Southern Baptists—the largest Protestant denomination in America, with just under 16.3 million members in nearly 44,000 local congregations—have some awareness that they are out of step with the broader culture in which they live. As Evangelicals, they expect to be. Indeed, if they were not a significant degree out of step with the larger culture, at least on moral issues, they would be concerned that instead of influencing the culture, they were being too influenced by it—that instead of being salt and light they were being salted and lit by the culture.
However, there are occasions when Southern Baptists are themselves startled with just how much they are marching to the beat of a different drummer than the wider culture around them.
This week LifeWay Research, a division of LifeWay Christian Resources (the publishing and research entity of the Southern Baptist Convention), released research and survey data which revealed that while 50 percent of Americans say that it is “morally acceptable to ask for a physician’s aid in taking his or her life,” almost 9 out of 10 (88 percent) of Southern Baptist pastors strongly disagreed with that position.
A similar polarity surfaced on the question of embryo destructive stem cell research. While 66 percent of the American public agreed that such research is “morally acceptable” given the potential for medical breakthroughs, 76 percent of Southern Baptists pastors “strongly disagreed” and an additional 14 percent “somewhat disagreed” with such embryonic research.
Clearly, Southern Baptists are marching to a beat of a different drummer than their non-Southern Baptist neighbors on these controversial issues.