Thread by @bartbarber

The relationship between Southern Baptists and @realDonaldTrump right now ought to be of interest to anyone who studies the intersection of religion and politics.

I served on our state convention's resolutions committee last Fall. We proposed a resolution (which the convention adopted) in support of the First Step Act (prison reform).

A member of our committee had, in the days prior to our meeting, been to a meeting at the White House to discuss this presidential initiative. A lot of Southern Baptists are visiting the White House these days, as are a lot of other Evangelicals.

All of this in spite of the fact that the @ERLC, the SBC's agency most likely to be involved in secular politics, has had a relationship with the Trump White House that has been marked by a significant level of tension.

This is, of course, a situation most Trumpian. He's all about bypassing gatekeepers and building his own networks of support. And, the President's personality and policies aside, a more grassroots kind of influence is a pretty Baptist thing as well.

You may recall that during the campaign Candidate Trump called @drmoore of the @ERLC a "nasty guy with no heart." Tension.

Although it is true that some of the President's closest allies in the SBC seem to be people working to oppose the Moore ERLC, not all of them. At SBC Annual Meetings, Moore and the ERLC win vote after vote, even in years when VP Pence gets a lot of SBC love.

That's what has really been intriguing to me: The number of Southern Baptists who are both supportive of Donald Trump and supportive of Russell Moore.

At one time I would've predicted that you could fit that group of people into a hansom cab. But they're more numerous than you may think.

And this is a truly Baptistic thing. We don't let @realDonaldTrump do our thinking for us about ethics, religious liberty, or the leadership of our entities. The leaders of our entities don't dictate to us our political affiliations.

This is why I think that any journalistic endeavor or any political analysis that starts out with the question "In whose hip pocket will we find the SBC?" is flawed from the start. There's an under-appreciated independence of thought in this fellowship of churches.