When did Baptists stop making news?<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"The Southern Baptist Convention has passed scores of blunt resolutions in recent decades urging America's leaders to reject the sexual revolution and\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/tmatt\/2010\/07\/when-did-baptists-stop-making-news\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"When did Baptists stop making news?\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"The Southern Baptist Convention has passed scores of blunt resolutions in recent decades urging America's leaders to reject the sexual revolution and\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/tmatt\/2010\/07\/when-did-baptists-stop-making-news\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"Terry Mattingly\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2010-07-12T17:26:15+00:00\" \/>\n<meta name=\"author\" content=\"tmatt\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:card\" content=\"summary_large_image\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:label1\" content=\"Written by\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data1\" content=\"tmatt\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:label2\" content=\"Est. reading time\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data2\" content=\"4 minutes\" \/>\n<script type=\"application\/ld+json\" class=\"yoast-schema-graph\">{\"@context\":\"https:\/\/schema.org\",\"@graph\":[{\"@type\":\"WebPage\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/tmatt\/2010\/07\/when-did-baptists-stop-making-news\/\",\"url\":\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/tmatt\/2010\/07\/when-did-baptists-stop-making-news\/\",\"name\":\"When did Baptists stop making news?\",\"isPartOf\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/tmatt\/#website\"},\"datePublished\":\"2010-07-12T17:26:15+00:00\",\"dateModified\":\"2010-07-12T17:26:15+00:00\",\"author\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/tmatt\/#\/schema\/person\/76ce2260a572ff41a28fb285de9350f1\"},\"description\":\"The Southern Baptist Convention has passed scores of blunt resolutions in recent decades urging America's leaders to reject the sexual revolution and\",\"breadcrumb\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/tmatt\/2010\/07\/when-did-baptists-stop-making-news\/#breadcrumb\"},\"inLanguage\":\"en-US\",\"potentialAction\":[{\"@type\":\"ReadAction\",\"target\":[\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/tmatt\/2010\/07\/when-did-baptists-stop-making-news\/\"]}]},{\"@type\":\"BreadcrumbList\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/tmatt\/2010\/07\/when-did-baptists-stop-making-news\/#breadcrumb\",\"itemListElement\":[{\"@type\":\"ListItem\",\"position\":1,\"name\":\"Home\",\"item\":\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/tmatt\/\"},{\"@type\":\"ListItem\",\"position\":2,\"name\":\"When did Baptists stop making news?\"}]},{\"@type\":\"WebSite\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/tmatt\/#website\",\"url\":\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/tmatt\/\",\"name\":\"Terry Mattingly\",\"description\":\"On Religion\",\"potentialAction\":[{\"@type\":\"SearchAction\",\"target\":{\"@type\":\"EntryPoint\",\"urlTemplate\":\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/tmatt\/?s={search_term_string}\"},\"query-input\":\"required name=search_term_string\"}],\"inLanguage\":\"en-US\"},{\"@type\":\"Person\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/tmatt\/#\/schema\/person\/76ce2260a572ff41a28fb285de9350f1\",\"name\":\"tmatt\",\"description\":\"Terry Mattingly directs the Washington Journalism Center at the Council for Christian Colleges and Universities. 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{"id":1924,"date":"2010-07-12T13:26:15","date_gmt":"2010-07-12T17:26:15","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.tmatt.net\/?p=1924"},"modified":"2010-07-12T13:26:15","modified_gmt":"2010-07-12T17:26:15","slug":"when-did-baptists-stop-making-news","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/tmatt\/2010\/07\/when-did-baptists-stop-making-news\/","title":{"rendered":"When did Baptists stop making news?"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<\/head>

But something different happened during this summer\u2019s convention. In a jolting statement<\/a> on the divorce crisis, leaders from America\u2019s largest non-Catholic flock looked in the mirror and decided that their own sins were just as bad as everyone else\u2019s sins.<\/p>\n

\u201cStudies have indicated that conservative Protestants \u2026 are divorcing at the same rate, if not at higher rates, than the general population,\u201d stated the resolution, which passed unanimously. Other studies indicate that areas in which \u201cSouthern Baptist churches predominate in number often have higher divorce rates than areas we would define as \u2018unchurched.\u2019 \u201d<\/p>\n

In other words, Southern Baptists have \u201cbeen prophetic in confronting assaults in the outside culture on God\u2019s design for marriage while rarely speaking with the same alarm and force to a scandal that has become all too commonplace in our own churches.\u201d<\/p>\n

The convention urged its churches to walk their conservative talk by offering improved premarital counseling, by uniting in marriage \u201conly those who are biblically qualified to be married\u201d and by intensifying efforts to heal broken unions.<\/p>\n

Press coverage of this text was next to nonexistent. Media coverage was light of a strong SBC statement on corporate sin and the environment, in the wake of the Gulf of Mexico oil spill. The convention also approved, after some emotional debates, a sweeping program to change key elements of its national structure and finances.<\/p>\n

This is the stuff of national news, noted religion-beat veteran Jeffrey Weiss, writing for Politics Daily<\/em><\/a>. The question is why this SBC gathering received so little attention, while gatherings in the 1980s and \u201990s created waves of ink.<\/p>\n

Back then, he noted, the \u201cpressroom would be packed by wire service reporters, writers from large and not-so-large newspapers from across the South, and from most of the top 10 largest papers not in the South. This time, I can find evidence of exactly five representatives of the secular media in attendance. \u2026<\/p>\n

\u201cWhich leads to this question: Did the SBC get too much attention back in the day, or is it getting too little attention now? My answer to both: Probably so.\u201d<\/p>\n

Of course, the troubled state of the news business played a role. There are fewer journalists on the religion beat and there are fewer travel dollars to invest in covering subjects other than those most editors consider holy, such as politics and sports.<\/p>\n

At the same time, the era of intense coverage of Southern Baptist life coincided with what journalists perceived as a major change in American politics \u2014 the growth of the religious right. Journalists took note when the nation\u2019s largest Protestant body spoke out on abortion, gay rights, the ordination of women, Hollywood\u2019s influence on families and the need for evangelism around the world, including among Jewish believers.<\/p>\n

Hot buttons were being pushed, year after year.<\/p>\n

\u201cAtop those reader-friendly news hooks, we had the 25-year internal battle between what we always called \u2018conservatives\u2019 and \u2018moderates.\u2019 That fight ended with the conservatives in firm control of the denominational leadership and the moderates purged at about the same time the Republican Party was becoming increasingly defined by a publicly political conservative Christian base,\u201d noted Weiss.<\/p>\n

In other words, more politics.<\/p>\n

These days, the SBC is primarily wrestling with issues of theology and polity, especially the culture\u2019s slide into a post-denominational age in which people are increasingly moving into congregations that strive to avoid putting a brand name \u2014 think \u201cSouthern Baptist\u201d \u2014 on their signs. People are drifting back and forth across hazy doctrinal lines that used to be clearly defined.<\/p>\n

This is a giant story and, in part, is what that reorganization plan is about \u2014 granting more independence to churches, clergy and donors in an attempt to pull the old Southern Baptist tent a bit closer to contemporary megachurch realities.<\/p>\n

Consider, noted Weiss, the news value of this dramatic plan to restructure \u201cits organization and the way it funds missionaries \u2014 which was the main reason the SBC was formed in the first place. How dramatic? Imagine if your city decided it would let people send some of their tax money to those programs they particularly liked.\u201d<\/p>\n

Imagine that. That\u2019s would be news, wouldn\u2019t it?<\/p>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"