WakeForestRanger
Well-known member
- Joined
- Mar 17, 2011
- Messages
- 22,959
- Reaction score
- 1,168
[h=1]Southern Baptists Call Off the Culture War[/h] America’s largest Protestant group moves to cut ties with the Republican Party and re-engage with mainstream culture.
https://www.theatlantic.com/politic...-off-the-culture-war/563000/?utm_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.
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.
"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.
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.