Southern Baptist Convention

Let’s engage in a thought experiment: Pretend that it’s May of 2009, and Barack Obama, who has been president for a few months, has just shared some highly classified intelligence with the Russians. Let’s say this material has damaged America’s standing with our allies, exposed sources to possible retaliation and jeopardized the war on terror.

What do you think the leaders of Religious Right groups would be saying? My guess is they’d be calling for his impeachment, if not outright imprisonment.

For years now, Religious Right leaders have been whipping up hysteria by claiming that, should marriage equality become the law of the land, conservative churches will be forced to host same-sex marriage ceremonies.

If there were a prize for unmitigated gall, it would be awarded today to Russell Moore, president of the Southern Baptist Convention’s Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission.

Moore, speaking during a recent panel discussion at the Evangelical Leadership Summit, an event sponsored by the American Enterprise Institute in Washington, D.C., told the crowd that they need to “reclaim” the phrase separation of church and state, a term he admitted that “we long ago tossed overboard.”

When the Religious Right started to become a prominent force in American politics in the late 1970s, its advocates had a major impact on the country’s largest Protestant denomination: the Southern Baptist Convention (SBC).

Younger readers may be surprised to read that the SBC, which claims 16 million members, used to be fairly moderate on social issues. It strongly supported the separation of church and state, citing historical Baptist leaders like John Leland and Isaac Backus.

A claim that someone is being persecuted by a government is not something to be taken lightly, but that accusation rings hollow when it comes to the Roman Catholic hierarchy and Religious Right’s fight for exemption from the Obama administration’s birth control mandate.

Wendell Berry is a Kentucky farmer, poet and essayist best known for his advocacy of responsible stewardship of the environment. He has offered compelling critiques of strip mining and other excesses of our over-industrialized, war-mad planet.

Some folks consider Berry a modern-day Henry David Thoreau, but last week he sounded more like an Old Testament prophet railing against injustice. Addressing a Baptist pastors’ conference at Georgetown College in Georgetown, Ky., he took on the issue of marriage equality for gay couples.

The Religious Right makes it seem like nearly every pastor in America would endorse political candidates from the pulpit if only the pesky tax code didn’t prohibit it, but a new survey shows that couldn’t be further from the truth.

Notorious Southern Baptist lobbyist Richard Land has announced his retirement. I’d break out the champagne, but I fear that this is a mere change of personnel, not policy.

The Southern Baptist Convention (SBC) was once a staunch supporter of church-state separation. But in 1979, fundamentalists orchestrated a takeover that moved the nation’s largest Protestant denomination in exactly the opposite direction.