That’s a pretty interesting article: link.Originally Posted by WakeForestRanger
Worth reading.
I may get that book.
I love mankind...it’s people I can’t stand!!
Very good interview. I haven’t seen that kind of clarity on this issue.
Southern Baptists Call Off the Culture War
America’s largest Protestant group moves to cut ties with the Republican Party and re-engage with mainstream culture.
https://www.theatlantic.com/politics...m_source=atlfb
The Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission, which is the denomination’s public-policy arm, hosted a packed #metoo panel discussion. And several leaders publicly suggested that women must be included in top levels of leadership. Multiple prominent leaders even insinuated that it may be time to elect a woman as SBC president, a notion that would have been considered unthinkable, if not heretical, even a decade ago.
In addition to the elevation of women, the second Southern Baptist revolution is committed to fostering greater diversity throughout the denomination.
When I attended the annual gatherings as a child, the crowd was almost completely Caucasian. This year’s event, however, included a noticeable increase of people of color—not just in the crowd, but on the platform. The SBC pastor’s conference, which takes place on the first days of the gathering, was led by a black pastor and six out of 12 speakers were people of color. Three sources within the denomination, speaking on condition of anonymity to discuss confidential deliberations, also told me that it is seriously considering a black candidate to become the CEO of the Executive Committee, which oversees the denomination’s day-to-day operations at its headquarters in Nashville.
The inclusion of more minority voices in Baptist life will only hasten the changes already underway, said Bill Leonard, Dunn professor of Baptist Studies and Church History at Wake Forest University and author of The Challenge of Being Baptist. “This predominately white denomination knows that it must reach out to Baptists of color, but if it takes Baptists of color’s concerns seriously, it is going to have to change in other ways, including politically,” he said.
Indeed, disentangling the SBC from the GOP is central to the denomination’s makeover. For example, a motion to defund the ERLC in response to the agency’s full-throated opposition to Donald Trump failed miserably.
Speaking as someone ordained as an SBC pastor, that article is much more optimistic than I am. I think they did a lot of window dressing that gives better optics, but has a long way to go in actually valuing and listening to voices of non-white men. For all the talk of disentangling themselves from the GOP, this is also the same convention that featured a campaign speech by Mike Pence.
I was raised in a country Southern Baptist church, and I still have many relatives and friends who are SBC members, so I agree completely. Virtually every active Southern Baptist I know is a diehard Republican, and while a few have expressed some displeasure with Trump over a few things (mainly his tweets and crass persona, not his policies), virtually all of them voted for Trump in 2016, and I have no doubts that they'll gladly do so again in 2020, no matter who the Democrats nominate. The SBC has been little more than an arm of the GOP for a long, long time, and whatever changes may be occurring to shift that, it's still a long way away from having any real effect on the denomination's political stances or the beliefs and voting behavior of its members, imo.
I do agree with the article that the SBC has a tough choice to make in terms of its future. Even the SBC now admits that it's steadily losing members (I believe it's at least a million members "lost" in the last decade), so it must recruit new members, most likely among minority groups and, ironically, socially conservative Latino immigrants. But to do so, it will have to somehow get its still largely white membership to accept a rising percentage of non-white SBC members, and there's already evidence that white Baptists are not too happy about it. As the article points out, if they do expand, they're going to have to become less openly political, which is going to also cause friction with their white base. I don't feel any sympathy for them, though, as it's a crisis of their own making.
Last edited by Highland Deac; 07-15-2018 at 03:38 PM.
“People will set aside for a moment their moral beliefs, their religious beliefs, to get somebody that is honest in office," he said. "Trump is the trailblazer, he is the Christopher Columbus of honest politics."
Christopher Columbus is a good comparison. He's an idiot who wrecked ships on the way to stumbling somewhere he never expected to be and ushered forth a wave of ironically destructive immigrants the likes of which the world has never seen.
and was probably a rapist. or at the very least enabled rapists.
Europe was not sending their best people back in the 1400's. The Indians should have built a wall.
No hypocrisy here
"They were a homeless family with nowhere to stay," Carlson told the news outlet of Joseph, Mary and Jesus.
"I think our faith tells us where we need to be. The fact that it's controversial isn't because I want to be controversial. What's controversial is that we're turning away from the values that should be guiding us. The point of a religious icon is to move our hearts. If at first, people are upset by it, that might just be God trying to move their hearts. I hope their hearts soften."
When asked by ABC how long the statues would remain inside the fence, Carlson responded: "How long are we going to keep detaining families indefinitely?"
But FBI text messages to their girlfriends!
Pastor at Trump rally asks God to protect President from 'jungle journalism'
http://flip.it/uyIBnK
"Tonight, I pray that You will protect our President and his family with a shield of faith, Lord, that shield of faith against the fiery darts of the wicked one, Lord, against that jungle journalism (that) extorts the truth and distorts honesty and integrity every single day, gets in his face with lies and mistruths and innuendos," Gary Click, a pastor and member of the Ohio GOP's State Central Committee, told the crowd. "Lord, protect him," he continued.
I love mankind...it’s people I can’t stand!!
He acts like one of us?
I'm sure he acts like Jerry Falwell, and exactly like his base and the vast majority of Republicans who support him. So, yeah, in that sense.
I'm sure that George Washington, a man who prized his dignity so highly that as POTUS he generally did not shake hands, but instead politely bowed to people who came to see him, would agree that Donald Trump is a wonderful exemplar of the type of man they hoped would serve as Chief Executive in the future. All of the Founding Fathers believed that showing dignity in the office of POTUS was important. Little Falwell's tweet sounds like one of those US History "facts" that only Liberty University seems to teach.
ETA: Even Falwell's claim that the Founders wanted only "temporary" public servants is rather vague. Presidents originally had no official term limits, although Washington set an unofficial two-term precedent. Senators and Representatives have no term limits, nor do members of the Supreme Court.
Last edited by Highland Deac; 08-17-2018 at 06:24 PM.
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