If Randy Adams is elected SBC president this June he will make some history in a couple of ways.
It’s been a long time since a state convention CEO was elected president of the SBC, maybe never (I’ll let some SBC history person fact check me on that). I’m certain that we haven’t had a non-celebrity, non-megapastor as SBC president since the 1970s. Adams would be both of those.
His only announced opponent, Al Mohler, is a first order SBC celebrity.
Either way the election goes, we will have a denominational employee as SBC president. This isn’t an issue for me, since his power is mostly persuasive and his appointees are a couple of levels removed from decisions on anything that would benefit the candidate or the institution that employs him.
Adams, lately, has taken a mild bumper shot at the social justice resolution and backers. His article today, The Peace of Jesus or the Peaceful Bigotry of Social Theories should be read and is ripe for some commentary from some of my deeper thinking friends here. It’s a thoughtful piece. I’m not making any specific criticism of it here. I have mixed feelings about the whole issue and am certainly not up to the speed that my colleagues here are on the thing.
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Here’s the list of SBC presidents. You can tell me who was the last non-mega, non-celeb, non-denominational employee.
I don’t plan to cast my vote in Orlando simply because I will not be present. Randy Adams would call me disenfranchised. I’d call me fiscally and meteorlogically sensible. Mad dogs, Englishmen, and Southern Baptists go out in the midday sun, in central Florida.
Should be interesting from now until then.
The featured image, “Star trails night long exposure” is how SBCers see themselves – center of the sky.