Analysis: Southern Baptists will need a bigger tent

NASHVILLE, Tenn. (RNS)—Not too long ago, the Southern Baptist Convention was known more for what, and often who, it rejected than what it included—with political warriors in the SBC leadership often alienating other religious groups, particularly the racial minorities in them. But over the past decade, that began to change.

Southern Baptists elected the denomination’s first African-American president, apologized for supporting slavery, apologized to Asians for the culturally offensive “Rickshaw Rally” Vacation Bible School curriculum, reprimanded their former Ethics & Religious Liberty Commission chief Richard Land for racially charged remarks and recognized its regional-sounding brand has so much baggage that perhaps a name change might be in order.

They began reaching out to other evangelical churches and to Roman Catholics on issues of common interest, a collaborative spirit that landed three Southern Baptists in top leadership roles at nondenominational evangelical universities.

Then, at its annual convention this summer, the denomination seemed to confirm its shift toward both ecumenical work and racial reconciliation by taking the first step to joining the National Association of Evangelicals and—most notably—by repudiating the Confederate battle flag.

Pivot away from hardline leadership

Taken together, these moves represent a significant pivot away from the ultra-conservative takeover that began in the 1970s and produced a string of hardline leaders, said David Gushee, director of the Center for Theology and Public Life at Mercer University.

Those leaders included the denomination’s president in 1980, Bailey Smith, who declared God didn’t hear the prayers of Jews.

Frank Page, president of the Southern Baptist Convention Executive Committee, presents the Executive Committee report to the SBC annual meeting in St. Louis. (BP photo by Bill Bangham)Gushee and others track the current shift to the 2006 election of Frank Page as SBC president. Page represents a generation of Southern Baptist leadership less concerned with political victories and more impressed by leaders who are pastoral, plugged into the broader culture and manifesting biblical fruit of the spirit, Gushee said.

“I would say that leadership in the denomination seems to be passing to people who are still plenty conservative, but they are not mean on the whole,” he said.

“They are cooperating with Catholics when they can and other evangelicals. They’re sensitive to the convention’s history on race and trying to get that right. And the Confederate flag discussion … was the next step forward there.”

‘Conservative enough’

Without the shift, Ed Stetzer said he may not have spent much of the last decade as director of the SBC-affiliated LifeWay Research or have been considered for the Wheaton College chair he assumes July 1.

“The Southern Baptists were continuing to move to the right and erecting new arguments over secondary, tertiary issues,” Stetzer said in an interview leading up to the June 14-15 SBC annual meeting.

“In 2006, they decided they were conservative enough. They said, ‘This is where we want to be’—to the disappointment of a significant number of people who wanted to keep narrowing the parameters of cooperation.”

Stetzer, employed as a North American Mission Board missiologist at the time, said he was considering jobs outside the denomination. Page convinced him to stay.

“In 2007, Frank asked me to preach at the convention. I told the crowd, ‘This is the only place I go where I feel young and thin,’” Stetzer said.

Significantly less insular

When he starts his job at the Billy Graham Center for Evangelism at Wheaton, Stetzer will be another Southern Baptist in a top role at a nondenominational institution.

The King’s College and Trinity International University both hired Southern Baptists to their presidencies in the last three years—increasing evidence of a decreasingly insular convention.

Page, a former pastor in South Carolina, said he didn’t seek the presidency and said he was so convinced he would not win he barely had a platform to discuss as a convention worker guided him toward a post-election press conference. He handily beat two other candidates on the first ballot and went on to serve two terms.

“I assured people I was not trying to undo a conservative resurgence,” Page said. “People feared that. It took three decades to turn us back to a conservative direction. I said, ‘I’m an inerrantist but not an angry one.’”

Positive developments

Developments since then, he said, have been ones he hoped for.

“Discontinuing the use of the Confederate battle flag—I could not take credit for that, but I hope that in some small way, I encouraged us toward this. We still have a lot to do,” said Page, who became president of the SBC Executive Committee two years after his two-term convention presidency ended and still holds that post.

Local churches can feel the effects of the leadership shift, noted Mike Glenn, pastor of 10,000-member Brentwood Baptist Church in Tennessee. Glenn, a longtime friend of Page, said Page’s ability to find one or two points he can agree upon with someone and then build from there contributed to the convention’s new tone.

“Several years ago, when we were so actively politically engaged, there were times when statements would be made by Southern Baptist leaders, and we would have to say, ‘They don’t represent us,’” Glenn said. “I think there was a sobering up about the realities of the political process. The Southern Baptist Convention had put a lot of eggs in the conservative Republican political system and got very little in return.”

But it’s not that Southern Baptists have exactly gone Democratic. The immediate past president of the SBC, Ronnie Floyd, and some high-profile Southern Baptist pastors—notably Robert Jeffress from First Baptist Church in Dallas and Jack Graham from Prestonwood Baptist Church in Plano—are on Donald Trump’s evangelical advisory board. And white evangelicals are still supporting Trump by a wide margin over Hillary Clinton, who continues to draw sharp criticism from many Southern Baptists.

More action, less rhetoric

As for the denomination’s goals, Glenn would like to see the convention mimic his church, doing more hands-on ministry to communities in need. “We have talked so much and done so little, nobody is listening to us anymore. Provide clinics and services in under-served areas. And then you’ll earn the right to speak.”

The denomination is continuing its outreach to other faiths. Recently, the Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission joined Catholics in a Capitol Hill briefing on anti-abortion issues, said Jeanne Mancini, the Catholic head of the nonsectarian March for Life. Her organization, seeing the potential for like-minded collaboration, long had sought ways to pair on public policy, she noted.

“We don’t typically get into theological conversations,” she said. “In terms of public policy, we’re working hand-in-glove, and I’ve never been offended by anything they’ve had to say.”

Big tent but fewer inside

But while Southern Baptists may have a bigger tent these days, there are fewer members inside it.

Still the nation’s largest Protestant denomination with 15.3 million members, that total has decreased for nine straight years. Not only are members departing—200,000 of them from 2014-15—fewer are joining. Baptisms have decreased eight of the last 10 years.

Those inside and outside the convention have different takes on the figures and their relationship, or lack of it, to Southern Baptists’ more culturally relevant approach.

In a news release about the numbers, Page asked God to forgive a lack of diligence in evangelism. But, in his interview a week later, he said he was encouraged by more than 18,000 men and women—a record high—enrolled in Southern Baptist seminaries.

David Dockery, president of Trinity International University, said the Page-led shift in approach made a positive difference, despite the membership totals: “I don’t have data to support this statement, but while those numbers are a disappointment to all concerned, I think they would have been far greater without those efforts,” he said.

The key is not stanching the flow of members out, but evangelizing more new ones in, Stetzer said, noting that’s something he hopes to help all evangelicals do in his new role at Wheaton.

While Stetzer strongly identifies with being Southern Baptist—he converted as a young adult after being raised Catholic and becoming an Episcopalian—and sees the convention’s value, he’s long been involved in a multidenominational, evangelical ministry in addition to his LifeWay job.

“Mainline denominations value ecumenical cooperation much higher as a symbolic representation of unity. For evangelicals, it’s more a unity of purpose than a display,” he said.

For Stetzer, as a Southern Baptist in an interdenominational setting, the key will be allowing racially and theologically diverse groups of evangelicals to collaborate without leaving their convictions at the door.