{"id":22429,"date":"2021-05-27T03:00:28","date_gmt":"2021-05-27T09:00:28","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/johnbeckett\/?p=22429"},"modified":"2021-05-29T12:20:26","modified_gmt":"2021-05-29T18:20:26","slug":"the-decline-of-the-baptists-and-what-the-rest-of-us-can-learn-from-it","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/johnbeckett\/2021\/05\/the-decline-of-the-baptists-and-what-the-rest-of-us-can-learn-from-it.html","title":{"rendered":"The Decline of the Baptists and What the Rest of Us Can Learn From It"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<\/head>

For all that I\u2019m passionately committed to my Pagan polytheist path, I remain a religious pluralist. Deep down all paths aren\u2019t the same, and that\u2019s OK \u2013 the world is better off with a glorious garden of many religions<\/a>.<\/p>\n

That doesn\u2019t mean I want all religions to succeed.<\/p>\n

Given my rather unpleasant childhood<\/a> in the denomination and its offshoots, I freely admit to more than a bit of schadenfreude any time I see bad news for the Southern Baptist Convention.<\/p>\n

Last week I saw this article<\/a> from Religion News Service, reporting that the denomination has lost more than 2 million members since 2006. Here\u2019s a quote:<\/p>\n

Southern Baptists, long known for denominational infighting, have seen several high-profile departures of leaders in the past year, including Bible teacher Beth Moore, ethicist Russell Moore, and a number of Black pastors. The SBC has also faced controversy over revelations of abuse, disputes over support for Donald Trump and a debate over critical race theory.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Another Religion News Service article<\/a> quotes political science professor Ryan Burge, who predicts that \u201cby 2025, Baptists will be at about half their former size, and more politically homogenous than ever.\u201d<\/p>\n

A third article \u2013 this from the Christian Post<\/a>, an evangelical publication not affiliated with the SBC but generally in agreement with them \u2013 reports survey results that say \u201c43% of millennials \u2018don\u2019t know, don\u2019t care, don\u2019t believe\u2019 God exists.\u201d The future is not bright for the Southern Baptist Convention.<\/p>\n

Much of this is simply the continued decline of Christianity, something that started 500 years ago and that has been accelerating for the past 60 years. But there are specific reasons behind the SBC\u2019s decline that are worth looking at \u2013 in part for schadenfreude and in part so the rest of us can avoid them.<\/p>\n

To be clear: there are numerous Baptist denominations in the United States \u2013 Wikipedia lists 62<\/a> of them. Some are theologically moderate and socially progressive \u2013 I wish them well. But the Southern Baptist Convention is by far the largest \u2013 they\u2019re the ones I\u2019m discussing in this post.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

You can\u2019t preach hate and call it love<\/h2>\n

We need to start here. The #1 reason young people are leaving the SBC and other conservative churches is the continued attack on LGBTQ people.<\/p>\n

Older generations often debated issues of sexuality and orientation in a vacuum \u2013 a bunch of straight white men pontificating on something they knew nothing about. Younger generations grew up with openly gay friends. So when preachers talked about the evils of homosexuality, it didn\u2019t match their lived experiences. Their gay friends weren\u2019t evil, they were their friends \u2013 they didn\u2019t like hearing them slandered.<\/p>\n

And let\u2019s not forget about LGBTQ people themselves. Previous generations stayed in the church due to social and religious pressure. Some of them tried to conform, while others just hid in the closet. Now there are plenty of churches who accept them freely and openly. Why stay with people who hate who and what you are?<\/p>\n

Because that\u2019s what it is \u2013 hate<\/a>. No amount of devotion to ancient texts can justify trying to change someone\u2019s orientation \u2013 the essence of who they are.<\/p>\n

You can\u2019t ignore the truth<\/h2>\n

The SBC insists that the Bible is the literal and inerrant Word of God \u2013 that puts them at odds with most Christian denominations. This leads to absurd beliefs such as Young Earth Creationism \u2013 the idea that the Earth is only 6000 years old and that humans were placed on the Earth in our current form.<\/p>\n

Perhaps 200 years ago this was an understandable position. But over the last 200 years advancements in geology, astrophysics, and biology have provided ample evidence that the Universe is 13.8 billion years old, the Earth is 4.5 billion years old, and the human species evolved from previous species, taking our current form around 200,000 years ago.<\/p>\n

