Mike Stone

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What's up with the Rev. Bart Barber's easy win as SBC president? Don't ask the Gray Lady

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What's up with the Rev. Bart Barber's easy win as SBC president? Don't ask the Gray Lady

One of the most interesting stories from the 2023 meeting of the Southern Baptist Convention was the easy win by the Rev. Bart Barber, a low-key Texas Baptist who was elected to a second term as president.

Under normal conditions, SBC presidents are elected to a second term without opposition.

However, words like “normal” do not apply to Southern Baptist life in the Internet age — in which there are ordinary conservative Southern Baptists and then there are those gathered in the Conservative Baptist Network tent.

Barber faced opposition from the right, which was a newsworthy fact in and of itself. I would say that the opposition came from the “theological” right, but I haven’t seen strong evidence that this conflict is about theology.

Still, Barber’s easy win in the New Orleans convention was a blow to the rebel conservatives and a win for the establishment conservatives. I found it interesting that some in the elite press didn’t seem to realize this, or appeared predestined to ignore it.

Check out the top of the New York Times wrap-up report on the SBC meeting. The massive double-decker headline tells the readers what really matters:

“Southern Baptists’ Fight Over Female Leaders Shows Power of Insurgent Right.”

Moves this week to oust women from church leadership in the nation’s largest Protestant denomination offer an early look into the psyche of evangelical America ahead of 2024.

Whoa. “Ahead of 2024?” Is this a reference to the next SBC election or a suggestion that what happened in New Orleans is important because it was some kind of symbolic foretaste of what really matters to the religion-desk at the Times — which is the 2024 White House race?

As always, remember: Politics is what is real. Religion? Not so much.

That journalism question, once again: Is this Times sermon “analysis” or “news”?


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Plug-In: Life after Pat Robertson, a religious broadcaster who mixed religion and politics

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Plug-In: Life after Pat Robertson, a religious broadcaster who mixed religion and politics

In the headlines, former President Donald Trump has been indicted on federal charges in the classified documents case. A possible prison sentence aside, will the case help or hurt Trump with conservative Christian voters? Stay tuned.

Here in Oklahoma City, where I am, the Oklahoma Sooners celebrate their third straight Women’s College World Series championship. The best team in college sports finished the season by winning a record 53 games in a row.

And yes, Jesus is a big part of their team chemistry, as ESPN’s Hallie Grossman has highlighted.

This is our weekly roundup of the top headlines and best reads in the world of faith. We start with Thursday’s death of Pat Robertson at age 93.

What To Know: The Big Story

‘He obeyed God’: That’s how the Christian Broadcasting Network characterizes Pat Robertson’s life.

More from CBN:

Pat Robertson dedicated his life to preaching the Gospel, helping those in need, and educating the next generation. He founded the Christian Broadcasting Network and numerous organizations, including Operation Blessing, Regent University, the American Center for Law and Justice, and International Family Entertainment Inc. He was also a New York Times best-selling author and host of The 700 Club.

Pat was married to the love of his life and partner in ministry for 67 years, Dede Robertson, until she died in 2022. Together, they had four children, 14 grandchildren, and 24 great-grandchildren.

Religion and politics: Robertson was a “pugnacious conservative whose Christian Broadcasting Network defined televangelism for decades,” the Washington Times’ Mark A. Kellner writes.

“With CBN, ‘The 700 Club,’ Regent, the Christian Coalition, and a run for president, he changed evangelicals’ place in public life,” according to Christianity Today’s Kate Shellnutt.

The 1988 Republican presidential candidate “turned evangelicals into a powerful constituency that helped Republicans capture Congress in 1994,” the New York Times’ Douglas Martin notes.

Robertson’s legacy: The Associated Press’ Ben Finley explains:


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Podcast: Return of the SBC civil war? That'd be a huge development in American religion

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Podcast: Return of the SBC civil war? That'd be a huge development in American religion

In the early 1980s, the Religion Newswriters Association (now the Religion News Association) held many of its annual meetings in the days just before the Southern Baptist Convention’s big national gatherings .

