In the early 1980s, the Religion Newswriters Association (now the Religion News Association) held many of its annual meetings in the days just before the Southern Baptist Convention’s big national gatherings .

With good cause: The SBC was in the midst of a spectacular, painful civil war — “moderates” fighting the armies of “biblical inerrancy” — for control of America’s largest non-Catholic flock Big headlines were a certainty, year after year. Religion reporters knew their editors — back in the days when more newsrooms had travel budgets for this sort of thing — would pay to get them to the SBC front lines.

Thus, the trip was a twofer. Religion-beat pros arrived early and started work during the meetings that preceded the actual convention, such as the Pastors’ Conference (a preaching festival featuring rising SBC stars) and the Women’s Missionary Union. The RNA would work its own seminars into the gaps.

One of my favorite memories was in New Orleans in 1982. Religion-beat patriarch Russell Chandler of the Los Angeles Times and some other scribes got into a convention-hotel elevator, carrying a box of wine and liquor for an RNA social hour. The elevator was packed with WMU women, who didn’t like the looks of that box.

When the RNA folks got off the elevator, one of the women said, under her breath: “Well, they’re not here for the Southern Baptist Convention.” Over his shoulder, Chandler replied: “Oh, yes we are.”

I bring this up because there’s plenty of evidence that the Southern Baptists are about to have a second civil war. As I argued during this week’s “Crossroads” podcast (CLICK HERE to tune that in), that would be a big news story for at least three reasons.

Before we get to those, here’s a few key passages from a Religion News Service story by Bob Smietana describing a big SBC domino that tipped over this week: “SBC President Ed Litton won’t run again — to focus on racial reconciliation instead.” Here’s the overture:

Saying he wants to spend his time focusing on racial reconciliation, Southern Baptist Convention President Ed Litton announced via video Tuesday (March 1) that he would not seek a second term in office.

Litton will become the first SBC president in four decades to not seek reelection after his first one-year term. The last SBC president to do so was famed Memphis, Tennessee, megachurch pastor and radio preacher Adrian Rogers.

A pastor from Mobile, Alabama, Litton was elected in June 2021 by a few hundred votes, narrowly defeating Georgia pastor Mike Stone, who was a member of the Conservative Baptist Network, a group that believes the nation’s largest Protestant denomination has become too liberal.

SBC trends linked to two of the biggest stories in American culture loom in the background — Critical Race Theory and sexual abuse. Thus, Smietana added:

On its website, the CBN denounced a recent online event focused on racial reconciliation in the SBC because the event, featured Litton and New Orleans pastor Fred Luter — the first Black president of the SBC — along with other speakers but did not include Memphis theology professor Lee Brand, the current first vice president of the SBC. Brand is Black. …

Leaders of the CBN and other critics of current SBC leaders have also repeatedly said that the denomination is becoming “woke” and that Baptist leaders have embraced critical race theory, a term for legal theories about structural racism that has become a rallying cry for political conservatives. 

Litton’s first eight months in office were marked by controversy in the SBC. Members of the denomination’s Executive Committee, which oversees the SBC’s operations between annual meetings, feuded over how to proceed with a sex abuse investigation — a controversy that ended with more than a dozen members of the committee resigning last fall.

There’s much more here (think “Sermongate”), so read that whole story and check out Smietana’s sequel: “SBC President Ed Litton on racial reconciliation, SBC decline and his own failings.”

Readers should also note reports from the official Baptist Press and, on the Baptist left, Baptist News Global. To scan the news pages of the Conservative Baptist Network, click here.

So, what are the three big stories that I see linked to this elopement.

(1) The SBC — claiming nearly 15 million members — remains a giant force in American religion and culture, especially with the Bible Belt growing in terms of economic and political clout.

In the local-church centered SBC polity, the convention only “exists” when it is in session each summer. It’s the president who is in charge of proposing the members of all of the various boards and committees that steer this big ship, year in and year out. Whoever controls the presidency — let’s say for six or so years — gets to appoint all the members of these smaller groups that guide SBC institutions.

That was the game plan in the great SBC civil war that began in 1979 in Houston. That’s still how the SBC works, today.

