Southern Baptists: Churches can use 'Great Commission' instead

[steve2470]

http://www.latimes.com/news/nation/nationnow/la-na-nn-southern-baptist-name-change-20120620,0,682727.story?track=rss

The Southern Baptist Convention, the nation’s largest Protestant denomination, has approved an alternative name that will allow churches to distance themselves from the organization’s past ties to slavery and racism.

Great Commission Baptists, the alternative name, was endorsed by 53% of the 4,800 ballots cast at the convention’s annual meeting in New Orleans, officials said.

The change marks another step in the predominantly white denomination’s efforts to become more inclusive. On Tuesday, convention delegates elected the Rev. Fred Luter Jr. of New Orleans as the first black president in the denomination's 167-year history.

“In regions outside of the South, ‘Southern’ may conjure up a regional stereotype that becomes a hindrance to the Gospel,” Roger S. "Sing" Oldham, a spokesman for the denomination, told the Los Angeles Times. “Our brothers and sisters in Christ who are of other race and language groups can now identify themselves with something that does not hearken back to a Southern past.”

[RainDog]

1. typical public relations bullshit

from an organization that continues to tell women they are second-class citizens, tells homosexuals they are second class citizens, teaches people that, in order to believe in god they must check their brains at the door and deny every bit of scientific evidence from the last 1000 years and, most especially, the last 150 years with the denial of evolutionary science, who cannot seem to buy a clue that, just as they were racists they are now sexists and homophobes.

....but it's all different now.

In another 100 years they'll call themselves what?

hopefully, in another 100 years they'll be as scarce as the shakers.

[lpbk2713]

2. The name sounds like they want to step up their image to used car salesmen instead.

What was that the half-governor was saying about lipstick on a pig?

[xfundy]

3. Oh, yeah.

this is like when that tobacco company became Altria.

[Zax2me]

4. New Southern Baptist leader: Former street preacher, Katrina survivor

A native of New Orleans' impoverished lower Ninth Ward neighborhood, Luter was the third of five children raised by a divorced mother who worked as a seamstress and a surgical scrub assistant

http://religion.blogs.cnn.com/2012/06/20/new-southern-baptist-leader-former-street-preacher-katrina-survivor