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SBC baptism rate lowest in two decades: Membership sees slight drop

The number of baptisms by Southern Baptists—who consider the rite a gauge of their evangelistic success—has dropped to the lowest rate in two decades.

The denomination, which has also seen a slight decrease in membership numbers, recorded 342,198 baptisms in 2008, a decrease of 1.1 percent from the previous year, according to LifeWay Christian Resources, a division of the Southern Baptist Convention that compiles annual statistics.

Top SBC ethicist calls waterboarding torture: Land: Torture "violates everything we stand for"

Southern Baptist ethicist Richard Land, a leading Christian conservative who helped advance the Bush administration’s agenda on a range of social issues, says that the formerly sanctioned practice of waterboarding of suspected terrorists is torture and “violates everything we stand for.”

Land, who is president of the Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission of the Southern Baptist Convention, repudiated the simulated drowning technique in an interview May 5 with Religion News Service.