It may come as news that the Southern Baptists, the largest Christian denomination in this country, after the Roman Catholic Church, with sixteen million members, is experiencing a continuing decline in new members. The denomination’s research arm said that its membership will decline fifty percent by the year 2050 unless there is a significant change from today’s predominantly older and white congregations. Such membership loss has been a staple of ‘mainline’ denominations for decades, but that it is now a serious possibly in the Southern Baptist Convention’s future gives lie to the idea that it is only liberal churches that are being deserted.

Coming to Houston in 1971, I was an observer of the conservative takeover of the denomination, especially since one of the prominent players was Houston Judge Paul Pressler. Important was the 1979 Houston Southern Baptist Convention that added the word “inerrancy” to the official understanding of scripture, replacing the work “infallible.”  That word change signaled a significant shift in theology. Following up on that prominent victory, the 1980s was a time of conservative control being extended over the Southern Baptist Convention at every level. The result has been, along with this ideological ‘purity,’ fractures in families, in churches and in state conventions.

Being quite removed from Baptist theology and far removed from the spirit of those who were ‘purifying’ the Southern Baptist Convention, I nonetheless wondered at times what it was that drove people to draw such rigid theological lines. We all do need boundaries, as individuals and in organizations, but when boundaries become walls, we are cut off from relationships and new ideas.

In a UCC (United Church of Christ) chat room, I keep reading many respondents who express that same grim-faced desire to slice off all who don’t meet a particular theological and biblical standard. The Southern Baptist Convention provide an example of the results of rigid walls built to exclude others.

Bob Tucker
July 2009

Tags: Now the Baptists too

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