Typically, on the second or third week of June, the Southern Baptist Convention would be having its annual meeting. Had 2020 been a normal year, that meeting would be finishing up today.

Of course it was cancelled because of the coronavirus crisis. With the current riots going on in cities across America, I bet that SBC leaders are privately thanking God they’re not meeting.

Can you imagine what a draw that would be for some protestors; several thousand mostly white Southern Baptists congregating at the Orange County Convention Center?

Not only is there ferment on the streets, there’s also unrest within the denomination. Longtime RNS reporter Adelle Banks just gave us a thorough look at the pivot Baptists are having to make, due to current events. Her June 4 piece about the race conversation within the 14.5-million-member denomination concentrated on the rifts that remain from the Civil War era.

Please stay with me during the lengthy intro:

(RNS) — The Southern Baptist Convention will not hold its annual meeting as it regularly does each June. But issues its members have long grappled with — including race and the roles of women — continue to be points of controversy in the nation’s largest Protestant denomination.

In December, Founders Ministries, a neo-Calvinist evangelical group made up primarily of Southern Baptists, premiered a documentary called “By What Standard?: God’s Word, God’s Rule.”

The film includes selective footage of discussions around last year’s meeting about whether women should preach, juxtaposed with Founders Ministries head Tom Ascol speaking of motherhood as “the highest calling.” Much of the almost two-hour film that has had some 60,000 views online chronicles the passage of resolutions at the 2019 meeting, from one on “the evil of sexual abuse” to another on “critical race theory and intersectionality.”

Two months after the film’s release, the Conservative Baptist Network was founded, calling itself an alternative for dissatisfied Southern Baptists who might otherwise leave the denomination or stay and remain silent.