June 13, 2006

Blogging Baptists

Among the coverage of the Southern Baptist Convention in Tuesday's Tennessean, this sidebar:

Blogs bring Baptists' conflicts to the fore
As the Southern Baptist Convention convenes today, it will grapple with conflicts over doctrine and management - many of which have been brought into the spotlight by a younger generation of vocal Baptist ministers blogging on the Internet.

Burleson also gets a mention in the main story:

Burleson, 44, an Oklahoma pastor who has been censured by Southern Baptist Convention leaders for openly criticizing them on his blog site, said younger pastors simply wanted to be represented more in guiding the denomination's future, in times when church membership is stagnating.

"I think there's a new generation of evangelical conservatives who appreciate what the older generation has done to secure conservative evangelical theology in the SBC for decades to come," he said. "But the younger generation is different.

"The younger generation demands transparency, desires cooperation in the sense that the new generation is very missional; they disdain politics. They're about doing the ministry, what they want is everyone to cooperate in the mission. They don't like the idea of people being excluded."

A vote for Jerry Sutton is a vote for the continuing of the narrowing of the parameters of the Southern Baptist Convention. If Jerry Sutton were to be elected President the exclusionary, isolationist practices of the SBC will become more entrenched.

Hey, wait. I just did.