Will we soon live in a world without Mormons and Southern Baptists?

September 18, 2020 Bobby Ross Jr.

Weekend Plug-in 🔌

Editor’s note: Every Friday, “Weekend Plug-in” features analysis, fact checking and top headlines from the world of faith. Got feedback or ideas for this column? Email Bobby Ross Jr. at therossnews@gmail.com.

(ANALYSIS) When it comes to religious groups, what’s in a name?

In 2018, the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints began a push to get rid of the term “Mormon.” (A quick side note: Continued news media use of that identifier is “significantly correlated” with negative sentiment in the article, argues a new study, coauthored by Brigham Young University journalism professor Joel Campbell and Public Square Magazine’s Christopher D. Cunningham.)

Now, the Southern Baptist Convention — the nation’s largest Protestant denomination — seems to be recasting itself, as first reported by Washington Post religion writer Sarah Pulliam Bailey.

Bailey’s story this week noted:

Leaders in the Southern Baptist Convention are increasingly dropping the “Southern” part of their Baptist name, calling it a potentially painful reminder of the convention’s historic role in support of slavery.

The 50,000 Baptist churches in the convention are autonomous and can still choose to refer to themselves as “Southern Baptist” or “SBC.” But in his first interview on the topic, convention president J.D. Greear said momentum has been building to adopt the name “Great Commission Baptists,” both because of the racial reckoning underway in the United States and because many have long seen the “Southern Baptist” name as too regional for a global group of believers.

“Our Lord Jesus was not a White Southerner but a brown-skinned Middle Eastern refugee,” said Greear, who this summer used the phrase “Black lives matter” in a presidential address and announced that he would retire a historic gavel named for an enslaver. “Every week we gather to worship a savior who died for the whole world, not one part of it. What we call ourselves should make that clear.”

For more insight on the possible change, see Religion News Service national correspondent Adelle M. Banks’ follow-up report.

Speaking of names, Greear serves as pastor of The Summit Church, a Durham, North Carolina, megachurch whose website contains scarce references to its Baptist affiliation.

Other examples of prominent Southern Baptist churches that don’t necessarily market themselves that way include Rick Warren’s Saddleback Church in Southern California and Ed Young Jr.’s Fellowship Church in the Dallas-Fort Worth area.

The trend of churches de-emphasizing denominational affiliation — be it Baptist, Methodist or Lutheran — in favor of names such as The Grove, Community of Grace and The Bridge is not new, as noted by the Minneapolis Star-Tribune’s Jean Hopfensperger and the Columbus Dispatch’s Danae King.

Even the label “evangelical,” often tied to politics, has become problematic for some.

During the 2016 presidential campaign, RNS national correspondent Emily McFarlan Miller reported on prominent Christians such as Russell Moore, president of the SBC’s Ethics & Religious Liberty Commission, eschewing the evangelical identity.

And on the same day that Bailey’s story on Southern Baptists was published, Christianity Today’s Kate Shellnutt reported that a justice-focused group, known for nearly 50 years as Evangelicals for Social Change, was changing its name to Christians for Social Change.

Power Up: The Week’s Best Reads

1. ‘We lost what we cherished’: “What happens when a priest with a traditional approach to the job arrives at a parish used to doing things its own way?” tweeted the Cincinnati Enquirer’s Dan Horn. “This happens.”

Horn details the specifics in a skillful, in-depth story that mixes parishioners’ personal feelings with crucial doctrinal context.

2. ‘At the intersection of two criminalized identities’: Time’s Sanya Mansoor reports on how the Black Lives Matter movement “is forcing the Muslim community in the U.S. to reckon with its own anti-Blackness and scrutinize its already tense relationship with law enforcement.”

Mansoor cites Pew Research Center data showing that “Black Muslims account for at least one-fifth of all Muslims in the U.S. even as they face discrimination from within their religious community.” Moreover, she notes, “Some mosques are segregated by race, reflecting the neighborhoods they are located in.”

3. Ancient rite gets a Zoom update, stirring clash of generations: In a front-page Wall Street Journal feature, Krishna Pokharel explains how tech-savvy Hindu priests “are offering their help online for Nepal’s yearly ritual appreciation.”

