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What happened to the Southern Baptists?
The Southern Baptist Convention (SBC) is the largest Protestant denomination in the United States. The annual meeting of the SBC was held this year in San Antonio, Texas, on June 12 and 13. President Bush addressed the crowd of thousands of messengers via satellite with a nine-minute speech on the closing day "to multiple lengthy applauses and standing ovations," according to Baptist Press, the official news agency of the SBC.

Although he is not a Southern Baptist, Bush has addressed the SBC annual meeting, either by satellite or videotape, every year since 2002. The only exception was last year, when Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, who is also not a Southern Baptist, spoke to the SBC messengers in person in Greensboro, North Carolina, because Bush made a secret trip to Iraq during the time of the SBC annual meeting in 2006.

Like he did in 2004 and 2005, the president mentioned Southern Baptist support for the military in his recent comments to the SBC messengers:

I also appreciate the fact that Southern Baptists are supporting our brave men and women in uniform, and their families. I know you pray for their safety as they defend our people and extend the hope of freedom to the oppressed across the globe. I appreciate the fact you’ve sent care packages, and tend to the spiritual needs as military chaplains or kneel in prayer. I thank you as you support those who volunteer to serve our nation.

If the president were honest, he would have thanked the pastors at the annual meeting for supplying cannon fodder for the state in the form of their young men that they encouraged to join the military....

...What happened to the Southern Baptists? Their overwhelming support for the U.S.-initiated Persian Gulf War shows that they fully accepted the government’s new enemy after the end of the Cold War: Saddam Hussein. Thus began their descent down the slippery slope of militarism, presidential aggrandizement, and statolatry. The transformation was made complete in 2001.

What happened to the Southern Baptists? The events of September 11, 2001, apparently "changed everything." Yet, after the fiasco that is the war in Iraq has been scrupulously exposed many times over, no change in opinion has been forthcoming from the SBC. Instead, the man most responsible for the war is welcomed with applause and ovation. But there is one thing that the events of September 11th didn’t change – the reckless, belligerent, and meddling U.S. foreign policy responsible for the blowback we suffered on that date, and will inevitably experience again since our militaristic, interventionist foreign policy likewise shows no sign of changing.