It has received virtually no coverage in the Mainstream Media (MSM), but the Conservative Baptist Network (CBN) scored a potentially hugely significant victory this week in its efforts to roll back the growing influence of the Left’s woke ideology within the nation’s largest Protestant denomination.
The CBN was organized several years ago in response to the growing inroads within the Southern Baptist Convention (SBC) by ministers and activists seeking to “moderate” — i.e. destroy — the denomination’s official adherence to the Bible’s unqualified support of traditional marriage between a man and a woman and related issues raised by the woke movement.
As the CBN explained in an April 4 email:
The last several years have fueled concerns that the SBC may be relaxing its biblical stance concerning LGBTQ+ ideology. Debate over “pronoun hospitality,” descriptions of God “whispering” in regard to sexual sin, and discussion of whether men and women can identify as LGBTQ+ and still be faithful Christians are just a few issues among many raising questions about how firmly committed the SBC is to its long-held, biblical beliefs regarding sexuality.
Such concerns came to a head as a result of a February decision by the SBC’s Abuse Reform Implementation Task Force (ARITF) to retain Faith-Based Solutions (FBS), a subsidiary of Guidepost Solutions.
The latter is an independent secular firm that purports to help “companies, government agencies, individuals, and their counsel solve problems, mitigate risks, and resolve disputes, and protect lives, assets, and reputations.”
The SBC retained Guidepost to perform an independent assessment of the denomination’s response to allegations of sexual harassment in its organizational ranks in recent years. The denomination has been severely criticized from within and without by individuals and activist groups claiming it too often ignored or covered up such allegations.
The FBS specifically provides assistance to faith-based organizations, including creating and maintaining a proposed “Ministry Check” website that is intended to encourage more timely and detailed reporting of sexual harassment incidents in SBC-affiliated congregations. An associated database would also be created and maintained.
When a June 6, 2022, tweet by Guidepost was discovered, the decision to hire FBS prompted a huge outpouring of concern from CBN and numerous state conventions of the SBC, including those of Florida, Georgia, Alabama, Tennessee, and Kentucky. Those conventions represent the heartland of the SBC.
The tweet featured the familiar LGBTQ rainbow and a corporate statement declaring:
Guidepost is committed to strengthening diversity, equity and inclusion and strives to be an organization where our team can bring their authentic selves to work. We celebrate our collective progress toward equality for all and are proud to be an ally to our LGBTQ+ community.
To a swelling chorus of voices within the SBC, the response pointed out that by bringing in support for LGBTQ, isn’t the denomination merely substituting one kind of sexual sin (homosexuality) for another kind of sexual sin (harassment in all its varied forms)?
But instead of merely protesting, CBN and the millions of like-minded individual Southern Baptists did something concrete to push back against yet another illustration of creeping woke within the denomination’s leadership.
Leaders of the Florida Baptist Convention’s State Board of Missions adopted a resolution that provided concrete action. As described by CBN:
On March 31, 2023, the Florida Baptist State Board of Missions unanimously adopted a resolution expressing deep concern with the hiring of Guidepost Solutions. The resolution further informed the Southern Baptist Convention Executive Committee that if Guidepost Solutions or its subsidiary Faith-Based Solutions were retained by the Southern Baptist Convention in any manner, then the Florida Baptist State Board of Missions would “escrow a percentage of funds commensurate with the allocation percentage for the Executive Committee of the Southern Baptist Convention.”
In addition to that, Florida Baptist State Board of Missions “staff shall designate on all remittance reports that the Executive Committee of the Southern Baptist Convention shall not receive any financial distribution from funds forwarded by the Florida Baptist Convention on behalf of its churches.”
In other words, the Florida Baptists told the SBC leadership in Nashville — which, like the leadership of so many U.S. corporations and nonprofits, seems severely unconnected with their workforces, customers, and supporters — that Sunshine State Baptists’ tithes and offerings would no longer be forwarded to the national convention. Call it defunding the woke movement within the SBC.
Since Florida is one of the largest state conventions in the SBC, such a message could not be ignored, especially since it seemed likely that other state conventions would make similar decisions, with dire consequences for the national leadership.
On April 3, the CBN issued a statement imploring the ARITF to reconsider and noted in its concluding sentence that “Southern Baptists give millions of dollars per year through SBC channels to fund the Great Commission, not to support sexual depravity. Therefore, we implore the Abuse Reform Implementation Task Force to reverse course on this unfortunate, unacceptable, and untenable decision.”
The very next day, the ARITF announced it has opted instead to consider “alternative pathways” that don’t include Guidepost or FBS.
There is a VIP lesson here: If you as an individual or organization (are you listening, House Republicans?) are serious about changing things for the better, get involved, educate yourself on the issues, then take decisive action that cannot be ignored and that renders it incapable of continuing.
Join the conversation as a VIP Member