Second Wave or Last Gasp

Mark Ray has posted an insightful essay entitled "Is the Second Wave of the Conservative Resurgence Coming to Fruition" for the Baptist Studies Bulletin. By "second wave" Ray is referring to the fundamentalist takeover of Southern Baptist State Conventions. He makes note of the recent resurgence of fundamentalist successes in relatively tranquil state conventions like Texas, Alabama and North Carolina and concludes:

As denominations continue a steep decline in attendance at annual meetings, diminished financial resources, and loss of talent pool through the severing of longstanding institutional ties, Fundamentalists may awaken one day to discover that it's unclear exactly what it is they've actually "won." That which remains may be unrecognizable or even non-existent.

I agree. Perhaps we should call this "second wave" the last gasp of a body suffering from fundamentalist induced asphyxiation.

Sex and the Pulpit

When I was a teenager at a Baptist church, preachers were constantly telling boys and girls not to hold hands during church services. Naturally, we perceived that as a challenge to do so and couples often came up with some creative ways to both openly and secretly defy ministerial bans on handholding.

As a teenager, I never quite knew whether the preacher's opposition to intertwined fingers was prompted by his own desire to control every aspect of our young lives or whether they thought God frowned on every form of premarital touching. I just know that holding hands with a girl was never more exhilerating than when it was done during a service at a Baptist church.

I mention this to provide some psychological background for my uneasiness with a new trend among preachers of Baptist churches. Gone are the days when Baptist preachers stand behind pulpits and issue mandates against handholding. Today, some Baptist preachers have become so hip that they preach from beds in order to exhort their married congregants to add daily sex to their list of spiritual disciplines. I'm not making this up.

I'm still not certain whether such preaching is prompted by the preacher's desire to control every aspect of his congregant's lives. I am fairly certain that if Jesus gave a sermon on a bed, it would have been recorded in the gospels right along with his sermon on the mount and the sermon on the plain.

I'm also a little worried that if more preachers make sex obligatory, it will start taking some of the fun out of sex.

Southern Baptists Selling Off Assets

The Fort Worth Star Telegram is reporting that Southern Baptists have sold the broadcast facilities of its former Radio and Television Commission.

After the fundamentalist takeover of the Southern Baptist Convention, the Radio and Television Commission was turned over to the North American Mission Board (NAMB). As chronicled in Mary Kinney Branson's Spending God's Money: Extravagance and Misuse in the Name of Ministry, NAMB was so badly mismanaged that trustees eventually relieved its fundamentalist president of his duties.

The North American Mission Board is not the only agency of the Southern Baptist Convention to sell off assets. The International Mission Board has been selling off valuable assets all over the world.

The Southern Baptist Convention has been imploding both financially and in membership ever since the fundamentalist takeover. It's death is progressing so slowly that few people realize how hollow this body has become.

One who is not surprised is Dallas Morning News reporter Christine Wicker whose book The Fall of the Evangelical Nation thoroughly documents the numerical decline of this denomination.

On Myopic Letters from Young CBFers

Associated Baptist Press reports that a group of young CBFers are challenging Cecil Sherman for recounting the history of the fundamentalist takeover of the Southern Baptist Convention.

While Sherman's analogy to the holocaust is surely over the top, his concern to recount the story of the fundamentalist takeover is not.

From the beginning of the CBF movement there have been pious voices telling us that we need to move on, forgive and forget, and be more positive and proactive in our spirituality. Every fundamentalist assault upon the integrity and well being of Baptist educators, administrators, missionaries, ministers and lay persons has been greeted with the same mantra to "move on," "get over it," and "face the future."

Unfortunately, most Baptists both within CBF and within the SBC took that advice. That was myopic. Nothing could stir Baptists from our pious apathy. Not the firing of educators, not the seizure, pilfering and mismanagement of Baptist institutions, not the formation of creeds and the administration of loyalty oaths, not the termination of scores of missionaries, and not the union of denomination and right-wing politics. No outrage has been sufficient to create a spine for sustained dissent within the Baptist body.

I'll always be convinced that Baptist apathy -- both within CBF and the SBC -- created a favorable climate for misguided foreign policies that the entire world will be facing for the foreseeable future.

While every mainline denomination in America opposed the doctrine of pre-emptive wars, SBC ethicist Richard Land was writing rationales for war with Iraq. While religious leaders around the world have been working to defuse tensions between religions, Southern Baptists have been leading cheers for a clash of civilizations. When all people of good will have been clamoring for an end to secret arrests, renditions, and torture, Southern Baptist leaders have been offering justications for tactics previously associated only with authoritarian regimes. While scores of scientists insist that we are running out of time to reduce greenhouse gases, Southern Baptists insist there's no grounds for concern.

The world will never know how different history might have been if more Baptists had the boldness, outspokenness, and dogged persistence in confronting injustice that characterizes Cecil Sherman.