Ethics Daily has an insightful article about the decline in baptisms reported by the Southern Baptist Convention. The article quotes sociologist Robert Wuthnow:
Robert Wuthnow, a professor of sociology of religion at Princeton University, says it may be that demographics are catching up with the SBC and the denomination could be facing a long-term decline in membership and loss of public influence similar to other moderate and liberal Protestant churches.
Southern Baptists' membership core--white and middle class--is aging, he says, and migration patterns are pulling two directions, taking churchgoers out of the Bible belt while people from less religiously inclined regions move into the South.
I doubt that many Southern Baptist preachers will pay attention to Wuthnow. Demographics don't preach. That's why Convention President Bobby Welch offers a different analysis:
In his remarks to the SBC Executive Committee, Welch surmised that disasters like Hurricane Katrina and church fires in Alabama and controversy among convention leaders might be distractions to reaching the 1 million baptism goal.
"We must somehow become proficient enough in the spiritual war-fighting that we are not overwhelmed by struggles," Welch said. "Can you not fight with a scratch on your nose? Can you not lose a piece of your ear and keep going? Can you not take a flesh wound and stand up straight? Must you always lay down and whine when the least difficulty comes along?"
This kind of simplistic theology that blames every ill and ailment on struggles with Satan is killing the Southern Baptist Convention.
3 comments:
When have the leaders or for that matter most preachers ever understood reality?
I got my computer back yesterday so I am busy putting everything back. Why when people are moving out of the Bible belt am I back. I haven't lived here since I was two, am I being punished. People rejected the hell fire and brimstone once and they will again. Why are the SBC so good at getting people to know they are under attack. It is those of us that don't subscribe to hell fire and brimstone that are under attack.
My sister, who is now the pianist for the First Methodist Church in her hometown, and her husband left their Southern Baptist Church because they couldn't take another Sunday screed against gays (their son died of AIDS). My husband and I left because we go to church for fellowship and to hear the Good News, not a Republican campaign speech.
The biggest distraction from the Great Commission in history has been the seeking of political power.
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