Bart Barber

As you can tell by now, I've decided to give November over to writing posts from a posture of gratitude, particularly for institutions for which gratitude may not be the stock and trade of what I read online. I don't know how many of us #NeverTrump people are writing about what we appreciate in the Moral-Majority-slash-Religious-Right, but if it is not a genre yet, I'm willing to be the one to start it up. I've studied enough of our history to have an appreciation for the Religious Right. For Southern Baptists, the advent of the Religious Right was, in my opinion, a very healthy … [Read more...] about In Appreciation of the Religious Right

"Fawning" is generally not a term people use to describe me. Dig back through my blogging history and I think you'll find that foolishness overcomes fear with some regularity when I write. Where criticism was warranted, I've readily dished it up, at times damaging relationships by doing so. Now, that's a strange way to launch a post, but I know that when we talk about megachurch pastors, whoever says something favorable is going to prompt some people to suggest that the author is fawning over celebrities. I really don't think that's in my heart as I write this post. The men leading large … [Read more...] about In Appreciation of Megachurch Pastors Engaged in the SBC

David Platt has reported what appears to be a case in which an apparently dead man came back to life while believers were praying for him and sharing the gospel in his village. … [Read more...] about My Kind of Cessationism and David Platt’s Resuscitation Story

I have a reputation in the world of blogging for being long-winded, even though most of you have not had much, if any, opportunity to hear a sermon of mine. The average Bart Barber sermon lasts between 30 and 40 minutes. That's shorter than some of the preaching I heard in my growing-up years and longer than other sermons I've heard. I choose to believe that I am in the middle somewhere. I write today not to argue that sermons should be the length that mine are. Rather, I write today to advance an argument about what criteria you should employ to determine the length of your … [Read more...] about On the Length of a Sermon

In the aftermath of the Orlando shooting there are already people claiming this event as justification to set aside American religious liberty. Some of this is demagoguery; some of it is a well-meaning attempt to sort out feasible options in the face of terror. Much of the latter portion proceeds from misunderstandings about the nature of religious liberty. Religious liberty simply means that people are treated equally regardless of their religious beliefs. Government does not take notice of a person's religious affiliation when applying the law to them. That's all that religious liberty … [Read more...] about Religious Liberty and Violent Religious Kooks

The Annual Meeting of the Southern Baptist Convention is a business meeting. That's a simple, indisputable, "duh" sort of statement, but it is sometimes easy to forget in the midst of all of the other things that accompany the Annual Meeting. Sometimes people allege that the business aspect of the meeting is entirely "in the can," being tightly controlled by "those people." Here's some data for you. In the past 18 years: People have made 409 motions from the floor, an average of nearly 23 per year. The trend is toward fewer motions each year. The average of the past five years is … [Read more...] about The Big Business Meeting

The Christian Index is just six years shy of its bicentennial—the oldest religious newspaper in the Western Hemisphere, I believe. Dr. Gerald Harris has been the editor of this newspaper since 2003 and has steered the paper through an era that has perhaps offered more challenges to The Christian Index (by virtue of what the Internet has done to print publications) than any epoch since what the Index's readers would doubtless have called "The War of Northern Aggression." That he has done so successfully earns him a prominent place in the paper's storied history. For these reasons, I want to try … [Read more...] about Yes, Muslims Really Qualify for Religious Freedom

It looks like attendance at the SBC Annual Meeting will be higher this year. Why? I'd like to think that Southern Baptists know a good baseball city when they see it, and therefore have a hankering to get to St. Louis, but that's probably not it (especially this year!). I think the number one factor affecting attendance at the Annual Meeting is meaningful participation. This year we have a three-candidate race for the SBC Presidency, the three of them just different enough in style and substance to make this a genuinely contested (but not contentious) election. I personally know of at … [Read more...] about What Drives SBC Attendance?

I've made some changes to the text of my resolution. I've been persuaded that "RESOLVED"s in the original resolution that made mention of specific SBC entities could reasonably be construed as instructions to those entities. I have therefore reworded the resolution to remove that wording where possible and wise. The resolution expresses the opinion of the messengers regarding how church misbehavior in response to sexual misconduct lines up with the teachings of The Baptist Faith & Message. It is only an opinion, but given the wording of our Constitution, it is an opinion with consequences. I … [Read more...] about Revised Resolution on Sexual Predation