Good news from the Southern Baptists

Onenewsnow reports that the Southern Baptist Convention is declining. In 2007, the SBC had the lowest number of baptisms since 1987. In 2006, the SBC recorded 364,826 baptisms. In 2007, they scored only 345,941; a drop of about 5.5 percent.

Woe is us!

That's not all the bad news, either. Although the SBC added some 473 new churches in 2007, the dunking decline is indicative that the church is not growing as it should be growing.

What to do?

Well, Dr. Thom Ranier, president of LifeWay Christian Resources, believes too many don't take the so-called Great Commission seriously (you'll find the Great Commission in Matthew 28:19 - where Jesus is supposed to have told his followers to go and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father, Son and Holy Spirit. Of course, most biblical scholars argue that Jesus said nothing of the sort. He was an observant Jew. Any notion of a "trinity" would be totally foreign to him. So, that verse was inserted in the Gospel of Matthew at a much later date, when the trinitarian formula had become standard.)

None of that matters to the Christian wingnuts, of course. And Dr. Ranier moans the fact that Southern Baptists are "not very excited about being saved, redeemed, forgiven, and having the blood of Jesus shed for us. It just seems like that's a ho-hum thing to us."

We can hope.

The best thing so far as many are concerned would be the continuous decline of the Southern Baptist Convention. The SBC is a fundamentalist behemoth, unrepentantly anti-female, homophobic, and rejects most all of the biblical scholarship of the past 300 years.

Furthermore, the president of the SBC ("Southern Baptist President - fraudulent credentials"), Johnny Hunt, is a fraud. He "identifies himself with the title 'Dr.' and lists two accredited educational institutions on his personal Web site from which he did not receive a doctorate. Yet he is often identified as having degrees--degrees that come from two diploma mills."

Unfortunately, a 5.5. percent drop in baptisms is simply insufficient. Let us pray that god in heaven will dry up the baptismal waters in SBC churches.

Ho-hum.