The SBC, Animal Farm & Disneyland + Jonathan Merritt
Roxy Stone and guest host Jonathan Merritt discuss their Southern Baptist upbringings and how it feels to watch your childhood denomination go so off the rails.
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We are one week away from the Southern Baptist Convention’s annual meeting and it promises to be an interesting time.
Aside from another contentious presidential election, the nation’s largest Protestant denomination must also reckon with the explosive findings from a sweeping sex abuse investigation.
On this week’s episode, Roxy is joined by her good friend and a son of the Southern Baptists, Jonathan Merritt. The two discuss their own SBC upbringings and how it feels to watch your childhood denomination go so off the rails. They are also joined by SBC insider Ben Cole, who gives a preview of what to expect next week in Anaheim.
GUESTS:
- Jonathan Merritt is one of America’s most trusted and popular writers on religion, culture, and politics. He is an award-winning contributor for The Atlantic, a contributing editor and monthly columnist for Religion News Service. He is author of several critically-acclaimed books including “Learning to Speak God from Scratch: Why Sacred Words are Vanishing – and How We Can Revive Them.”
- Benjamin Cole is the founder of Longview Strategies consulting firm. On Twitter, he’s @BaptistBlogger, where he has a lively feed.
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