With good cause: The SBC was in the midst of a spectacular, painful civil war — “moderates” fighting the armies of “biblical inerrancy” — for control of America’s largest non-Catholic flock Big headlines were a certainty, year after year. Religion reporters knew their editors — back in the days when more newsrooms had travel budgets for this sort of thing — would pay to get them to the SBC front lines.

Thus, the trip was a twofer. Religion-beat pros arrived early and started work during the meetings that preceded the actual convention, such as the Pastors’ Conference (a preaching festival featuring rising SBC stars) and the Women’s Missionary Union. The RNA would work its own seminars into the gaps.

One of my favorite memories was in New Orleans in 1982. Religion-beat patriarch Russell Chandler of the Los Angeles Times and some other scribes got into a convention-hotel elevator, carrying a box of wine and liquor for an RNA social hour. The elevator was packed with WMU women, who didn’t like the looks of that box.

When the RNA folks got off the elevator, one of the women said, under her breath: “Well, they’re not here for the Southern Baptist Convention.” Over his shoulder, Chandler replied: “Oh, yes we are.”

I bring this up because there’s plenty of evidence that the Southern Baptists are about to have a second civil war. As I argued during this week’s “Crossroads” podcast (CLICK HERE to tune that in), that would be a big news story for at least three reasons.

Before we get to those, here’s a few key passages from a Religion News Service story by Bob Smietana describing a big SBC domino that tipped over this week: “SBC President Ed Litton won’t run again — to focus on racial reconciliation instead.” Here’s the overture:

Saying he wants to spend his time focusing on racial reconciliation, Southern Baptist Convention President Ed Litton announced via video Tuesday (March 1) that he would not seek a second term in office.

Litton will become the first SBC president in four decades to not seek reelection after his first one-year term.


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Nashville 2021 revisited: For Southern Baptists, sermons are part of how their work gets done

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Nashville 2021 revisited: For Southern Baptists, sermons are part of how their work gets done

Whenever the Southern Baptist Convention gathers in times of trials and turmoil, one thing is certain -- someone will preach a sermon that makes a difference.

That's how Southern Baptists do what they do. These sermons may not produce as many headlines as SBC elections or fiery debates about hot-button social issues. But the sermons matter.

The big sermon during the 2021 convention in Nashville came at a logical moment -- when SBC President J.D. Greear gave his farewell address, just before tense voting to elect his successor.

In this "defining moment" address, the leader of the Summit Church in Raleigh-Durham, N.C., offered a stinging quote about an elephant that has camped in the SBC fellowship hall.

"We have to decide," Greear said, "if we want our convention primarily to be a political voting bloc or if we want it to be a Great Commission people. … Whenever the church gets in bed with politics, the church gets pregnant, and the offspring does not look like our Father in heaven."

America is important, he stressed. But America is not the whole picture for believers striving to build churches around the world. "God has not called us primarily to save America politically. He has called us to make the Gospel known to all," said Greear.

Southern Baptists can agree that "no compromise should be tolerated" on crucial social issues, he said. And no one wants to stop defending the inerrant truth of the Bible.


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New podcast: Is SBC President Ed Litton 'woke'? What is a 'conservative' stance on CRT?

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New podcast: Is SBC President Ed Litton 'woke'? What is a 'conservative' stance on CRT?

It certainly was an interesting way to start a podcast (click here to tune that in) about press coverage of the 2021 national meeting of the Southern Baptist Convention.

Here’s the gist of what “Crossroads” host Todd Wilken wanted to know: If journalists were going to write that the Rev. Mike Stone — who lost his bid to become SBC president — was “right-wing” and “ultraconservative,” then why didn’t they pin “left-wing” and “ultraliberal” labels on Bishop-elect Megan Rohrer, the first trans/queer/gender fluid bishop in the Evangelical Lutheran Church of America?

Think about it this way: Stone and the new Conservative Baptist Network — many flew pirate flags — set out to attack the already conservative (theologically speaking) leadership of the Southern Baptist Convention, saying that it was not conservative ENOUGH on several issues. In other words, the goal was to move the SBC further right and away from recent pronouncements by the convention.

