I admit a certain over-fascination with The Southern Baptist Convention. While I’ve noticed various people and events in and around the SBC over the years, the fascination really took hold last summer when, from the comfort of my computer chair, I covered the SBC convention for an online news site. What I wrote was utterly bland, utterly ordinary and fortunately forgettable.
Writing a few words on the convention sucked me into a foreign world.
I blame the internet.:^)

First off, as a Canadian, my knowledge of Baptist history is nil. I’ve been quite content  -other than the occasional rubber-necking - to keep it nil. To try to understand some of the procedure and people attending the convention I began to read Baptist history.  Days of intense cramming only scratched the surface. I also spent days and nights reading just about every Southern Baptist blog out there.
Shoot, I may well have read every Southern Baptist blog. 
I don’t think that is anything to brag about. 
While Anglicans make news with their schism, even their most intense and passionate exchanges sound cool and civil beside with a SBC discussion. 
The Anglican communion is structurally different, more hierarchical than the congregationalist, autonomy governance model Baptists embrace. While some of the problems each denomination faces may be the same, the group dynamics are very different.

It’s been a long time since I’ve been that spiritually drained.  
While I admit I over-researched, over-crammed and over-compensated, that does not account for the spiritual depletion I experienced.
Southern Baptists fight. It is what they do. It is not all they do, but it is what they do best. It’s toxic. 
The denomination, despite it’s best efforts is  known by the casual observer for what it is against, not what it is for.  And that is a sad legacy. With the intense power struggles on their national, state, regional and economic levels, let alone theology, it’s none stop drama.

I learned that while the SBC leadership draw blood, draw money, power and political influence, there is more noise than light. I think most of the 6 million or so members (statisticians say the self claim of 16 million members is exaggerated) are unaware and uninvolved in the ongoing structural wrestling matches and are probably desensitized to outrageous characters in leadership positions.  I learned that in taking the turn to the right about 30 years ago, the SBC solidified becoming it’s own entity.  I learned moderate Baptists aren’t SBC. There are about 50 separate groups of Baptists in the US.  It’s unfair for even the most casual  and disinterested observer to paint Baptists with the same brush. Very unfair. It’s difficult not to. The noisy, upset sibling gets the attention.
Ben Cole of Baptist Blogger summed up the past year in a post: The way forward. Now please understand his interests and his heart are in his denomination;  his time line unintentionally captures the SBC the rest of us gawk at.
One wild year out of many wild years.

Cheat sheet  Canadian Baptist Church
According to Stats Can (2001)  2.5 percent of Canadians identify as Baptist
There are about 12 thousand Canadian ‘Southern’ Baptists