New Warhorn Media post by Tim Bayly:
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On a not-unrelated note, Albert Mohler has put his hat in the ring to be the next SBC President:
The result here will be a good indicator of the lie of the land within the SBC as a whole, thought I think they are as bitterly divided as anyone.
Mohler stands a good chance of winning. It’s been reported that one of the unnamed villains of Russell Moore’s sob sister letter was Mike Stone, who is also a candidate. Being attacked by Moore helps Stone’s candidacy among the SBC right wing. It shows he is effective. Whether it is enough to win over the mushy middle is another story. If a second conservative resurgence is successful, however, it seems that Stone would have to get some of the credit. Evidently his maneuvering behind the scenes helped push Moore out, and got him angry enough to burn bridges on his way out. No mean feat.
To Ben:
Well, “keep your friends close and your enemies closer”!
What the SBC did decide:
SBC Elects Racial Reconciliation Pastor as New President — Charisma News
In the event, it was a close-run thing between Ed Litton and Mike Stone - Mohler only got a quarter of the initial ballot, and his supporters seem to have split more to Litton than to Stone on the second ballot. They are very divided, but no-one wants to be the SBC President on whose watch any big split happens.
Back in 1924 well into the fundamentalist controversy, orthodox Christians of the Presbyterian Church in the USA went all out to elect Clarence Macartney as their moderator. He won by 18 out of over 910 votes and that was that. Supposedly. But really, the election of a moderator is only symbolic in Presbyterian polity where you actually have the courts of the church for discipline. (You don’t even have courts in the SBC, so of course it’s a dumpster-fire of nasty politics. There’s no way of governing congregationalists, really, although it hasn’t helped us Presbyterians to supposedly have a way, formally.) Of course, then as now, the courts weren’t used to discipline the heretics and the libs won—eventually defrocking Machen and other pastors involved in the Independent Board for Presbyterian Foreign Missions. Truth is, just as in the PCA and SBC today, sheep bleat their support of whichever side adopts the cover of being “evangelistic.” It was the way all the neuter-the-Bible people sold neutered Bibles in the pages of CT back in the late nineties (and still do today). It’s the way all the Revoice dudes and dudettes sell their conference still, and the way the entire PCA avoids disciplining them. It’s the cowardly defense of SBC libs today. And it was the cover for Eerdman’s destruction of the PCA back in the twenties.
North Americans never believe that anyone protesting his concern and passion for saving souls might be saying it to cover his tracks, and there’s blood on those tracks. Here’s a good summary by Brad Longfield.
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It’s sure a good thing he’s not gonna be told how to stand up to Social Justice in the SBC.
He acted like he had some great plan for fighting it and he just got eviscerated. His pride and arrogance is costly.