Conservatives Take Over the SBC --- More NC Results | Eastern North Carolina Now

    Next week is the real Southern Baptist Convention. It is the Annual Meeting in Ohio this year. This is when all the churches send Messengers to vote on matters. Every Messenger has a vote. Each church can send as many as 10. Any church which contributes to the Cooperative Program (which is the only funding source for all SBC work) gets at least 2 Messengers.

    They are going to get a report on their Progress or Decline. Here are the facts they will view:

    The stats get this summary:

    It marked the eighth straight year of declining membership for the nation's second-largest faith group behind Roman Catholics. Today 807,000 fewer people sit in Southern Baptist pews than in 2006.

    Ed Stetzer, head of LifeWay Research, says the trend goes back much further, to slower rates of growth in the 1960s and 1970s followed by plateau and then gradual decline. If it continues, Stetzer predicts the SBC will follow the same trajectory of the so-called "mainline decline," long presumed by SBC conservatives to have been caused by liberal theology.

    Preserving evangelistic zeal was a driving force behind the "conservative resurgence" movement of the 1980s and 1990s that produced a more conservative denominational leadership at the cost of losing former SBC churches now affiliated with smaller groups such as the Alliance of Baptists and Cooperative Baptist Fellowship."

    This series of articles is covering what EXACTLY happened! You may read them from the beginning now if you have overlooked some. The Conservatives---all mega church authoritarian Pastors with giant egos---started with W.A. Criswell of Dallas FBC. He discovered the secret ingredient of control. The SBC President appoints the Committee on Committees each year. It was intended as a means to share power, solicit input from all parts of the SBC, and have a totally democratic structure as opposed to the Roman Catholic hierarchy where the Pope decides / the Cardinals affirm / from there to the local church and priests---you do as told!

    There has been a dichotomy between rural shouting and screaming churches---called the Sandy Creek (NC) Tradition vs. Charleston (SC) Tradition which was formal. It is based on the highly educated clergy stemming from the formation of the SBC in the FBC of Charleston. Both churches exist today. You will note this is a product of Frontier America and original southern colonies of NC and SC! As usual, NC is at the evangelical religious core of America. Our Halifax Accords actually pre-date the Constitution --- and much of our early founders' thought is in that document!

    The same dichotomy is part of original America. The majority of early settlers were simply revolting from the staid and fixed culture of the Old World to the wild-and-wooly Frontier of the New World. The laws of primogeniture said "only the oldest son can inherit." A wealthy family could purchase a Land Grant in the forming Colonies. Many prominent Planters of the South got their start and can still produce the document which gave them a big Plantation. Either a daughter of son could have such a bold start in the Colonies.

    If you were poor and wanted a future, you could book passage and start from scratch in the New World. From that simple penniless start the opportunities of the New World were your apple to eat. The idea was "anyone can become the President of the United States." Benjamin Franklin arrived in Boston with such poverty and worked his way up with newspaper publishing and the appreciation of the readers sending him to the forefront of the writing of the Constitution. George Washington married Martha who had a Land Grant for their home and large farm. Land Grants were prominent from Virginia down the coast to Georgia. The Spanish settled Florida with the same formula for land.

    In America a good education and social prominence were the valued possessions along with having a big farm. That story repeated itself as the westward movement added more opportunities of land ownership. We took the land from the Native Americans and sent them packing to the Mountains of NC --- and ultimately over the Trail of Tears to the mid-west. Greed and beating out the "heathen Indians" were part of this picture as well. Prejudice and Greed are in the blood of this nation, my friends! Slaves, like Indians, were thought to "have no souls as did the White Man." If you make your mind think there is "superiority built into your color," you can do as did Hitler. He made the Jews into "Jewish rats and infidels who killed Christ."

    Situations and history change, but basic human nature does not!

    This article takes the upcoming SBC meeting and the founding of the Nation into consideration. Rather than make it longer on this round. I shall continue the details of the Conservative Takeover and its results in the next article:

    The previous one dealt with the changes forced on NC by the Takeover. This one gives a jump forward and way back to the beginnings. It is like a William Faulkner novel or Star Wars where the reader/viewer has to use his mind to put the whole story together!

    Changes to the Southern Baptist Convention (to be continued)

        •  Redaction of the history of SEBTS and the SBC

        •  Formation of a new group of Baptists honoring local church freedom

        •  Reduction in numbers of churches participating in NC / SBC work