When it comes to religious groups, what’s in a name?

In 2018, the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints began a push to get rid of the term “Mormon.” (A quick side note: Continued news media use of that identifier is “significantly correlated” with negative sentiment in the article, argues a new study, coauthored by Brigham Young University journalism professor Joel Campbell and Public Square Magazine’s Christopher D. Cunningham.)

Now, the Southern Baptist Convention — the nation’s largest Protestant denomination — seems to be recasting itself, as first reported by Washington Post religion writer Sarah Pulliam Bailey.

Bailey’s story this week noted:

Leaders in the Southern Baptist Convention are increasingly dropping the “Southern” part of their Baptist name, calling it a potentially painful reminder of the convention’s historic role in support of slavery.

The 50,000 Baptist churches in the convention are autonomous and can still choose to refer to themselves as “Southern Baptist” or “SBC.” But in his first interview on the topic, convention president J.D. Greear said momentum has been building to adopt the name “Great Commission Baptists,” both because of the racial reckoning underway in the United States and because many have long seen the “Southern Baptist” name as too regional for a global group of believers.

“Our Lord Jesus was not a White Southerner but a brown-skinned Middle Eastern refugee,” said Greear, who this summer used the phrase “Black lives matter” in a presidential address and announced that he would retire a historic gavel named for an enslaver. “Every week we gather to worship a savior who died for the whole world, not one part of it. What we call ourselves should make that clear.”

For more insight on the possible change, see Religion News Service national correspondent Adelle M. Banks’ follow-up report.

Speaking of names, Greear serves as pastor of The Summit Church, a Durham, North Carolina, megachurch whose website contains scarce references to its Baptist affiliation.

Other examples of prominent Southern Baptist churches that don’t necessarily market themselves that way include Rick Warren’s Saddleback Church in Southern California and Ed Young Jr.’s Fellowship Church in the Dallas-Fort Worth area.

The trend of churches de-emphasizing denominational affiliation — be it Baptist, Methodist or Lutheran — in favor of names such as The Grove, Community of Grace and The Bridge is not new, as noted by the Minneapolis Star-Tribune’s Jean Hopfensperger and the Columbus Dispatch’s Danae King.

Even the label “evangelical,” often tied to politics, has become problematic for some.

During the 2016 presidential campaign, RNS national correspondent Emily McFarlan Miller reported on prominent Christians such as the Rev. Russell Moore, president of the SBC’s Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission, eschewing the evangelical identity.

On the same day that Bailey’s story on Southern Baptists was published, Christianity Today’s Kate Shellnutt reported that a justice-focused group, known for nearly 50 years as Evangelicals for Social Action, was changing its name to Christians for Social Action.

Power Up: The Week’s Best Reads

1. ‘We lost what we cherished’: “What happens when a priest with a traditional approach to the job arrives at a parish used to doing things its own way?” tweeted the Cincinnati Enquirer’s Dan Horn. “This happens.”

Horn details the specifics in a skillful, in-depth story that mixes parishioners’ personal feelings with crucial doctrinal context.

2. ‘At the intersection of two criminalized identities’: Time’s Sanya Mansoor reports on how the Black Lives Matter movement “is forcing the Muslim community in the U.S. to reckon with its own anti-Blackness and scrutinize its already tense relationship with law enforcement.”

Mansoor cites Pew Research Center data showing that “Black Muslims account for at least one-fifth of all Muslims in the U.S. even as they face discrimination from within their religious community.” Moreover, she notes, “Some mosques are segregated by race, reflecting the neighborhoods they are located in.”

Continue reading “Will We Soon Live In A World Without Mormons And Southern Baptists?”, by Bobby Ross, Jr., at Religion Unplugged.