The most prominent Baptist bloggers who led a two-year effort against the Southern Baptist Convention (SBC) establishment have abandoned their Internet-fueled campaign, but they insist they will continue the crusade for more openness in the SBC with other methods.
Marty Duren, Benjamin Cole and several other voices in the denomination announced in June that they won’t be blogging about SBC issues anymore.
“Bloggers have been successful at guiding conversation,” Duren wrote on www.sbcoutpost.com June 14, one day after the annual SBC meeting.
“But for lasting change to take place, it must move into larger realms with more participants at more levels.”
The bloggers are widely credited with electing South Carolina pastor Frank Page as SBC president in 2006.
They used the election to broaden participation in the denomination beyond the entrenched conservative leaders, who themselves rose to power on a reform agenda almost three decades ago.
After Page was re-elected June 12, the young reformers’ candidate for first vice president was defeated.
But they achieved their second big victory a day later by getting denominational approval for a statement declaring the SBC’s revised doctrinal statement — the 2000 Baptist Faith and Message — “is sufficient in its current form to guide trustees in their establishment of policies and practices of entities of the convention.”
In addition to Duren and Cole, other Baptist bloggers — including Art Rogers and Allen Cross — announced they will stop blogging or change topics. But Wade Burleson, whose dispute with fellow trustees of the SBC International Mission Board in 2005 became a rallying cry for the online revolution, says he will continue to blog, even “redoubling” his efforts, for the sake of the missionaries. (ABP)
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