No comments = no future [updated]

SBC Today is a Southern Baptist niche blog which has called attention to itself by exiting the blogoshphere.

Specifically, it has no blogroll, it doesn’t accept linkbacks and has announced that it will no longer accept comments on its posts (it was that last action which marked its exit from the blogosphere).

Wikipedia accurately describes the blogosphere:

The collective community of all blogs is known as the blogosphere. Since all blogs are on the internet by definition, they may be seen as interconnected and socially networked, through blogrolls, comments, linkbacks (refbacks, trackbacks or pingbacks) and backlinks.

Clearly, little remains for SBC Today to remove itself from even the possibility of participation in the worldwide online conversation that drives the blogosphere, except perhaps to take itself offline altogether.

Even so, we do not agree with those who say SBC Today is no longer a blog. Its entries are hyperlinked, printed in reverse chronological order and make some use of hyperlinks to outside resources. Its publication platform is blog software. So in a truly minimalist sense, and you may quarrel with us about this, even with comments off, SBC Today remains a blog.

Just not a blog which respects its readers enough to accept comments.

Too bad.

The wages of disrespect for one’s readers is typically death.

Addendum

Wade Burleson wrote Saturday in a blog about his differences with the Baptist Identity movement, that “the premier Baptist Identity blog, SBC Today, has chosen to terminate all comments. . . . Shame on them. . . . .”

Burleson finished by quoting one of his frequent commenters, Jim Champion, who nailed the key online issue, writing: “If I want editorials I’ll go to print media.”

How many Southern Baptists?

Usually with a straight face, various news services reported this week that in 2006-2007, according to the latest edition of the Yearbook of American and Canadian Churches, the number of Southern Baptists declined 0.24% to 16.2 million members.

Annual % change in SBC membership

Surely no one thinks that “16.2 million” number refers to real, active members? Not for a denomination with a “50 year trend” of declining growth that has become real decline.

Real membership begins with baptism. Southern Baptist decline in baptisms is old news. USA Today reported last March:

Baptisms last year [2007] dropped nearly 5.5 percent to 345,941, compared with 364,826 in 2006, according to an annual report released Wednesday by LifeWay . . . . baptisms peaked in 1972 at 445,725 . . . .

As for active members, their comparatively small number is older news. In 2000, Ernest C. Reisinger and D. Matthew Allen wrote:

The Wall Street Journal reported in 1990 that, of the 14.9 million members of Southern Baptist churches (according to an official count), over 4.4 million are “non-resident members.” This means they are members with whom the church has lost touch. Another 3 million hadn’t attended church or donated to a church in the past year. That left about 7.4 million “active” members. However, according to Sunday School consultant Glenn Smith, even this is misleading, because included in this “active” figure are those members who only attended once a year at Easter or Christmas.

For those with time to spare, Adherents.com has a mind-numbing list of somewhat contradictory claims.

Writing about the “16-million-member Southern Baptist Convention” is somewhat like publishing the transcript of an interview with Bigfoot. Thus defined, with grossly inflated numbers which imply Christian solders in the field, it apparently doesn’t exist.