North Greenville University

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Are Southern Baptists bracing for another civil war? Well, today isn't 1979 ...

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Are Southern Baptists bracing for another civil war? Well, today isn't 1979 ...

Once upon a time, Southern Baptists in Bible Belt communities knew how to talk to people who didn't go to church.

"We were dealing with people who were, for the most part, like us," said Baptist historian Nathan Finn, the provost of North Greenville University, located in the South Carolina hills near the North Carolina border. "Everyone understood sweet tea, fried chicken and SEC football. It was easier to talk to those people about Jesus."

Things changed, as the greater Greenville-Spartanburg welcomed waves of high-tech firms and industries with global brands such as BMW, Bosch, Fluor, Hitachi and many others. Today's newcomers speak German or Japanese.

"It's not Black folks and White folks from the South. We're past that. The Sunbelt has gone global and we're more urban. We don't know how to talk to the new people," said Finn. "The cultural gaps are bigger. … Southern Baptists are better at handling these kinds of issues in foreign missions than in our own communities."

Finn has been studying this trend and others for years, which led him to write a series of articles in 2009 for Southeastern Baptist Theological Seminary entitled "Fifteen Factors that have Changed the SBC since 1979."

Anyone who knows Southern Baptist Convention history gets that 1979 reference. That was when activists backing "biblical inerrancy" attacked establishment leaders of America's largest Protestant flock, while also supporting causes favored by the surging Religious Right. Electing one SBC president after another during the 1980s, this "conservative resurgence" helped change the face of evangelicalism.

There are signs a second Baptist civil war may be ahead.


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Old Southern Baptist stereotypes? Journalists need to update some information

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Old Southern Baptist stereotypes? Journalists need to update some information

Anyone looking for Baptists should head to Greenville, S.C.

"People here say you can throw a rock in one direction and hit a Southern Baptist church and if you throw a rock in the other direction you'll hit an independent Baptist church," said Nathan A. Finn, provost of North Greenville University.

Finn's school -- with strong Southern Baptist ties -- isn't the only brand of "Baptist" life in town. There's the progressive Furman University, as well as the independent Bob Jones University, known for its rock-ribbed Baptist defense of fundamentalism.

The Baptist world is extremely complex and hard for many outsiders to navigate. Some of this confusion, said Finn, affects life inside the most prominent Baptist flock -- the Southern Baptist Convention -- and perceptions of SBC conflicts.

"Lots of people need to understand that Southern Baptists are far more diverse, ethnically and culturally, than they think we are," he said, in a telephone interview. "At the same time, we're more uniformly conservative that we often appear, especially since we spend so much time fighting with each other over some of the small points of theology on which we differ."

With some of these stereotypes in mind, Finn recently fired off a dozen Twitter messages describing different images of real "Southern Baptist" churches that are common today. The goal, he said, was to create "composites of what different kinds of SBC congregations look like" and he gave them "names that are common with certain types of real churches."

There is, of course, a "First Baptist Church" which Finn described as "a downtown church that runs 500 in worship. The church is affluent, which is reflected in their beautiful building. The worship service is traditional. There are lots of programs & committees" and the congregation is known for big donations to the SBC's shared "Cooperative Program" budget.

Then there is one of the megachurches that have dominated the American religious marketplace in recent decades. While the word "Baptist" is missing in its name, Finn noted: "CrossWay Church is a suburban church that runs 1400 in two services. The 'feel' of each service is laid back & contemporary. CrossWay has excellent recreational facilities" and its leaders are "considering launching a second campus."

These big churches frequently make headlines.


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Think about it: Southern Baptist tweetstorm spotlights an important issue for religion-beat pros

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Think about it: Southern Baptist tweetstorm spotlights an important issue for religion-beat pros

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).


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