Just read an article about how the Southern Baptist Convention is part-and-parcel of the #SouthernStrategy, as well as the SBC’s aid in the rise of Trumpism.

After reading this, I wonder how the SBC is able to retain so much political power that even the Roman Catholic Church, the only Christian organization with a larger parishioner size in the U.S. than the SBC, can find themselves at odds with them on several economic and immigration-related issues.

• There are 33 million Baptists in the U.S., 16 million of whom are members of SBC-affiliated congregations throughout the U.S. (as of 2013) but the highest rates of which are concentrated in Texas, North Carolina, Georgia, Florida and Tennessee.
• The SBC provides funding to six seminaries, and the SBC’s state convention affiliates provide funding to nearly 50 universities and colleges in 19 states.
• At the same time that the South was going through the end of Jim Crow and its immediate aftermath, the SBC was in the throes of its Fundamentalist Takeover.

All of this is crucial in understanding where the SBC is right now.