On the SBC's Revised Membership Figures

Thanks to Bob Allen at Ethics Daily for calling attention to discrepancies in reported membership figures for the Southern Baptist Convention over the past few years.

Twenty-five years ago, after more than five decades of remarkable and unbroken growth, fundamentalists contended that moderates had to be removed from positions of leadership before they led the SBC into decline. Most moderates left in 1990. By 1998 the SBC was reporting its first decline in over seven decades. Fundamentalists responded by revising the Baptist Faith and Message and turning it into a binding creed. Then the fundamentalists fired whatever professors and missionaries that were left who would not sign their creed. They've run out of handy scapegoats and they are still declining.

If they can't keep the numbers straight on membership statistics, one might wonder about the accuracy of their financial reports.