As Goes the SBC...?

Where’s all the people?

Ed Litton is now President of the Southern Baptist Convention.  What that means depends on who you ask.  National Review (the house organ of the late, unlamented racist William F. Buckley) calls him a "turtle on a fence post," although that's not the criticism I took it to be (turns out it's from a sermon by Litton).  Indeed, NR seems approving:

“If you look throughout Scripture, whether it was Joseph or Esther or Nehemiah or Ezra or especially Daniel, God took every one of those people in as servants, and that’s the picture we need to get,” he told me. “It’s counterintuitive,” he said, but he believes that, “as we go into our cities and serve, God raises our influence so that we can speak truth to power at just the right moment.”

That's fine; I'm not here to argue with him, anyway.  Arizona Central calls him a "reconciler," and notes there is much reconciliation to do:

Late last year, the Rev. Joel A. Bowman Sr. announced he was leaving the SBC following a statement from Southern Baptist seminary presidents rejecting critical race theory. 

The presidents wrote that they "stand together on historic Southern Baptist condemnations of racism in any form" but added their belief that critical race theory is "incompatible with the Baptist Faith & Message."

Bowman, who is one of several Black pastors who have left the denomination in recent years, said in a tweet that the SBC has "no credibility on the issue of racism."  

Frankly, I don't see a lot of reconciling over coming together on that issue, but I don't single out the SBC on that.  I'd say that about any group of white Americans.  If you're interested in the horse race:

Litton, the longtime pastor of Redemption Church in Saraland, Alabama, a congregation with 3,900 members, was considered a long shot in the presidential race. Two other candidates — Georgia pastor Mike Stone, a leader among critics of current SBC leaders, and Southern Baptist Theological Seminary President Al Mohler — had been considered the favorites.

Mohler was knocked out during the first round of ballots, receiving about a quarter of votes. In a runoff, Litton got 52% of the vote, and Stone got close to 48%. 

The point being Litton won because the extremes fell to the wayside.   "Extremes" here requires careful context I can't really provide, except that Mohler is, or has been, a pretty hard-shell fundamentalist/literalist.  To say I disagree with Mohler on almost all things ecclesiological and theological is a gross understatement.  I doubt we even pray to the same God.  But apparently the "favorites," for one reason or another, failed, and the dark horse won the race.

There's a lesson there for all the pundits and GOP office holders who think Trump has a death grip on the party and/or the country.  The SBC is very conservative already.  It would seem to be fertile ground for Trumpism.  Yet that seems to be precisely what the Convention rejected.  I think this is in keeping with their culture and traditions (every institution has those).  I also think this doesn't bode well for Trumpism in the country at large.

What does it mean for the SBC?  Well, the more things change, the more they remain the same.  Litton may reconcile some groups; but moving the SBC toward greater recognition of the sin of slavery, the "original sin" of this country, and the multiple sins it has spawned down to this day?  Yeah, don't expect the SBC to be "woke" any time soon.  It has been pointed out recently, in this context, that the Rev. Dr. King was a Baptist. True; but he wasn't a Southern Baptist.  The SBC is gonna do what it's gonna do; but if the SBC doesn't want to go any further Trump than it already has, that tells me most of the conservative parts of the country don't want to, either.  Not enough to really keep Trumpism alive, anyway.