Use Your Voice, Not the Exit
The Conservatives of the SBC Must Resist the Urge to Move On
I am not a Baptist, southern or otherwise. As someone who grew up in the Midwest and has lived my entire life in the north, the culture of the Southern Baptist Convention (SBC) is foreign to me.
Nevertheless, the importance of the SBC is clear. This is in part for obvious reasons such as its large membership, important institutions like its seminaries, and the traditional baptist focus and gifting in making new converts. It’s also the case that in some southern communities, prominent SBC congregations serve as “establishment” churches similar to Episcopal or Presbyterian ones. They thus take on extra importance in shaping the civic, political, and cultural life of their communities.
Conservatives have a pattern of leaving institutions they perceive as failing or suffering from mission drift and starting over someplace new. The city goes blue and gets a little crazy? Move to the new suburb on the edge of town. The mainstream media is biased? Start Fox News. Public schools have gone woke? Homeschool.
There’s a history of this in the religious world as well. The PCA, EPC, and ECO are all new denominations that have split from the mainline presbyterian denominations since the 1970s.
To be fair, some people didn’t leave institutions, they were pushed out. Or their positions were made so untenable that they felt compelled to leave, such as to avoid violating their conscience. But for many it was a choice.
This choice to leave is not merely a conservative inclination but an American one. Albert O. Hirschman wrote an influential book called Exit, Voice, and Loyalty: Responses to Decline in Firms, Organizations, and States. When faced with a failing or poorly performing institution, people are confronted with two options: Voice or Exit. Voice is to advocate for reform within the institution itself. Exit is to leave for a different institution.
Hirschman notes that “Exit has been accorded an extraordinarily privileged position in the American tradition.” This makes sense. After all, we are the descendants of people who left somewhere else to come here.
The choice for Exit often makes rational sense at the individual level. I’ve chosen it myself on multiple occasions. But we all too often underestimate the value of the institutions we leave behind or the difficulty of constructing a replacement—something that’s impossible in many cases.
Hirschman points out that the incumbent management of poorly performing institutions may well want the people who could most effectively use Voice to choose Exit instead. He says, “Those who hold power in the lazy monopoly may actually have an interest in creating some limited opportunity for exit on the part of those whose voice might be uncomfortable.”
Choosing the Exit option leaves very valuable institutions in the hands of people who may not run them well and who may not share your values. While there’s no one right option for everyone in every circumstance, conservatives, who have an inherent bias towards Exit, should reflect deeply before making that choice. This includes those who might be tempted to cut ties with the SBC.
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