Southern Baptists Are Now More Conservative Than Ever
(ANALYSIS) The Southern Baptist Convention held its annual meeting in Indianapolis last week. The eyes of the religious world turned to a group of about 11,000 messengers as they voted on a variety of resolutions regarding an array of social and cultural issues.
They also elected a new president who will take over for Bart Barber as he finished up his second year in office.
Let me give you three takeaways from that meeting:
The election of Clint Pressley to the presidency: It was a crowded field of six candidates to begin the meeting. But Pressley emerged the victor in a run-off. Pressley is undoubtedly a conservative when compared to the United States as a whole, but among Southern Baptists I think it’s fair to say that he was not the most conservative candidate of the six who were on the ballot.
The passage of a resolution that opposed in-vitro fertilization: This one made a lot of headlines. You can read the full text here — it starts on Page 14. For reference, only 8% of Americans think IVF is a bad thing. It’s 9% of White evangelicals. And 44% of White evangelicals said that they had used fertility treatments or knew someone who did.
The Law Amendment failed: This become somewhat of a litmus test for the direction of the Convention. The amendment’s purpose was to clarify that the term “pastor” is reserved for men alone. That means that if the amendment passed, an SBC church that had a female serve as a women’s pastor would “not be in friendly cooperation” with the convention and would be expelled. Opponents argued that there’s already a process to remove those churches who are flouting the SBC’s stance on women in leadership. It’s used those mechanisms to remove FBC Alexandria, Saddleback Church and Fern Creek Baptist, among others in the last two years.
It’s hard to get a read on where the SBC is headed, honestly. Some events would lead one to believe that they are headed in a very conservative direction (like the IVF resolution), while others tend to point to a denomination that is conservative, but not fundamentalist.
The failure of the Law Amendment is part of that, but also the fact that the most conservative candidate for SBC president has not won in any election in the last several years.
But make no mistake — the data says that the average Southern Baptist is further to the right today than the average Southern Baptist from 30 or 40 years ago. The reason I know that is because I have data from the General Social Survey that dates back to 1984.
To read the rest of Ryan Burge’s column, click here.
Ryan Burge is an assistant professor of political science at Eastern Illinois University, a pastor in the American Baptist Church and the co-founder and frequent contributor to Religion in Public, a forum for scholars of religion and politics to make their work accessible to a more general audience. His research focuses on the intersection of religiosity and political behavior, especially in the U.S. Follow him on X at @ryanburge.