The Southern Baptist Convention recently concluded its annual convention, electing a new president, Steve Gaines (of Bellevue Baptist Church in Memphis); he replaces Ronnie Floyd of Cross Church in Rogers, Arkansas.

Besides a resolve to denounce the Confederate flag, the convention made some news on the heels of the recent story involving a planned mosque in New Jersey.

Traditional Southern Baptists, those from the immediate past in particular, would be horrified that an SBC entity (in this case the Russell Moore-led Ethics & Religious Liberty Commission) joined almost two dozen other groups in a lawsuit aimed at allowing a mosque to be built in Bernards Township, New Jersey. Moore has maintained that “religious liberty” must be the priority.

At the SBC convention, however, an attendee or two took to the microphones and questioned Moore about his defense of the New Jersey mosque. The scene then took a sad turn as Moore smugly dismissed the concerns. On some subsequent blogs, those few brave souls who took exception to an SBC entity helping build a mosque were mocked; one was even derided as perhaps being old (dementia?) and out of touch.

What is out of touch, however, is exactly what has happened: Moore is pushing through a fairly radical left-wing agenda to turn the Southern Baptist community into a “kinder, gentler” church.

The problem is, as the SBC continues to hemorrhage members (down 1.1 million since 2002, and 200,000 in the last two years led by Floyd), the world still will not tolerate even those positions Moore and his friends purport to resist, such as abortion.

In other words, “the world” won’t like you better because you come their way. It only makes them loathe you “more,” no pun intended.

The SBC leadership is scrambling for solutions to halt the exodus of members. Sadly, they are largely looking in the wrong places for those solutions. A return to biblical teaching, I believe, would do the trick. I don’t expect that to happen, as books like Jesus Calling and The Circle Maker pass for study materials today, in too many circles. They are infinitely poor substitutes for God’s Holy Word.

Prediction: the SBC slide will continue, culminating in cultural irrelevance.