Commentary : Factions Look to Future in Rift Among Southern Baptists : Conservatives: Denomination will not tolerate teaching seen to undermine ‘perfect’ Bible.

After 12 years of rancor and heated dissent, the smoke of political gunfire is lifting from the 15-million-member Southern Baptist Convention, making it possible to discern the outline of what the nation’s largest non-Catholic religious body will be like in the years to come.

In the future, four descriptions will characterize the SBC, now a national church body with congregations in all 50 states: theologically conservative, passionately evangelistic, fervently revivalistic and politically active.

The first three characteristics will surprise few people. In the spectrum of religion in America, Southern Baptists long have been perceived as theologically conservative, passionately evangelistic and fervently revivalistic. In the future, Southern Baptists will just be more so.

The outcome of the 12-year Baptist battle over the Bible, now ending, makes it clear that Southern Baptists will not tolerate teachings which undermine belief in true and perfect Scriptures. Evangelism and a revivalistic spirit remain a passion of those who believed God was on their side in “the controversy” and who now lead the convention.

The fourth description will frighten those who thought it was OK for mainstream Presbyterians and Episcopalians to be politically active but who recoil at the thought of conservative groups, such as Southern Baptists, entering the process too.

Another way to frame the image of Southern Baptists in the future is to borrow a common description from the corporate world today: “leaner, meaner and bolder.” The 12-year battle to set the course of the convention has shaken loose the less than theologically conservative elements in the SBC and roused the denomination from merely complaining about the ills of society to actively trying to do something about them.

No longer are Southern Baptists willing to let their preachers pound the pulpits against a society drunk on alcohol, drugs, sex, violence, greed and corruption without also carrying their messages to society’s power brokers in Congress, the courts, the White House, the media and state legislatures.

Some mistakenly say that the SBC has become the “Republican Party at prayer.” That image inverts the reality of Southern Baptists seeking to make their influence felt based on their own collective agenda. At times, the SBC agenda will coincide with or collide with Republican and Democratic agendas of the day.

Some believe that the SBC of the future will be smaller, but that is probably a short-sighted view. In the short term, attention will focus on what will become of the 6,000 dissenting Southern Baptists who gathered in a “ya’ll come” meeting in Atlanta three weeks before the annual SBC there June 4-6.

The future for these dissenters is uncertain. They are reported to be divided along a spectrum that ranges from those who want to march off into a new denomination to those who love that from which they came and are wondering if there isn’t some creative way to stay on board the SBC ship. A review of the history of American denominational schisms since World War II shows that when the dust has settled the breakaway group has been much smaller than its supporters predicted. That’s the most likely scenario for this one too.

But looking beyond the dissent, one sees a Southern Baptist Convention that will rebound rapidly from any numerical losses and be different in style and tone from the denomination that existed in the 1960s and 1970s. Like a populist rebellion, the 12-year Baptist war, whose roots date at least to the end of World War II, has brought to power new faces with different styles and different ways of doing business. If the old leaders were like the classic men in gray flannel suits, the new leaders are high profile with a flair for the dramatic. If the old style was accommodating, the new style is confrontational.

Unbeknown to most Americans, including most Southern Baptists, America’s largest Protestant body over the years built up a huge bureaucracy which rivals that of the Vatican. For the next few years, the Southern Baptist conservatives will tame and refashion that bureaucracy into their likeness, sparking more flickers of controversy.

But when the dust settles, watch out, America! Move over, Presbyterians and Episcopalians! The sleeping giant of American Protestantism will have been awakened to share the Good News that God is alive, Jesus is Lord, the Bible can be trusted and society cannot fling aside traditional Christian values so easily.