Terry Mattingly

September 21, 2026

Baptists, worship, young people, Godbeat, family life, evangelicals, doctrine

Among Southern Baptists, as well: More adults are converting, and getting baptized

Terry Mattingly

September 21, 2026

Baptists, worship, young people, Godbeat, family life, evangelicals, doctrine

Among Southern Baptists, as well: More adults are converting, and getting baptized

Back in the Southern Baptist Convention's boom years, from the 1960s to 2010, the experts charting baptism statistics divided "children" into three groups -- starting with those under age 6.

Behind the scenes, there were discussions about when children reached the "age of accountability" and could make mature professions of faith in Jesus Christ, leading to "believer's baptism" by full immersion in water. As with many other doctrinal issues, this was settled by local-church leaders. The same was true when adults asked to be rebaptized, for various reasons.

"At the end of the day, when someone says they've decided to give their life to Christ, the local church is going to let them symbolize that by being baptized," noted Scott McConnell, executive director of Lifeway Research. "That's what Baptists do. That's who we are."

Obviously, Baptists pay close attention to baptism statistics, along with trends with church attendance and membership. In a new report, Lifeway dug into Southern Baptist Convention Annual Church Profile numbers for 2025 and reported that baptisms rose for the fifth consecutive year.

Baptist leaders quickly noted another current trend -- adults 30 and older represented 33% of all baptisms. That was higher than the baptism of those 12-17 (25%), children before age 12 (22%) and young adults between 18-29 (20%). In the past, it was common for the baptism of minors to be two-thirds of the total, noted McConnell, reached by telephone.

The "seismic development" in these numbers is the consistently rising number of conversions among Americans over age 18, noted the Rev. R. Albert Mohler, Jr., president of Southern Baptist Theological Seminary in Louisville, Kentucky.

Terry Mattingly

June 26, 2023

worship, Women, LGBTQ, Godbeat, evangelicals, doctrine, Baptists

Has the DNA of Southern Baptist Convention doctrine changed on ordaining women?

Terry Mattingly

June 26, 2023

worship, Women, LGBTQ, Godbeat, evangelicals, doctrine, Baptists

Has the DNA of Southern Baptist Convention doctrine changed on ordaining women?

After decades as America's most famous Sunday school teacher, Jimmy Carter decided to cut the symbolic ties binding him to the Southern Baptist Convention.

The former president remained active at Maranatha Baptist Church in Plains, Georgia, and didn't renounce his faith. His 2000 letter to 75,000 American Baptists explained that he rejected a revision of the SBC's Baptist Faith and Message document, months earlier, to oppose the ordination of women.

"I have been disappointed and feel excluded by the adoption of policies and an increasingly rigid SBC creed," wrote Carter, who is now 98 years old and in hospice care. He stressed that, with his wife Rosalynn, he would cooperate with "traditional Baptists who share such beliefs as separation of church and state, servanthood of pastors, priesthood of believers, a free religious press, and equality of women."

From Carter's point of view, the SBC had evolved from a convention of autonomous churches -- with individuals claiming "soul competency" when choosing their own beliefs -- into a denomination that defines orthodoxy on doctrines.

The issue isn't who is a Baptist and who is not. Church historians struggle to count the number of organized Baptist groups and thousands of Baptist churches are totally independent. The question is whether the SBC's DNA has changed in ways that will affect local churches, as well as agencies, boards and seminaries at the state and national levels.

The Rev. Rick Warren -- an American evangelical superstar -- urged the recent national convention in New Orleans not to "disfellowship" congregations that ordain women, such as the giant Saddleback Church he founded in 1980.

"For 178 years, the SBC has been a blend of at least a dozen different tribes of Baptists," said Warren, during floor debates. "If you think every Baptist thinks like you, you're mistaken. What we share in common is a mutual commitment to the inerrancy and infallibility of God's Word, and the Great Commission of Jesus.

"No one is asking any Southern Baptist to change their theology. I am not asking you to agree with my church. I am asking you to act like a Southern Baptist -- who have historically 'agreed to disagree' on dozens of doctrines in order to share a common mission."

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What Do the Orthodox Converts Want? (2006)

It doesn't take a Ph.D. in Liturgical Studies to tell the difference between a Southern Baptist church and an Orthodox church. You can get some pretty good clues just by walking in the door and looking around. But there are some similarities between the two that might be a little trickier to spot. For instance, let me tell you about what life is like on Sunday nights in a Southern Baptist congregation.

Baptists worship at several different times during the week -- at least they did in the old days when I was growing up as a Southern Baptist pastor's son. One of those times is on Sunday nights. Back in the early 1980s, I was active in a church in Champaign-Urbana, Illinois, in which the typical Sunday morning crowd would be about 200 to 300 people, which is rather small for a Baptist church, but fairly normal for an Orthodox parish. Then the crowd on Sunday night would be from 40 to 45 people.

Now, that ratio should sound familiar to many priests who lead Vespers services. But the similarities don’t stop there.

Before the age of 30, I became a deacon and the finance chairman of that church -- which, in the Southern Baptist way of doing things, meant that I was the only person, not excluding the pastor, who saw the annual pledge cards. I was the only person in the congregation who knew who was giving what.

If there is an experience in life that will teach you the meaning of original sin, finance chairman is that role. What I discovered through that experience is that there is no connection whatsoever between how much a family gives to the church and how much money that family makes. Instead, I found that the key connection is faithfulness in worship. If you attend the Sunday night service at a typical Baptist church and look around at the 40 people there in comparison to the 200 or 300 in attendance on Sunday morning, you will find that about 80 percent of the church's giving is accounted for in that group.