And also over the past 200 years, Biblical criticism<\/a> has brought a literary and historical analysis that has shown that the Bible is exactly what it appears to be: a collection of ancient writings from multiple sources over multiple centuries, most of which were not written by the claimed authors. Most of the \u201chistory\u201d has been mythologized. Like sacred texts in other religions, the Bible works well when read for contemplative purposes. When read as history or science \u2013 or as a voting guide \u2013 it is completely inadequate\u2026 something most Christians understand.<\/p>\n

Like all Christian fundamentalists, the Southern Baptists understand that if they accept the truth about evolution and the age of the Earth, they lose their claim to a literal interpretation of the Bible. And if they lose that, their whole \u201cmetanarrative\u201d of original sin falls apart like a house of cards.<\/p>\n

A quote often misattributed<\/a> to Carl Sagan but that originated with fantasy author P.C. Hodgell says \u201cif it can be destroyed by the truth, it deserves to be destroyed by the truth.\u201d Younger people are asking \u201cwhy do they tell me I have to believe things that aren\u2019t true?\u201d The Southern Baptist Convention is being destroyed by the truth.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

\u201cCostly religion\u201d doesn\u2019t always work<\/h2>\n

In the last decades of the 20th<\/sup> century, the SBC and other conservative denominations were growing, even as more liberal and moderate Mainline Protestants were shrinking. That led them to argue that people who wanted religion wanted \u201creal\u201d religion with supernatural beliefs, traditional morals, and high expectations for maintaining orthodox beliefs and practices. But that changed in the 21st<\/sup> century and now the conservative denominations are shrinking at a fast rate.<\/p>\n

Costly religion \u2013 a religion that requires much of its followers \u2013 builds a sense of identity and purpose. But how many people are willing to make that kind of investment? Clearly, not as many as there were 30 years ago.<\/p>\n

More importantly, what is the identity you\u2019re building? Devotion to your God is one thing \u2013 devotion to continuous proselytizing and to hating gay people is something very different.<\/p>\n

The era of the Church as dictator of belief is over<\/h2>\n

In 1633 the Catholic Church forced Galileo to renounce his scientific finding that the Earth revolves around the Sun, because it conflicted with official church doctrine. 359 years later they finally admitted their error<\/a>.<\/p>\n

No church has that kind of power anymore. Baptists in Texas keep trying to stop the teaching of evolution in public schools \u2013 they\u2019ve only managed to muck things up with statements about \u201conly a theory.\u201d And putting Richard Dawkins on trial is laughably impossible (I\u2019m a polytheist \u2013 Richard Dawkins is not my friend. But he\u2019s a very good biologist<\/a>).<\/p>\n

The Southern Baptist Convention can\u2019t convince young people that being gay is a sin, or that the Bible is inerrant. They can\u2019t make their case on its merits and they don\u2019t have the authority to force people to accept it.<\/p>\n

More importantly, they\u2019re unable to convince people that their beliefs about Jesus, Heaven, and Hell are correct, and they don\u2019t have the power to force people to pretend they do.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Even a good salesman can\u2019t sell a bad product<\/h2>\n

The fundamentalists can read the numbers \u2013 they know they have a problem. But their answer has been to double down on fundamentalism and to focus on building more churches. As Religion News Service reports<\/a>, \u201cthat has led to more churches but not more baptisms and Southern Baptists.\u201d<\/p>\n

I started driving in the late 1970s, possibly the worst era for automobiles in history \u2013 particularly for American cars. They were poorly designed, inefficient, and unreliable. GM, Ford, and Chrysler tried to sell them with flashy advertising, or with appeals to \u201cmade in the USA\u201d patriotism.<\/p>\n

Meanwhile, Toyota, Honda, and other Japanese manufacturers introduced small, efficient, and reliable models and people bought so many they couldn\u2019t keep them in stock.<\/p>\n

Cars and religion are very different things. But people buy \u2013 or buy into \u2013 them both because they fill a need in their lives. If what you\u2019re selling doesn\u2019t fill people\u2019s needs \u2013 whether for transportation or for spiritual fulfillment \u2013 they\u2019re going to look somewhere else.<\/p>\n

And they have lots of options.<\/p>\n

At some point you have to accept that the problem isn\u2019t the sales pitch, it\u2019s that people have looked at your product and they see no reason to buy it.<\/p>\n

The Baptists could change. They could focus on following the teachings of Jesus and building the Kingdom of God here and now. But they\u2019re too invested in Biblical literalism and the authoritarian politics it supports.<\/p>\n

