done, which has been to push themselves boldly forth into the late 19th century, I wouldn’t return to them even if I were invited (and no one will do that). My heart collapses like a bad souffle when thinking of going back to that."
Here are comments received yesterday from Thinking Friend Virginia Belk in New Mexico:
ReplyDelete"SBC's opposition to female pastors is just one more instance of the underlying systemic racist and sexist prejudice upon which our country was founded. One can find it documented in Fred Rodell's book, '55 Men: The Story of the Constitution Based on the day-by-day notes of James Madison' and 'The Book of Abigail and John; Selected Letters of the Adams Family 1702-1781' by I. H. Butterfield, Marc Freidlander and Mary Jo Kline; that pervading prejudice is explained by Nancy Isenberg in 'White Trash. The Untold History of Class in America' and further documented in Isabel Wilkerson's 'Caste: The Origins of Our Discontents.' It explains why men can rape women and girls and get away with it but women cannot seduce boys or men without punishment. That attitude is behind the contention that the Bible condemns homosexuals, trans genders, etc. . . . .
"As you know, I also was a Southern Baptist but I left them long ago. I have often been embarrassed by SBC; now I am enraged by this latest attempt to proclaim male superiority over females in the name of a loving and forgiving God."
Thanks, Virginia, for your significant comments, including important books related to the subject at hand. Unfortunately, I don't have many women who are on my Thinking Friends mailing list (I would like to have more), but you are only the second woman to comment. (I would like to have heard from more.)
DeleteYou may already have seen the news article about it, but another megachurch has left the SBC. Although not as large as Saddleback Church in California, the Elevation Church in North Carolina recently sent a letter to the relevant SBC leadership saying that it was “withdrawing its affiliation with the Southern Baptist Convention effective immediately.”
ReplyDeletehttps://religionnews.com/2023/06/30/southern-baptists-lose-another-megachurch-elevation-church-quits-the-sbc/