The bottom line: The Sunday night experience in a Baptist church is very similar to that in Saturday evening Vespers services in an Orthodox church. As Bishop Antoun told me once, if you look at who attends Great Vespers and comes to confession, you are looking at about 80 percent of the service, the giving, and the energy in most parishes.

Who comes to Vespers? Who comes to confession? Who comes to the feasts, and why do they come? That’s where I would like to start as we consider this question: What do the converts want?

What we’re doing @ GetReligion.org

Originally posted on getreligion.org

Day after day, millions of Americans who frequent pews see ghosts when they pick up their newspapers or turn on television news.

They read stories that are important to their lives, yet they seem to catch fleeting glimpses of other characters or other plots between the lines. There seem to be other ideas or influences hiding there.

One minute they are there. The next they are gone. There are ghosts in there, hiding in the ink and the pixels. Something is missing in the basic facts or perhaps most of the key facts are there, yet some are twisted. Perhaps there are sins of omission, rather than commission.

A lot of these ghosts are, well, holy ghosts. They are facts and stories and faces linked to the power of religious faith. Now you see them. Now you don't. In fact, a whole lot of the time you don't get to see them. But that doesn't mean they aren't there.

I want to show you an an example -- a case study, if you will -- of what I am talking about, a ghost in a set of stories that is related to this blog that you are visiting (and we hope you come back often).

Democracy of the Dead - Snow Traditions

inter is over and it's time to pack away the shovels, down jackets, insulated boots and mittens until next year. The changing seasons teach different lessons and, this winter, I was reminded of a great truth about life. It goes something like this: There is a right way and a wrong way to shovel snow.

Perhaps you saw the headlines about the massive storms that hit the nation's capital, this past winter. Right after everyone calmed down from the Y2K scare, we were reminded that there are other ways to bring an entire region to a screeching halt.

Or, perhaps you had to dig your way out of record-breaking drifts in some other corner of the country, this year. Or perhaps you live someplace where it's normal to see several feet of snow. Perhaps you're a pro.

I grew up on the Texas Gulf Coast, which is hardly a great place to learn how to handle snow. We were masters of mosquito control.

But, after college, I found myself in the frozen Midwest, where shoveling snow is an art -- right up there with boiling corn and planning tailgate parties. The snow started about Thanksgiving and, before long, I realized that it wasn't going away on its own.

Several weeks, and several backaches later, I started watching the local talent. This is when it hit me: I was not the first person in the history of the world to shovel snow. I didn't have to reinvent the wheel. There I was, a youngster, slumping to the side of the path in exhaustion while gray- haired neighbors soldiered on.

What did they know that I didn't know? Well, yes, there were different kinds of shovels and different kinds of techniques and some folks were more doctrinaire than others. But there were common themes, such as bending your knees, not getting the shovel TOO full and never flinging the snow into the wind. There was a right way and wrong way to face this challenge and, I decided, only a fool would go it alone.

Eventually, I humbled myself and started asking questions. The elders took me in, showed me the ropes and handed down what they had learned -- a kind of oral snow-shoveling Tradition.

Rediscovering Religion — Religion Coverage: Past as Prologue? (2003)

Religion Coverage: Past as Prologue?
(Copyright) The Poynter Institute Poynter Reports, May 2003

Lou Grant had a problem.

Actually, the city editor of the classic TV comedy had two problems.

First of all, the fictional Los Angeles Tribune had lost its religion editor and no self-respecting journalist wanted the job. Second, Grant needed to ditch a lazy, often-drunk, no-good reporter named Mal Cavanaugh.

Finally, Grant saw the light. He told Cavanaugh he was the new religion editor.

"That stinks! Before you stick me with a lousy job like that, I'd quit," said the reporter, before storming out of the room.

Grant's staff beamed. The religion beat was still vacant, but who cared?

That scenario rang true to the editors and religion reporters I interviewed while doing my graduate work at the University of Illinois in Urbana-Champaign, researching a project that reached the cover of The Quill in January, 1983.

Many religion-beat veterans were proud of their work, but felt like Rodney Dangerfield in their newsrooms. Editors kept saying that they knew religion was news, but that religion-beat stories seemed too boring, or too controversial, to warrant dedicated coverage.

That's the ticket -- too boring and too controversial.

Journalism strategies in a hostile marketplace (2001)

Soon after John Grisham finished law school in 1981, he started hanging out at the DeSoto County Courthouse on the town square in Hernando, Miss. He had tried writing a book or two at the University of Mississippi, but nothing came of it. Then one day he overheard the horrifying courtroom testimony of a 12-year-old girl who had been raped. What would happen, he asked himself, if the girl's father became so outraged that he killed the rapist?

Grisham couldn't get this story out of his head. Soon he was getting up at 5 a.m. with a notepad, writing chapter after chapter of his first courtroom drama. It took three years to finish the manuscript, and another year of rejections by dozens of companies, before Wynwood Press published 5,000 copies in 1988.

But there was more to this process than telling a story that was in his head and heart.

"While I was writing 'A Time to Kill,' I read everything that was on the New York Times list," said Grisham, at a Baylor University conference called "Art & Soul" in March, 2000. "Most of it, I said to myself, 'I can do better than this.' A lot of it, I said, 'I'll never be that good.' "

Grisham realized that he was not writing the first legal thriller. So he read the competition and he learned the rules -- the writing style of the marketplace in which he would have to compete. He created a likable hero and then he ensnared him in a dangerous conspiracy. Then he carefully plotted a way to get him out of that mess, with as many entertaining twists and turns along the way as possible to create tension.

"I didn't invent that," said Grisham.

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