Southern Baptists: A Denomination in Decline

EthicsDaily.com reports on statistics released by LifeWay Christian Resources that show a drop in SBC membership of 40,000 over the last year. Baptisms are at their lowest level since 1970.

Ed Stetzer, director of LifeWay Research, writes on the LifeWay blog:

“For now, Southern Baptists are a denomination in decline.”

“Some might want to point to the good news (attendance up slightly, more churches, etc.),” Stetzer said. “However, you cannot miss the fact that a dubious historical milestone has been reached–and it needs to be noted in denominational and church offices across the country.”

“Some might say it’s ‘only one year,’ and they would be technically right,” Stetzer continued. But based on long-term membership trends, Stetzer said, “Reality is we have peaked.”

The Green Bible

EthicsDaily.com has launched The Green Bible, “a warehouse of information on the biblical mandate to care for the environment–and what people of faith can and should do.”

On Trying to Change Christian Attitudes Toward Homosexuality

At the Associated Baptist Press, David Gushee writes a moving editorial on the modern Christian response to homosexuality, a response that is too often based on fear, loathing, and ignorance. Gushee challenges us to extend the “rudiments of Christian love of neighbor” to homosexuals. Among other things, Gushee calls on Christians to stop blaming homosexuals for our social ills, to speak accurately about homosexuality as a sexual orientation, and to recognize the full humanity and dignity of homosexuals as persons made in God’s image. For Baptists, Gushee’s words challenge to us take seriously our long-standing position, rejected by the Southern Baptist Convention, that Jesus Christ is the criterion upon which the Bible is to be interpreted.

Southern Baptist President: Libera Media is Ruining America (Just Look at Canada)

Frank Page, president of the Southern Baptist Convention, rails against the “liberals” in an American Family Association webcast. Writes Bob Allen at EthicsDaily.com:

Page, who completes his two-year service as top elected leader of the nation’s second-largest faith group in June, described the prospect of a future Supreme Court ruling that gay marriage is legal in all 50 states as “a frightening thought.”

“I think it’s going to dramatically change everything,” he said. “The entire societal paradigm is going to shift. Nothing will be the same. The only place where people will be able to sense some sense of normality will be within the walls of Bible-believing churches. Because once they leave the walls of the Bible-believing churches, they are going to live in a world that is totally different.”

Would churches be in peril?

“Just look to Canada,” Page said. “Already in Canada, if you are as a pastor, you speak against homosexuality, you can be jailed. And I’ve told my people in my church, ‘You just have to come visit me in jail, because they may be where we’re headed.’ I’m just saying life is going to change if that happens. Life is going to change as we know it.”

Life in America would never be the same, Page said, unless the people of America were to wake up and ask, “What have we done?” He viewed that as unlikely.

“The liberal control of the media, most of the media, the liberal control of most of education, of most of movies, television–their control is so pervasive and so virulently opposed to a conservative viewpoint of life, they would make it extremely difficult for our nation to ever wake up and do anything about it,” he said.

Follow this link for the complete article.

I wonder if Page has read “Young Goodman Brown.” Perhaps Nathaniel Hawthorne’s short story should be added to the Southern Baptists’ Sunday School literature.

Sheri Klouda and Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary

Some backgroud: Sheri Klouda joined the faculty at Southwestern Baptist Theology Seminary (SWBT) in 2000, entering a tenure-track position in 2002. She was assistant professor of Old Testament languages, and the only female teaching in the School of Theology. In June 2003, SWBT hired Paige Patterson as president. In April 2006, the Seminary informed Klouda that her contract would not be renewed, because she was a female. It is Patterson’s position that women should not instruct men at SWBT, because women are not qualified to be pastors at local churches.