(2) In the past decade of two, the SBC has been slowly leaking members (slowly, when compared to the demographic collapse of liberal Mainline Protestantism). Many of these Baptists have moved on to independent, nondenominational megachurches that resemble SBC churches in many ways, but have even fewer links to larger structures providing unity and potential accountability.

Whatever happens in an SBC civil war 2.0, independent evangelical and charismatic churches — on the theological right or in the great mushy “evangelical” middle — will be the big winners. This is, in part, the statistical earthquake underneath the “great evangelical crack-up” that GetReligion’s own Richard Ostling has been writing about in his Memo features for several years now (surf through this file of posts).

One thing is clear: If the SBC establishment carries the day, some churches will leave out an exit to the cultural right. At the same time, the remaining SBC will continue to be conservative theologically, but much more complex in terms of culture and, yes, even politics.

Why? Everyone knows that Black, Latino and Asian churches are playing key elements in the numerical growth that continues in the SBC. These churches are theologically conservative, but may not fit neatly into the “white evangelical” niche that draws so much ink from the mainstream press.

(3) While social issues such as abortion (and the rise of Ronald Reagan in the Republican Party) played a role in SBC civil war 1.0, it was clear that there was a big theological issue — biblical authority and how to define it — at the heart of the fighting.

Is that true today? Last time I checked, “woke” was not a theological term. It’s also clear that — like it or not — the social-media flamethrower style of the Donald Trump era has played a major role in what could become SBC civil war 2.0.

How will journalists describe this? Many will simply tie the new SBC right to White Christian Nationalism and that will be that, even if a few of the new SBC conservatives are Black conservatives.

You can see the Associated Press struggling with labels and lingo at the top of its Litton-exit story:

Ed Litton, president of the Southern Baptist Convention, the largest Protestant denomination in the United States, announced … he will break with tradition and not seek a second term in the top convention role.

Litton, who narrowly fended off an ultraconservative candidate with his 2021 victory, said he plans to spend the next decade promoting racial reconciliation at the local level, something he thinks is best done “as a pastor and not from the office of president of the SBC.”

If the new right is “ultraconservative,” what is the SBC establishment? Truth be told, it’s just another camp of biblical conservatives with a different approach to key issues in American life and culture.

Biblical inerrancy? Yes on both sides. Opposed to abortion? Yes on both sides. Advocates of old First Amendment liberalism on religious liberty issues? Yes on both sides. Opposed to sex outside of marriage? Yes on both sides. Enemies of the Sexual Revolution in general? Yes on both sides. How about the ordination of women? A few cracks there, but not many.

Are many SBC leaders turning into liberal Democrats? Come on, get real.

What about the sexual abuse issue? That’s a crucial subject, in part because of legal and financial issues. The SBC establishment clearly wants more candor and some kind of change on this front, but knows it has few options for a “national” solution, since the convention-based polity makes it almost impossible to force autonomous SBC congregations (as opposed to SBC agencies, seminaries, etc.) to do anything specific.

What about race? This is where journalists will play a major role in shaping the debate. The key question: What do Black Southern Baptists believe — theologically — about racism and how does that affect what they say and believe about CRT?

Based on what I have read, I would argue that Black conservatives do not accept all of CRT, but they don’t reject all of it, either. They reject the secular framework of this school of academic analysis. They believe that the Bible is the ultimate authority here. But they also believe that sin has soaked into all of this fallen creation, including human institutions.

Systemic racism? Yes, all of God’s creation is both glorious and fallen. Is racism simply a White issue? Is sin simply a White issue?

What I fear is that the politics of the CRT debate will drown out any solid, accurate news coverage of the core issues that SBC leaders are trying to discuss.

Is the Trump era to blame for that? There is some truth to that. But blind spots in press coverage, with the relentless, singular focus on the politics of “white evangelicalism,” are also warping these debates.

My advice. Reporters need to talk to the SBC’s Black conservatives. Reporters also need to keep asking this question: What is the THEOLOGICAL issue that’s at stake in SBC civil war 2.0? Is there one?

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FIRST IMAGE: Largest religious groups in America life. Map featured on Pinterest and previously used with this GetReligion post.