Meanwhile, Bishop-elect Rohrer is an open advocate of the CURRENT teachings of the ELCA. In the context of this denomination and its doctrines, Rohrer is part of the ruling class.

Now, is Rohrer “ultraliberal” in the context of American culture? How about liberal mainline Protestantism? How about other Lutheran bodies? Was Stone “ultraconservative” in the context of today’s SBC?

You can see the struggle here. Are journalists supposed to label religious leaders in the context of the wider culture or of their own flocks? I have argued that this depends: I go with the “flock” framing when discussing news events that are taking place inside a given “flock.”

As I argued the other day (#SBC21: Press wrestles with Twitter-niche labels as Southern Baptists choose a new leader), most of the religion-beat pros who gathered in Nashville tried to be very cautious when describing the various groups under the conservative SBC umbrella. The exception was the New York Times, which offered a kind of acid-flashback return to the SBC civil wars of the early 1980s.

The key was the labeling in this early headline — “Southern Baptists Narrowly Head Off Conservative Takeover” — and then this overture:


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#SBC21: Press wrestles with Twitter-niche labels as Southern Baptists choose a new leader

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#SBC21: Press wrestles with Twitter-niche labels as Southern Baptists choose a new leader

If you have followed mainstream coverage of religion (and politics) in recent decades, you know that many journalists tend to make liberal use of the vague term “moderate.”

This has certainly been true of coverage of warfare inside the Southern Baptist Convention.

Since “liberal” is kind of scary, journalists have long divided the SBC into “moderate” and “conservative” camps. With very few exceptions, your typical “moderate” Southern Baptist would be a “fundamentalist” in the world of mainline Protestantism.

Thus, in the great SBC civil war of 1979 and the years thereafter, the term “moderate” came to mean Southern Baptists that mainstream journalists thought were acceptable. These were the folks in the white hats who backed abortion rights, women’s ordination and, at first, were silent or vague on LGBTQ issues. Most of all, they were the enemies of those Southern Baptists who fit under the Religious Right umbrella.

With that in mind, consider the tweaked double-decker headline on The New York Times report after the fireworks at the SBC national meetings in Nashville:

Southern Baptists Narrowly Head Off Ultraconservative Takeover

Ed Litton, a moderate pastor from Alabama, won a high-stakes presidential election with the potential to reshape the future of the country’s largest Protestant denomination.

The original headline stuck with the old-school “moderate” vs. “conservative” language.

The leadership of the Conservative Baptist Network may have been sad about their candidate, the Rev. Mike Stone of Georgia, losing the election. But they had to be elated at how the Times described this event in terms that meshed with their views on SBC life. Here is the top of that report:

NASHVILLE — In a dramatic showdown on Tuesday, Southern Baptists elected a moderate pastor from Alabama as their next president, narrowly heading off an attempted takeover by the denomination’s insurgent right wing.


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#SBC2021, CRT and sexual abuse: Are compromises possible in this complex showdown?

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#SBC2021, CRT and sexual abuse: Are compromises possible in this complex showdown?

When most journalists, and thus most news consumers, think of Southern Baptists it’s highly likely that “compromise” is not one of the first words that leaps to mind.

But think about this for a moment. The current firestorm surrounding the Southern Baptist Convention’s national meetings in Nashville (tomorrow and Wednesday) centers on recent efforts by the convention’s leaders to find working compromises on two explosive issues in church life — racism and sexual abuse. In both cases, forces have pulled at convention leaders to move further to the right or to pursue more “progressive” options that would clash with realities in SBC life and polity.

Consider the hellish realities of racism and, in particular, the complex secular doctrines of “Critical Race Theory.” The SBC could praise CRT and embrace it or totally reject this school of thought. A compromise? That would stress listening to conservative Black church leaders and saying that CRT makes some points about racism in America that are valid, but that it also contains secular views of evil and race that do not mesh with traditional Christian beliefs. Hold that thought.

