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June 15, 2006

Altar Call...or Wake Up Call?

As a veteran of Southern Baptist politics, I welcomed the news yesterday that Reverend Frank Page of South Carolina was elected President of the Southern Baptist Convention. In his stunning victory, Rev. Page defeated two candidates backed by the SBC leadership.

Over the past decade, the Southern Baptist Convention has made no apologies for becoming a proxy of the Republican Party. The leadership tended to heed the word of RNC Chair Ken Mehlman more than the actual words of Christ. As a result, thousands of Southern Baptists (like myself) became alienated from our denomination. The Texas Baptist Convention threatened to leave because of the leadership's political bully tactics and many churches made a full break from the convention, like the church home of President Carter. Other churches, like the District of Columbia Baptist Convention, were kicked out of the SBC because of their welcoming policy towards gay believers.

I'm sure that Reverend Page is equally as politically conservative as he is sculpturally conservative. The policies of the SBC most likely will not change, but hopefully their stands on political issues will adhere more closely to the founding principles of the Baptist faith - that the priesthood of the believer is paramount and that no follower should be forced to follow the political dictates of the church leadership. For the many Democrats and progressives in the Southern Baptist Convention, the adherence to our denomination's founding principle has been too long ignored.

Posted by John at June 15, 2006 10:30 AM