Weekend Plug-in 🔌

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(ANALYSIS) I’m no expert on the Southern Baptist Convention, but I’ve followed it — as a journalist focused on religion news — for nearly a quarter century.

I covered my first SBC national meeting in person in 2001 after I became religion editor for The Oklahoman, the daily newspaper in Oklahoma City.

That gathering, which drew about 9,100 Baptists to New Orleans’ Superdome, came during a time of relative peace for America’s largest Protestant denomination. 

The number of attendees that year marked a significant decline from the record 45,519 registered messengers who flocked to Dallas in 1985 for what a church historian called “a watershed moment in the conservative revolution in the convention.”

That revolution started in 1979 when conservatives who had attacked the SBC’s seminaries as “hotbeds” of liberalism flocked to Houston. Moderates who had expected a giant rally at the Astrodome featuring the Rev. Billy Graham to be the meeting’s highlight got a surprise.

But by 2001, many moderates had left the SBC and formed alternative groups such as the Cooperative Baptist Fellowship. Former President Jimmy Carter had cut his famous ties with the denomination in 2000, saying its “increasingly rigid” positions violated his faith.

Thus, “Southern Baptists wrap up meeting without controversy” was the headline one newspaper chose in June 2001.

“Resolutions that riled critics in past years, such as declarations that women should not be pastors and should ‘submit graciously’ to their husbands, were absent from the two-day gathering,” the late religion writer Rachel Zoll wrote in her Associated Press report.

(Keep reading. That whole issue of women’s roles might not be totally settled.)

In the ensuing years, the SBC meetings — which had made such prominent headlines during the internal war of the 1980s — became barely a blip on the national radar.

“Who’s watching Southern Baptists debate their future?” then-USA Today religion writer Cathy Lynn Grossman asked in a 2010 blog post, lamenting the lack of attention on the 11,000 Baptists who convened in Orlando, Fla., that summer. 

In an essay on that same topic in 2010, the late Jeffrey Weiss, a former award-winning religion writer for the Dallas Morning News, quipped, “If you know that the Southern Baptist Convention recently finished its annual meeting, you are either a Southern Baptist or a truly addicted news junkie.”

“Which leads to this question: Did the SBC get too much attention back in the day, or is it getting too little attention now?” Weiss asked. “My answer to both: Probably so.”

But in the past few years, SBC meetings have gained major news organizations’ attention once again.

As more than 10,000 Baptists came together in Indianapolis this week, AP’s Peter Smith, Christianity Today’s Kate Shellnutt, the New York Times’ Ruth Graham, Religion News Service’s Adelle M. Banks and Bob Smietana and USA Today’s Liam Adams (based at The Tennessean) all joined them. 

A few regional religion writers, such as the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette’s Frank Lockwood and the Chattanooga Times Free Press’ Andrew Schwartz, made the trip, too. Interestingly, Lockwood and Smietana (then with The Tennessean) were the only out-of-state religion writers who traveled to the 2010 Orlando meeting that drew attention for its lack of coverage.

What happened to make the SBC a hot topic of coverage once again? 

Probably a variety of factors, including both AP and RNS beefing up their number of Godbeat pros. But the biggest driver was the bombshell 2019 investigation by the Houston Chronicle and San Antonio Express News into widespread sexual abuse in Southern Baptist churches. 

The Texas newspapers’ investigation, voted the No. 1 news story of 2019 by the Religion News Association, prompted the SBC to launch an internal probe and made the denomination a focus of journalists once again. 

Amid the scandal, I traveled to Farmersville, Texas, in 2022 to profile SBC President Bart Barber for AP. Barber’s two years at the helm ended this week as the convention messengers elected a new president, Clint Pressley, a North Carolina megachurch pastor.

The abuse story — while perhaps overshadowed by a vote on women pastors and a resolution opposing in vitro fertilization — remained a key topic of discussion in Indianapolis.

Here are five takeaways from the latest meeting (relying heavily on the reporters cited above):

1. The denomination’s abuse reform keeps hitting hurdles.

Read coverage by CT’s Shellnutt, RNS’ Smietana and the Democrat-Gazette’s Lockwood.

2. Alarmed by embryo destruction, Baptists urge caution on IVF.

Read coverage by AP’s Smith, the Times’ Graham, USA Today’s Adams, the Washington Post’s Michelle Boostein and Politico’s Megan Messerly.

3. SBC rejects a formal ban on churches with women pastors.

Read coverage by AP’s Smith and Holly Meyer, CT’s Shellnutt, RNS’ Banks and USA Today’s Adams.

4. Former Vice President Mike Pence speaks about politics and prayer.

Read coverage by RNS’ Banks, Politico’s Adam Wren and USA Today’s Adams and Duane W. Gang.

5. Amid falling membership and nuanced divides, the SBC faces challenges ahead.

Read coverage by CT’s Shellnutt and USA Today’s Adams.

Inside The Godbeat

Mark A. Kellner wrapped up three years on the Godbeat at the Washington Times at the end of May.

Kellner has joined the New York Post as a reporter covering swing state election contests in Nevada, where he lives.

Best wishes, my friend!

The Final Plug

“As many religious people can attest, national journalists sometimes have a hard time getting religion coverage right.”

(Didn’t there used to be a website focused on that topic?)

The Deseret News’ Mariya Manzhos profiles Josh Good, “the man helping mainstream media get the religion story right.”

Happy Friday, everyone! Enjoy the weekend.

Bobby Ross Jr. writes the Weekend Plug-in column for Religion Unplugged and serves as 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 18 nations. He has covered religion since 1999.