On sexual abuse, there are progressives who want the SBC to start some kind of national agency that would be granted powers to yank abusive clergy and congregations into line. This would clash with Baptist teachings on the autonomy of local churches. At the same time, others say SBC leaders have already gone to far while trying to create a centrist, compromise, stance — providing some guidelines for churches facing accusations of sexual abuse, as well as best-practices materials on how to help victims.

So, here is the journalism question to ponder in the next few days: Can national-level religion reporters find a way to avoid the classic two-army, left vs. right, template that dominates most news coverage of clashes of this kind? This would allow readers to see the larger picture — the attempt to find compromises between two extremes that please enough conservatives to prevent a damaging explosion in SBC life.


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Beyond Potiphar's wife: Leaked letters yank SBC debates about sexual abuse into the open

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Beyond Potiphar's wife: Leaked letters yank SBC debates about sexual abuse into the open

It's hard to follow warfare inside the Southern Baptist Convention without a working knowledge of biblical symbolism.

Consider this passage in a May 31 letter (.pdf here) from the Rev. Russell Moore to SBC President J.D. Greear, which described key events leading to his recent resignation as head of the denomination's Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission.

"You and I both heard, in closed door meetings, sexual abuse survivors spoken of in terms of 'Potiphar's wife' and other spurious biblical analogies," wrote Moore, in a letter posted at the Baptist Blogger website. "The conversations in these closed door meetings were far worse than anything Southern Baptists knew. … And as you know, this comes on the heels of a track-record of the Executive Committee staff and others referring to victims as 'crazy' and, at least in one case, as worse than the sexual predators themselves."

Who was "Potiphar's wife"? She was known for her efforts to manipulate Joseph during his enslavement in Egypt. The Genesis narrative notes: "Now Joseph was handsome and good-looking. And after a time, his master's wife cast her eyes upon Joseph, and said, 'Lie with me.' " When Joseph refused, the seductress accused him of assault and had him jailed.

It's easy to see how "Potiphar's wife" insults would fit into attempts to discredit Moore and activists who want America's largest Protestant flock to change how its agencies, seminaries and nearly 48,000 autonomous congregations deal with sexual abuse.

Moore's resignation, after years of attacks by critics, has pushed sexual abuse to the top of the agenda at the SBC's June 15-16 national meetings in Nashville -- along with the election of a new president.


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New podcast: Will SBC politicos answer questions about doctrinal clashes in this new war?

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New podcast: Will SBC politicos answer questions about doctrinal clashes in this new war?

Whether they’ll admit it or not, when covering conflicts and controversies many (not all) journalists seem to think that one of their main duties is to help (wink, wink) readers separate the people in white hats from those in black hats, smart people from the not-so-smart people and kind people from mad people.

There are several ways to do this. Reporters can quote calm, articulate people on one side, will seeking the most radical, scary voices on the other. I have, when covering events linked to abortion, seen TV crews rush past women who oppose abortion (including women who have experienced abortions) in order to interview screaming male protesters who are waving (literally) bloody signs.

Journalists can do long, personal interviews with people on one side, while pulling dry, boring quotes from press releases on the other. They can allow one set of activists to define all the crucial terms and questions, while ignoring or distorting the beliefs of activists on the other side.

Journalists also get to choose the labels they pin on the competing armies. That was the subject that loomed over this week’s “Crossroads” podcast (CLICK HERE to tune that in), which focused on the bitter debates surrounding the resignation of Russell Moore as leader of the Southern Baptist Convention’s Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission.

The obvious other news hook: The nation’s largest non-Catholic flock will hold its 2021 national meeting next week (June 15-16) in Nashville. For more background, see this earlier post: “That SBC powderkeg: Clearly, executive committee is bitterly divided on sexual-abuse issues.”

As the old saying goes, “You can’t tell the players without a program.” Well, it’s going to be crucial how journalists label the “players” in this conflict.

For example, here is a crucial section of a new Peter Wehner essay at The Atlantic, which ran under this headline: “The Scandal Rocking the Evangelical World — The sudden departure of Russell Moore is forcing an overdue conversation about the crises of American Christendom.”


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