Religion is becoming an individual matter<\/h2>\n

I\u2019ll be honest: I don\u2019t like this any more than the Baptists do. I have no desire to convince \u2013 much less force \u2013 everyone to follow my religion. But I would like for those who follow the same Gods in more or less the same ways and who share more or less the same values to join together and build a lasting tradition. The Pagan community shows little interest in that, at least on a large scale.<\/p>\n

Christians are moving in that direction too.<\/p>\n

Belief is a personal thing. For all the councils and creeds, what goes on in someone\u2019s heart and in their head is an individual matter. It\u2019s always been that way \u2013 it\u2019s just that now there\u2019s nothing to stop people from talking about ideas that establishment leaders consider heresy.<\/p>\n

Or from putting those ideas into practice.<\/p>\n

Europe is running ahead of America. Their churches<\/a> are more museums than houses of worship. Most churches in this country weren\u2019t built to last centuries. Still, they aren\u2019t going to disappear any time soon. This is a centuries-long process that will continue for hundreds more years.<\/p>\n

In 2015 I said Pagans needed to focus on building the institutions and infrastructure<\/a> we need today, not on what the mainstream religions have. Turns out that\u2019s not much at the moment. I gave up on building institutions a couple years ago. My focus is on refining my practice, and on teaching those who are interested<\/a> in what I do. If some day that requires a building, then we\u2019ll talk about buildings.<\/p>\n

But the future of religion is with the individual.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>
St. Sebald\u2019s Church \u2013 Nuremberg \u2013 2019<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

There will always be a need for supportive religious communities<\/h2>\n

That said, religion is still best done as a group project. We will always need people to talk through our experiences and help us figure out what they mean. We will always need people to officiate our weddings and funerals, and to be there to congratulate and console us when needed.<\/p>\n

We will always need people to welcome newcomers, to challenge and affirm us<\/a>, and to celebrate the high days and holy days with. You can\u2019t dance the Maypole by yourself.<\/p>\n

These groups will just be smaller than we\u2019ve always assumed they should be. Perhaps future Baptists can adopt the Wiccan coven model.<\/p>\n

I\u2019m thankful for my local co-religionists. They are my closest and most trusted friends. I wish our circle was larger, but if it never is then what we have is enough.<\/p>\n

And perhaps that\u2019s something we all need to learn.<\/p>\n

There will always be mystics and contemplatives<\/h2>\n

One of the things I missed growing up Baptist was the presence of mystics and contemplatives\u2026 or really, the acknowledgement that they even existed. For a group that shares their name with John the Baptist they never really talked about what he did and how he lived.<\/p>\n

But in every tradition there are people who are called to a deeper practice, who spend hours in prayer and meditation, in study and contemplation, and in ritual. Some of them are fit for little else<\/a>. I think that\u2019s the Baptists\u2019 main problem with mystics \u2013 they don\u2019t fit into the Protestant work ethic.<\/p>\n

We need communities to support these people. The Pagan community by and large doesn\u2019t have a way to do that. So our mystics make do as best they can, for better or worse.<\/p>\n

This is where our big ideas begin. This is where we first hear from our Gods and other spiritual allies.<\/p>\n

These are the people who remind us that a good religion is an experiential religion, not a sit-and-listen religion. We may not all have the skills of the mystics \u2013 and most of us don\u2019t want them, or at least, we don\u2019t want the obligations that come with them \u2013 but we all have our first-hand experiences. Our mystics have the experience to help us interpret them as accurately as possible.<\/p>\n

We don\u2019t need churches nearly as much as we need a way to support our mystics and contemplatives, and to facilitate them helping the rest of us.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Focus on what\u2019s in front of you<\/h2>\n

Ultimately, any time I spend gloating over the decline of a fundamentalist denomination is time I\u2019m not spending doing the work my Gods have placed in front of me. So while I want to acknowledge what\u2019s going on and figure out what I can learn from it, mainly I need to get back to my own work.<\/p>\n

For me, that starts with honoring my Gods and ancestors. It\u2019s supporting my co-religionists. It\u2019s practicing my Pagan polytheist religion, and then writing about what I do for the benefit of those who are interested in it.<\/p>\n

But there is something we can learn here.<\/p>\n

We don\u2019t have the infrastructure and wealth of the Southern Baptist Convention. We also don\u2019t have their baggage. That means we can travel faster and adjust more quickly to a changing environment.<\/p>\n

Let\u2019s do what we can with what we have.<\/p>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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