The denomination is facing issues that, thirty years ago, it never imagined it would face, when fundamentalists, who were not in the majority, but who had a significant following in the denomination, began an effort to affect the election of officers who controlled appointments on two of the most powerful committees, in order to change the makeup of trustee boards at all of the denomination's six seminaries, two mission boards, publishing house and commissions, to place it under fundamentalist control. The claimed objective was to enforce a doctrinal position on Biblical Inerrancy that fundamentalists believed, and claimed that those who didn't were liberals who were subverting the Christian gospel.

But one of the distinguishing characteristics of Baptists, that make them different from other Protestants, is that they don't gather in denominations to force doctrinal unity on independent, autonomous churches. In reality, the leaders of this fundamentalist takeover, known as the "Conservative Resurgence," were introducing Christian Reconstructionism into the largest Protestant denomination in the United States, to bring about political change leading to the imposition of Christian nationalism on the country, culminating in what we now know as Project 2025.

It was at that moment that the Southern Baptists reached the peak of their influence and set events in motion that would lead to the denomination experiencing its steepest declines in membership and attendance since Reconstruction. I believe it was at that moment in 1979, clearly explained by Bill Moyers in the documentary linked above, that the Southern Baptist Convention destroyed itself.

Think about that. The largest Protestant denomination in the United States was founded on beliefs and convictions of people claiming to be Christian in a false, inhumane, unChristian doctrine and practice. And it took them 150 years to realize the error of their ways.

So it should not be surprising that another false doctrine would be at the core of a "Conservative Resurgence" aimed at using the voting strength of this same denomination to bring about radical political reform leading the United States down the path to Christian nationalism. Nor should it be surprising that this movement has led to the largest collapse of attendance and membership in this same denomination since Reconstruction.