The fascinating report points out:

The ceremonies usually involve a priest and a crowd of relatives, and are considered critical to ease ancestors’ journey in the afterlife. With coronavirus cases in the country still growing, tech-savvy priests are offering to help families pay their respects over video calls.

Traditional priests aren’t pleased, decrying the online versions as crass commercialization. They say family ancestors won’t be happy either.

Inside The Godbeat: Behind The Bylines

For the third time in five years, Religion News Service has appointed a new editor-in-chief (not counting G. Jeffrey MacDonald’s four months as the interim top editor in 2018).

A brief refresher: Jerome Socolovsky was named editor in October 2015, then fired in April 2018 in a highly publicized dispute with then-Publisher Tom Gallagher.

Bob Smietana was picked in August 2018 as Socolovsky’s successor. In December 2019, Gallagher made an abrupt exit as Smietana’s boss. A new RNS publisher, Deborah Caldwell, was chosen this past March.

This week, RNS announced Paul O’Donnell’s appointment as editor-in-chief. O’Donnell joined the RNS team as interim managing editor after Lauren Markoe resigned from that position in the wake of Socolovsky’s firing. O’Donnell remained on staff as a senior editor after Roxanne Stone’s hiring as managing editor in August 2019.

Smietana, who has assumed a new role with RNS as a national writer, described O’Donnell as a great guy and said he “will be fantastic” as editor-in-chief.

In an email, Caldwell told me:

Bob has been acting as a “player-coach” for RNS for months. His stories are routinely among our biggest audience drivers, and he’s always had way more ideas than he could execute on while he was heading the editorial team. For a while it was great for him to be doing both.

But we started realizing 1. We need more of his bandwidth to write the big stories and 2. We need a full-time “coach” instead of a “player-coach” as we head into the future. Neither Bob nor I wanted him to give up reporting and writing. And since we had Paul already on staff — and he’s great editor — it made it easy for Bob to take on the National Writer role. He’ll be able to expand into the big picture stories, plus do some of the mentoring he’s already done — it’s just that the focus will shift more toward writing than editing.

Charging Station: In Case You Missed It

Here is where you can catch up on recent news and opinions from Religion Unplugged.

• Why the evangelical editor who called for Trump’s removal became Catholic (by Mark A. Kellner)

• Pete Buttigieg hosts 'Believers for Biden' virtual town hall (by Timothy Nerozzi)

• Muslims in Hong Kong, 'the next Xinjiang,' silently support Uyghurs (by Shuk Wa Cheng)

• A Messi situation: Examining the faith of the world's greatest soccer player (by Clemente Lisi)

• Will Israel’s peace agreements bring religious freedom in the Middle East? (by Lela Gilbert)

• Christian private school students more likely to have stable marriages, study finds (by Mattie Townson)

• Christian nonprofit CEOs mostly white, mostly male (by Christina Darnell)

• International Fellowship Of Christians And Jews taps evangelicals for support (by Warren Cole Smith)

• Taylor University may not have followed its own process in dismissal of professor (by Warren Cole Smith)

• On Birmingham church bombing anniversary, a call for a unified movement for justice (by Micah Danney)

• After Kabul terror attack, Afghan Sikhs are fleeing to India (by Zaffar Iqbal)

• Yet another book about who will follow Pope Francis examines a church in transition (by Clemente Lisi)

The Final Plug

How are you weathering the COVID-19 storm?

I wrote a column this week on how my 2-year-old grandson, Bennett, is helping me cope with the pandemic.

I’d love for you to give it a read.

Bobby Ross Jr. is a columnist for Religion Unplugged and editor-in-chief of The Christian Chronicle. A former religion writer for The Associated Press and The Oklahoman, Ross has reported from all 50 states and 15 nations. He has covered religion since 1999.

Weekend Plug-in 🔌

Power Up: The Week’s Best Reads

More Top Reads

Inside The Godbeat: Behind The Bylines

Charging Station: In Case You Missed It

The Final Plug