Thursday, June 21, 2012

A new day for the Southern Baptists?

Last Sunday I worshiped at a Southern Baptist church pastored by a friend of mine in a rural South Georgia town. While the church is a Southern Baptist church it should be noted that my friend doesn't really consider himself a Southern Baptist. This may not be the most common situation in the world, but I feel that it may be more common than one would expect. I know many people who were raised in the Southern Baptist church and still attend Southern Baptist churches on the rare occasions that they step through the doors of a church for something besides a wedding. Many of these individuals have told me that they have stopped going to church regularly because, while they have a great appreciation for the teachings of Jesus Christ they find very little of his teachings apparent in many churches today. It looks like the Southern Baptists have taken note of the feelings of many of their irregular or former members. Sort of.

This week in New Orleans the Southern Baptist Convention elected its first African American president. Many hope that this will help potential church members forget about the SBC's past connection to slavery and bigotry against African Americans. The SBC also voted to adopt a new, optional, name for their organization. SBC members can now refer to themselves as "Great Commission Baptists". Why the name change? It seems that the SBC figured out that many people have a very negative concept of what the SBC stands for. Anti-gay, not supporters of full equality for women, and weak on issues of race. They realized that it might be a good idea to do a bit of "re-branding" and so just like Phillip Morris changed its name to Altria without changing the fact that it makes an addictive, cancer causing product, the SBC is changing its name without changing any of its practices that have driven so many away. Do they really think that we will be fooled by this poorly constructed illusion? Personally it all seems a bit dishonest to me, and I would hope that a major Christian denomination would want to project honesty instead of bad marketing.

Some of you might be thinking that it's possible that the Southern Baptist Convention really has changed, that this new name is about something more than sleazy marketing. Well I leave you with one piece of information. This week the SBC elected its first African American president and voted to allow an optional new name be used to describe it. It also adopted a resolution stating that while the LGBT community faces "unique struggles" it should not be protected from discrimination including being barred from exercising their right to marry the person they love. The Great Commission Baptists, still favoring discrimination and trying to insert their personal will into the Bible. Jesus commanded that we should love one another, any exceptions to this were created by men, not by God. Seems like the SBC is still siding with man over God.

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