G. Frink's

"Batholics in Bohemia, ...or when your pastor enquires of you" is a Czeck cartoon which was inspired by Tony Cartledge's May 20, 2005, blog (no longer online) "Baptists or Batholics?" The caption translates, "Did you vote for Christian democratic party, Civic democratic party or social democrats? According to the new SBC instruction no. 214/09 we cannot accept liberal voters."

How soon will they all be Batholics in Baptist State Convention of North Carolina?

Batholic was the word which sprang to mind when I read that the BSCNC had made a budgetary change intended to push moderate Baptists out. That change reflects the increasing doctrinal rigidity of a denomination which I am told once prided itself in having no formal creed.

I was blissfully unaware of the journey toward clerical domination by the nation's largest non-Catholic denomination until I read then-Biblical Recorder Editor Tony Cartledge's May 20, 2005, blog "Baptists or Batholics?" in which he wrote:

About half of North Carolina churchgoers are Baptists, and for years have been increasingly divided against one another by the 1979 fundamentalist takeover of the Southern Baptist Convention.

On Nov. 12, the fundamentalists at Baptist State Convention of North Carolina meeting in Greensboro ended almost two decades of budgetary cooperation with the moderate Cooperative Baptist Fellowship.

Although the action was technically an end in 2010 to the channeling of funds through the BSCNC to the CBF, without forbidding member churches to write a check directly to the CBF, it was clear that the intention was further imposition of theological conservatism on the BSCNC.

Not only was it clear when the action was taken that a number of the remaining moderate churches in the BSCNC would leave, some of the conservatives crowed about that prospect.

The CBF is an offspring of the culture wars and the split was in a fundamental sense inevitable. Although, according to the Biblical Recorder, a financial shift toward the CBF was already well under way.

The CBF was founded in 1991 in response to the fundamentalist takeover of the SBC. It is a fellowship of churches which call both men and women into the ministry, accepts homosexual members and are otherwise tolerant. Not a denomination, the CBF doesn't own or operate divinity schools or similar institutions but partners with like-minded institutions. Among those are 14 theology schools and seminaries and a variety of independent agencies, all of which operate autonomously.

The big Baptist tent is still up in North Carolina, most fundamentalists say with varying degrees of passion, and almost no one in sight really believes that. Certainly not Tony Cartledge, former editor of the Biblical Recorder, who wrote:

In a blistering critique of evangelical denigration of president-elect Barack Obama, Southeastern Baptist Theological Seminary head Danny Akin told told the N.C. Pastors' Conference in Greensboro that God had raised up Obama to be president.

Echoing the Nov. 5 view of Albert Mohler, president of Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, Akin said Christians are required by scripture to both accept Obama as president and to pray for God to change Obama's heart, especially with regard to abortion issues.

Conservative Christian political leaders like Focus on the Family's James Dobson tried to explain it away, but the "God gap" that was twice important to Republican George W. Bush's victory, shifted toward Democrat Barack Obama.

James Dobson's fear mongering letter and false vision were put in their place this week by the editor of Sojourners.

Jim Wallis demanded Dobson apologize for a letter which fails to live up to either Biblical standards or those of decent public discourse. The televangelist's failure, through his Focus on the Family Action organization, to live up to Biblical standards is especially telling. Willis handles it in clear, concise detail:

With the credit bubble burst and the economy struggling, where are the prosperity preachers who promise wealth to the Christian faithful?

University of California Religious Studies professor Jonathan Walton wrote recently of the prosperity gospel: