I haven't left my Southern Baptist church--yet

Last Sunday, I told the other old boys in our Sunday School class that if the Southern Baptist Convention did what it looked like they were going to do, that might be my last Sunday in that congregation.
Later in the discussion, I relented, so although the Southern Baptist Convention did indeed do what it looked like they were going to do, I will be in church this morning.
What they did was pass a resolution against something called the “alt-right” and against “Southern nationalism.”
Now, what I had heard before the convention was they were going to pass a resolution against nationalism. As I told the men in my Sunday School class, it looks to me like there is two choices, nationalism and globalism. I like my nation, the United States of America, and I don’t like globalism, which I take to mean a one-world government with a one-world currency and open borders and wide-open elections.
I’m not quite sure what “southern nationalism” is, nor am I sure what the “alt-right” is.
In my limited knowledge about the current political scene, I think southern nationalism means they want to reform the old Confederate States of America and secede.
I think the alt-right is a loose-knit movement of conservative people who believe in constitutional government, most authority given to the states and less to the federal government. There is apparently a spectrum of opinions about other things, such as race, and that’s where the Southern Baptists are poking their noses. Some of the alt-right, which is really an amorphous concept, like the tea party coalition was, have views defined as racist.
They don’t particularly like inter-racial dating or marriage for their children, they don’t like special consideration given to black people for college tuition simply because of their color, they don’t believe in reparations to Negro people because of slavery and they don’t buy the belief that cops are targeting black people.  All of these are today classed as racist beliefs and the Southern Baptist Convention, although founded before the Civil War because of the slavery issue, now has become progressive on racial issues, at least on paper.
The Southern Baptist Convention is losing numbers as older people die off and young people who grew up in Baptist churches quit going. It is harder and harder to get people into a church with a Southern history and a message that people are born in sin and need a Savior.
I think the Baptists are rebranding themselves. “Racial reconciliation” is a big deal to them, so they are going above and beyond to show Negroes they care about them. Last year, at the request of a black Texas pastor, they repudiated the Southern Cross flag, also known as the Confederate battle flag, and convention leaders said no true Christian should or would display the Confederate battle flag.
This year,at the request of the same pastor, they repudiated the idea of southern nationalism, an idea that has no chance of ever occurring anyway, so no repudiation is really needed. They also repudiated all ideas of the alt-right, many of which are right and good and are in keeping with the views of the Founding Fathers.
What the Southern Baptists did not repudiate was Black Lives Matter, an organization that does not seem to spurn violence and an organization with a website that I find un-American.
The Southern Baptists also did not repudiate the “antifa,” which is a left-wing organization as amorphous as the alt-right, but one that is not afraid to use violence.
I was surprised the Southern Baptists did not pass a resolution calling for the removal of Confederate monuments. Maybe that will come next year.
I also look over the years to come for the Southern Baptists to soften their opposition to abortion, at least returning to their old squishy position of being neither really for nor really against.
Eventually, I think, the Southern Baptists will take a formal position that Islam is equal in the eyes of God to Christianity.
Most of all, I look for the Southern Baptists to embrace same-sex relationships and marriages. I think that will be soon, perhaps within the next 10 years.
I am not ready to embrace the new theology that Jesus died on the cross for women’s reproductive rights, for the right of people of the same gender to have sex with each other, for special rights for non-whites and to show that all religions are equal.
So I will have withdrawn my membership in a Southern Baptist church before that happens. I won’t leave my church today or anytime soon, but I might start entering a motion at each business meeting that we withdraw as a church from the convention. After a few times of that, either I will leave or they’ll kick me out.--RDH