Mile High Evening News Covering 2021 Southern Baptist Convention

The folks at the Southern Baptist Convention Executive Committee were kind enough to approve Mile High Evening News for one-year provisional credentials for this year’s annual meeting.

You might say – I’m not a Southern Baptist. Why should I care?

The SBC remains the largest protestant “denomination” (in reality, it is a cooperative convention of autonomous churches) in the United States, and still holds (at least on paper) to traditional biblical values in terms of Christian orthodoxy and cultural issues. Yet the SBC has been beset by controversy and liberal theological drift for some time and has been threatening to follow the same path mainline protestant denominations took towards liberalism in the 20th century. The SBC claims over 47,000 churches and over 14 million members, and the Convention supports several large para-church organizations, including six seminaries.

Controversial issues within the SBC include:

• Wokeness and so-called anti-racism as it relates to Christianity and the Bible.
• The proper role of women in church ministry (and how it reflects the traditional family).
• The acceptability of homosexuality for professing Christians, including whether it is appropriate to be a celibate homosexual and a Christian.

The infiltration of wokeness and Marxist philosophies like Critical Race Theory and Social Justice into the Southern Baptist Convention came to the fore in 2019, when the Convention adopted Resolution 9, which described Critical Race Theory as a “useful tool” in understanding race relations as they relate to church ministry. The current SBC leadership has remained woefully incapable of responding to external pressure to hold the current SBC and its cooperating churches responsible for the now 150-year-old sin of slavery, choosing instead to continually apologize and release a statement every few years “repenting” for the sins of other people.

Beyond these challenges, the Southern Baptist Convention has dipped into secular political issues through its lobbying arm, the Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission (ERLC), which has notably failed to recognize the essential nature of gathering for church and has instead been content letting the government treat churches the same as businesses.

For the record, the United States Constitution specifically carves out a special place for religious liberty.

The ERLC has also notably placed SBC churches at risk by falsely claiming member churches and state conventions are Southern Baptist entities in an amicus brief to the United States Supreme Court, which if accepted would give SBC entities legal immunity in disputes with member churches under the Court’s principle of not interfering with ecclesiastical matters.

It is for these reasons, as well as Mile High Evening News’ friendly cooperation with other online publications that cover Christian news and issues, that makes this year’s convention of particular importance. The Southern Baptist Annual Meeting takes place June 15-16 in Nashville. Stay tuned.