Patriarchy, Critical Race Theory, and Christian Nationalism
Brad speaks with Jonathan Krohn ahead of the Southern Baptist Convention's annual meeting. Jonathan is an investigative journalist and essayist whose work has appeared at Mother Jones, the Washington Post, and many other outlets. He also grew up in the SBC and was once considered a teenager star in the denomination. He will be covering the annual meeting for the New Republic. He and Brad discuss what he expects will happen at the convention. It appears that the USA's largest Protestant denomination is going to shift even further rightward by embracing Christian nationalism explicitly, by continuing the demonization of critical race theory, by ignoring sexual abuse allegations, and by cementing even deeper the commitment to patriarchal theologies. All in all, this is a startling window into one of the most influential Christian communities in the country.
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Welcome to Straight White American Jesus.
My name is Brad Onishi, and our show is hosted in partnership with the Kapp Center at UCSB.
Before we get to our interview today, I have an announcement about our show and about my future.
Some of you might have heard this on the weekly roundup last week, but I've decided to step away from my position at Skidmore, It's been a really difficult decision and one that I haven't taken lightly.
For those of you who are in the academic game, you know that stepping away from a tenure-track job is just not something that's done very often.
And so you might be wondering why I'm doing that.
I'm doing it for a number of reasons.
My wife and I have been just talking and doing tons of soul-searching and Her career is really taking off and her career is really based out here in California.
We've prioritized my job for a long time.
Academia is a career that means moving around a lot and not really having control over where you live.
As a result, we've really had to kind of contour her pathway to my pathway.
Well, we've decided to prioritize what she's up to and part of the reason we're doing that now is that we're expecting our first child and so we just decided it was time to decide that we would kind of make our home out here in California and allow her to pursue everything she's up to without having to worry about more moving or relocating or us living in separate places and so on and so forth.
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I turn now to our interview.
I'm joined now by a special guest, a guest I'm really excited to have on, and that is Jonathan Crone, who is an essayist and investigative journalist, somebody who has done a ton of great reporting, lived in the Middle East and did reporting from there for a number of years, recently has been covering the Atlanta Massacre and the dimensions of faith and theology.
that have gone into that, doing that largely for the Washington Post, has written for Mother Jones, The Atlantic, USA Today, and many many others, and was also somebody who was raised in the Southern Baptist Convention, was at one point a kind of rising Christian nationalist star as a young man, somebody who was seen as a luminary, a rising luminary on the conservative right in this country, has had quite a change and is now a journalist who covers these things.
And so, Jonathan, let me say first, thanks for joining me.
Thanks for having me.
You are on your way this week to the Southern Baptist Convention.
That's something you're familiar with.
You grew up in that denomination.
There's a lot going on with the SBC right now.
There was a bombshell report this week that It was related to a letter that Russell Moore, who is the former head of the policy wing on religious ethics and legislation, etc., for the SBC, a letter that was leaked and reported on by the Religion News Service about widespread sexual abuse in the Southern Baptist Convention.
So that's one thing that's happening.
There is also the concerted war against critical race theory happening in the Southern Baptist Convention.
There's also a lot of talk about complementarianism and patriarchy in the wake of Beth Moore leaving the Southern Baptist Convention.
So, you are headed to the convention.
You are going to be investigating, reporting, interviewing.
What are some of the things you expect to see as you head there this week?
Yeah, I think that it's going to be an epochal moment for the Southern Baptist Convention, rivaled only in recent memory, perhaps, by Paige Patterson's conservative resurgence.
I think that the question this time around is not whether, I mean, none of these candidates are particularly liberal, you know, especially, you know, there are four of them.
There's Randy Adams, Ed Litton, And the two frontrunners, Al Mohler and Mike Stone.
None of them are... And these are the candidates for presidency of the SPC.
Yeah.
Yeah.
And Al Mohler, obviously, to those listening to this, I'm sure, is probably the most well-known, having his own radio show, now a podcast, that he does quite regularly about theological, the intersection of theology and politics.
And he's been the public face of SBC theology for some time now.
Back in my childhood days, I was interviewed on his radio show as a child conservative.
He has always been kind of that voice in the SBC, but there are those who are on the right I mean, he helped frame, he helped write the 2000 Baptist Faith and Message, you know, and he was one of the writers, as he wrote, and as he mentioned in a recent Candidates Forum, he was one of the guys who wrote the complementarian language into the Baptist Faith and Message, that women cannot be ministers, they cannot be pastors.
But all of them agree on this.
The complementarian issue is not one that's really going to be up for debate within the SPC.
Yeah.
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