Tactics: How Nominating Speeches Could Save The Southern Baptist Convention

On last week’s livestream featuring Dr. Jared Moore and Christopher Cunningham, two messengers who were on the floor of the Annual Southern Baptist Convention, I discussed a strategy with them that could change how conservatives operate on the convention floor to inform the otherwise low-information voters at the SBC. The tactic was nominating speeches.

At SBC23 there was general chicanery employed at the opportune times to deny messengers the ability to speak at the microphones. During the resolutions committee report, the microphones suddenly stopped working when conservatives were lined up at all the mics.

But the convention must recognize a nomination on the floor of the convention. Indeed all nominations, even if announced prior to the convention must occur on the floor of the convention. Therefore if a messenger wishes to make a nomination, they can make a speech to that end. This gives the messenger an opportune time to speak to the convention, when the room is likely most packed.

Nomination speeches are tricky. Willy Rice did not give a good speech. However, what conservative should be doing is run spoiler candidates and utilize the nominating speech to point out the corruption in the SBC and to attack the platform. It’s unclear to what extent derrogatory statements about another messenger will be “in order.” At SBC23, Todd Unzicker attacked messengers during the convention sermon which was not ruled out of order. But in any case, a shrewd messenger can give backhanded compliments saying that “Bart Barber has done a tremendous job at getting the SBC sued for defamation” or “Brent Leatherwood does Planned Parenthood’s work so they don’t have to.” Maybe conservatives should sabotage the liberal nomination speeches by giving an uninspiring speech on behalf of their candidate before their candidate’s preferred nominator gets to speak. It’s dirty politics but not sin. And if you are to stay in the SBC you need to fight for it.