Sharlet: Bob Smietana, religion reporter for the Tennessean and occasional Revealer contributor, responds to my Friday post on the most overlooked religion story of last week, the change in leadership of America’s biggest Protestant denomination, the Southern Baptist Convention:

Saw the Revealer post on the election of Johnny Hunt. He’s a lot closer to Frank Page than people realize. Hunt, and Ronnie Floyd, another big church pastor signed the same global warming statement as Frank Page and Hunt is an opponent of some changes from the International Mission Board, favored by the conservative resurgence folks. Like Page, Hunt is an anti Calvinist. Hunt, like Page, is more worried about the health of the convention, and its decline in baptisms, and the health of small churches. He’s very much like Page.

Frank Cox was the establishment candidate, the anti-Frank Page in this race, and he got squashed. He finished only slightly ahead of Avery Willis, a retired missionary and Lifeway staffer who was a real long shot in the race.

If Al Mohler ran and won, that’d be a rejection of Page’s vision. But Mohler’s probably out of the picture for the next 4 years as a presidential candidate. Hunt will be in for the next two years, and a Florida pastor will likely win in 2010, when the convention is in Orlando.

The conservative resurgence isn’t over by a long shot. But a new group of conservatives is in charge, and they’re worried about the future health of the convention and less about hard right politics. Hunt compared the SBC to the Titanic in his opening press conference; Page thinks half the churches in the convention will die by 2030.

Sharlet: My question in response: How seriously should we take the global warming declaration? That is, how much of a litmus test is it? And a litmus test for what? For generational loyalties? Or for one conservatism vs. another? Nobody ever accused fundamentalists of being stupid — ok, lots of people did, but they were wrong — and global warming looks like it’s probably a fact. So is it really a big deal if they acknowledge that? Isn’t the big question, What’s your response?

Smietana responds: Here’s one reason why the split matters and why its not a matter of style. The hard right folks are in lock step with the Republican party. Condoleeza Rice was not at this convention, nor was John McCain. In the past, they’d have been invited.
The moderate conservatives are less willing to give their allegiance away and more willing to work with others they disagree with. Land would fight any global warming restrictions until his dying breath. Page and Hunt would say, we’re don’t want to argue the science. All we know is that we want to take care of God’s creation. So they will at least not get in the way of environmental legislation.