“We got down to almost nobody,” he said. “We stayed around and said, let’s see what God will do with this.”
New Hope has grown in recent years, transforming from a mostly white congregation to a diverse church. He said church members have been concerned about critical race theory and its effects on the SBC. Pittman, who is Black, is mistrustful of CRT too, calling it a “different gospel” that assigned guilt to people based on the color of their skin.
Pittman, a first-time attendee of the annual meeting, was disappointed that messengers did not specifically reject CRT. He felt that Southern Baptist leaders didn’t always follow their own rules. His church, he said, can’t partner with an organization whose leaders do that.
Evan Stewart, assistant professor of sociology at the University of Massachusetts Boston, said the SBC reflects a bigger trend of public distrust of religious institutions.
In recent decades, he said, confidence in organized religion has dropped, according to the General Social Survey. In the 1970s and 1980s, he said, about 30% of Americans had a great deal of confidence in organized religion. Today, that’s dropped to about 20%, he said.
“It’s hard to tell if that decline is from folks who say ‘I have no confidence in organized religion’ or if folks are saying ‘I am just a little more tempered in my confidence,’” he said.
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For his part, Litton said Southern Baptists have to decide whether they want to work together despite their differences.
“I think Southern Baptists have to ask themselves, or Great Commission Baptists have to ask themselves, do we really want to glorify God, by cooperating?” he said, using an alternate name for Southern Baptists.
To cooperate, he said, they will have to exercise what he called their “compassion muscles” by loving their neighbors. He said Southern Baptists are known for their theology but have neglected that part of the faith.
Litton told Religion News Service that he is ready for the challenge ahead. But he knows things could get ugly, and he worries that his church in North Mobile might not be ready for the criticism he will face. “I feel the need to brace them for the social media,” he said. “I don’t think they have a clue what’s coming.”
Southern Baptists, he said, have to be “tender with those who are suffering and mercy, merciful for those who need the gospel.”
Being tender, in Litton’s eyes, is not a sign of weakness. His approach to ministry, especially in recent years, has been shaped by personal tragedy. His first wife, Tammy, was killed in a car wreck after 25 years of marriage.
Her death shook him. Litton said God was with him as he grieved and the experience of grieving made him stronger and more empathetic to others. (In a twist of fate, Litton played a pastor who comforts a grieving father whose daughter was killed in a car crash in the 2011 Christian movie “Courageous.”)
That experience, he suggests, will give him what it takes to restore faith in the SBC.
“I’ve always been told as a pastor that I had empathy,” he said. “But the reality of pain means I have credibility.”
This article originally appeared on ReligionNews.com.
