re: What are the origins of the Religious Right.. really?

quote:

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and the SBC has seen a decline in membership at a rate of 5% every year since then...

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Two questions to ask about this:

1. Church membership has been declining in many mainline denominations. Is the 5% decline within SBC worse than in other mainline groups?
2. How much of the decline is due to the rise of the megachurch phenomenon?

(BTW, several megachurches such as Saddleback and Fellowship are actually SBC affiliated, but they don't advertise their ties. So how many polled, who may attend an SBC-affiliated megachurch, answered "non-denominational" not knowing otherwise?)

Also it's strange that this thread has drifted off into an SBC discussion, when the focus of the article was on Bob Jones University, which is an Independent Baptist supported institution.

(IB's have an absolute disdain for SBC, many of them--such as J. Frank Norris, John R. Rice, and Lester Roloff--having broken away from it in the early and mid-1900's. Even with the SBC supposedly returning to conservative views, the IB's aren't convinced--IB publisher The Sword of the Lord sells a book titled SBC Conservative Takeover not a "Make-Over".)