How many times have you read a story that said something like, “Southern Baptists are expected to do so-and-so or such-and such”?
I’m not talking about coverage of the actual annual meeting when “messengers” from autonomous SBC churches actually get together and vote on this-and-that and make statements and changes in the mechanisms that affect their common work. I am referring to news stories that seem to assume that Southern Baptists can be summed up with one set of cultural or political images or a set of data points.
You know: I’m talking about news coverage of Southern Baptists that assumes that Sunbelt suburban megachurches are the only reality. It’s so easy, when trying to write news reports of 666 words or so, to settle into language that attempts to make the blurry real world snap into super-sharp focus.
The same is true of all big religious movements, of course. We all know that the singular “Catholic vote” doesn’t exist, now or ever. We know that rural United Methodists are not the same folks as blue zip-code urbanites (and there are complexities inside those two groups). We know that many Episcopalians in north Texas are not the same as those in northern California. But there’s only so much space (even in today’s online world) and editors always want snappy phrases and punchy conclusions, usually with a political hook or two.
Anyway, Nathan A. Finn — provost at North Greenville University, a campus in South Carolina with strong Southern Baptist ties — recently rolled out a tweetstorm in the wake of all the news coverage of the SBC annual meeting in Nashville.
This is not a news story. It isn’t even a conventional “think piece,” although Finn could have turned it into one quite easily. It’s “just” a long chain of tweets. Nevertheless, there is much to learn here. Let us attend.
The chain opened with the tweet at the top of this post. Here’s the rest of the “storm” (sorry about the repeats, but it’s the best way to keep the URLs clear).
Here is a relevant tweet, in this day and age.
Here’s another reality that is frequently overlooked — small-town life.
Here is another wrinkle in the familiar stereotypes, one linked to quite a few stories these days. Think Texas, Florida and lots of other places.
We are almost done.
This next one is the “typical” high-steeple church in a Southern town or city — the “Baptist church” that so many of us are familiar with.
That’s the end, sort of. You could add the Koreans in there, somewhere, although that’s a bigger trend in Presbyterian life. I would have added a tweet about churches that used to be SBC and have now gone independent. That’s a wrinkle that often gets lost or that causes confusion. There are, after all, thousands of Baptists in the South who are not Southern Baptists.
Spot any local stories and realities? What did you learn?