The Southern Baptist Convention assembles today amid declining membership for that powerful denomination, as well as for American churches in general.
The United States seems slowly to be getting kind of European about going to church.
An observer of the raging American culture war cannot resist. So indulge me, please, while I preach without a license.
Such a thing is permitted in a country guaranteeing free religion and free expression. One is limited only by his ability to get people to pay attention.
Let us begin with a definition of evangelicals: These are people of generally fundamental Christian religious beliefs who consider themselves commanded by God to try to convert others to accept and live by those beliefs.
Or as the Southern Baptists put it on their website, without actually calling themselves evangelicals: "It is the duty and privilege of every follower of Christ and every church of the Lord Jesus Christ to endeavor to make disciples of all nations."
Evangelicals are currently in great moral and institutional combat with people who say that religion is a matter of personal interpretation and belief and that people need to mind their own business. These opponents say that evangelicals should apply to themselves alone the beliefs and rules to which they are, of course, entitled.
So there was a front-page article in this newspaper Sunday about the declining attendance in Southern Baptist and other American churches. It contained the following analysis from Gary Hollingsworth, senior pastor of Immanuel Baptist Church in Little Rock: "It's continuing proof of the continued secularization of our society more than anything else. Spiritual things are not relevant to their lives in the minds of some. So the numbers speak to what's going on in culture."
He said three things and got two of them right.
It is true that the decline in church membership shows that the country is becoming more secular. That means it depends for behavioral guideposts more on individual philosophy and general societal values than it once did, and less on a church or a traditional religious structure.
And it is true that the latest numbers reflect the changing culture. We live in a time when people have come to embrace personal choices based on their own designs and schedules. We can watch a recorded television program whenever we choose. And many think they can get their religion their own way without reporting to church at someone else's appointed time, perhaps to listen to a priest or preacher with whom they're likely to disagree.
But it is not true, at least by my anecdotal observation, that "spiritual things are not relevant" anymore. I see people professing more spirituality and seeming to become more personally spiritual as they find less need for congregational association or traditional religious participation.
In fact, "spirituality" has become almost a catchphrase, a cliché, so pronounced is the new cultural reliance on it as an alternative to going to church.
The article Sunday delved into what Southern Baptists intend to say and do about the big one--same-sex marriage, which they believe to be a God-decreed sin. But gay marriage is clearly here to stay in wide application even if the U.S. Supreme Court, in a ruling due any day now, permits states like Arkansas to prohibit it if they choose.
Ronnie Floyd, longtime pastor of the mega-church of Southern Baptists in Springdale and current head of the entire SBC, was quoted in the article as saying he intended to negotiate this new gay marriage environment with God's love in one hand and God's word in the other.
It is a lovely phrase that says he intends to confront a gay-married couple to tell them he loves them but that they're sinners.
I support his right to believe and express his belief as he chooses. I wouldn't and shouldn't try to change it. But the complication is that such tolerance needs to apply both ways.
An evangelical person needs to accept the secular limitations in a free society on the evangelical pursuit to which he believes himself commanded. He can't make us agree with him, or use the government to force us to oblige.
So I wish Brother Floyd well. Just be aware that what he carries as God's word is his version of the word, suitable for himself and his willing and agreeable congregants, but that there are other interpretations in the clergy and out.
On his other hand, God's love is what he and everyone else ought to put out there for everybody.
God's word for oneself; God's love for everyone. I wonder if that might not be the very remedy for the decline in church attendance.
Remember that these are merely the views of a shade-tree preacher who thinks we should erect a monument on the state Capitol lawn to the Beatitudes, those blessings for the beleaguered in the Sermon on the Mount, rather than the Ten Commandments.
John Brummett's column appears regularly in the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette. Email him at jbrummett@arkansasonline.com. Read his blog at brummett.arkansasonline.com, or his @johnbrummett Twitter feed.
Editorial on 06/16/2015