# Conservative Baptist Network A movement-conservative pressure organization within the [[Southern Baptist Convention]], founded in February 2020 in coordination with [[Founders Ministries]] ([[Tom Ascol]]) — operating as the organized faction attempting to push the SBC further rightward on [[Christian Nationalism]] positioning, complementarian gender doctrine, anti-CRT politics, and immigration restriction. CBN does not have a fixed institutional headquarters or a separate executive structure; it operates as a coalitional network through Founders Ministries' infrastructure, the Conservative Resurgence's surviving figures, and a steering-committee of pastors and laypeople aligned with the program. CBN's emergence in 2020 was the **organizational consequence** of long-running tensions between the SBC's establishment-evangelical leadership ([[Russell Moore]] at ERLC, [[Albert Mohler]] at SBTS, the Gospel Coalition-aligned pastors) and a Reformed-Calvinist-conservative faction that argued the SBC had drifted toward "social justice" capitulation. The 2018 *By What Standard?* documentary (Founders Ministries production) was the prefiguring event; CBN was the formalized organizational response. The network's initial mission statement framed its goal as "promoting and defending the doctrines and historic positions of Southern Baptists" — language that operationally translated to anti-CRT, complementarian-gender-doctrine, and increasingly explicit Christian-Nationalist positions. The organization's signal political work has been **contesting SBC presidential elections**. Mike Stone (Georgia pastor, CBN-aligned candidate) ran in 2021 and lost a close race to Ed Litton; Tom Ascol himself ran in 2024 and lost to Bart Barber. Both elections pushed the SBC's center of gravity rightward even as the CBN-aligned candidates lost. The post-Moore ERLC restructuring (2021–) has substantially advanced CBN priorities even without CBN holding a presidential office. As of 2026, the network has continued operating, with steady but not dominant influence on convention politics. For the Right Wing KB, CBN is the **organized SBC-internal CN insurgency** — distinct from but coordinated with [[Founders Ministries]] (which serves as the theological-publishing vehicle), the [[William Wolfe]] / Center for Baptist Leadership operation (which serves as the policy-advocacy vehicle), and the broader contest with the Mohler-and-TGC-aligned establishment. Tracking CBN's organizational decisions, candidate selections, and convention-vote outcomes is part of tracking the long-running internal SBC fight over explicit-CN positioning. ## Founding (February 2020) The CBN was formally launched in **February 2020** by **Brad Jurkovich** (pastor, First Baptist Church, Bossier City, Louisiana), who serves as spokesman. The founding steering committee included Jurkovich, **Mike Stone** (pastor, Emmanuel Baptist Church, Blackshear, Georgia), **Tom Ascol** ([[Founders Ministries]] president), and approximately a dozen other pastors and laypeople drawn from the Founders orbit and the SBC's Calvinist-conservative flank. The launch was covered as the emergence of a new organized faction within the SBC — the first formally constituted pressure group since the Conservative Resurgence itself. The CBN's founding documents frame its mission as defending "the doctrines and historic positions of Southern Baptists" — language that operationally translates to opposition to CRT, progressive social-justice discourse, and any softening of complementarian gender doctrine within SBC institutions. ## Prefiguring Event: *By What Standard?* (2018) The **Founders Ministries documentary *By What Standard?*** (2018) was the intellectual and organizational precursor to CBN. Produced by Founders under Ascol's direction, the film argued that the SBC's establishment leadership — particularly [[Russell Moore]] at the [[Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission]] and the seminary presidents — had capitulated to secular social-justice ideology, particularly [[Critical Race Theory]] and intersectionality. The documentary framed the 2019 SBC Annual Meeting's **Resolution 9** (which acknowledged CRT and intersectionality as "analytical tools" subordinate to Scripture) as evidence of institutional drift. *By What Standard?* became the rallying text for the network of pastors who would organize as CBN eighteen months later. ## SBC Presidential Contests CBN's primary political strategy has been **contesting SBC presidential elections** — the same mechanism the original Conservative Resurgence used to capture the denomination in 1979. ### 2021: Mike Stone vs. Ed Litton **Mike Stone** ran as the CBN-aligned candidate in the **June 2021** SBC Annual Meeting (Nashville). The race became a four-candidate contest: Stone, **Ed Litton** (pastor, Redemption Church, Saraland, Alabama — the establishment-moderate candidate), [[Albert Mohler]] (the seminary-establishment candidate), and **Randy Adams**. Mohler was **eliminated on the first ballot**. In the runoff, **Litton defeated Stone** by a narrow margin — approximately **52% to 48%**. The result was widely interpreted as the SBC establishment's narrowest survival against the CN-insurgent challenge. Litton's subsequent plagiarism controversy (recycled sermon content from J.D. Greear) weakened his presidency. ### 2022: Bart Barber **Bart Barber** (pastor, First Baptist Church, Farmersville, Texas) won the 2022 SBC presidency as a compromise-conservative candidate. CBN did not run an endorsed candidate in 2022, though several CBN-aligned figures competed. Barber's presidency focused on the sexual-abuse reform implementation (Guidepost follow-up) and institutional stabilization. ### 2024: Tom Ascol vs. Clint Pressley **[[Tom Ascol]]** himself ran for SBC president at the **June 2024** Annual Meeting (Indianapolis). He lost to **Clint Pressley** (pastor, Hickory Grove Baptist Church, Charlotte, North Carolina) — Pressley won approximately **58% to 42%**. Ascol's candidacy marked the first time the Founders Ministries leader ran directly for the convention's top office, and his defeat by a wider margin than Stone's 2021 loss suggested that the CBN-insurgent faction had reached its ceiling within convention electoral politics. ## Key Policy Positions **Anti-CRT:** CBN's founding grievance. The network opposes any use of Critical Race Theory or intersectionality frameworks within SBC institutions, seminaries, or official publications. The 2019 Resolution 9 remains the CBN's primary institutional target — the network has sought to rescind or repudiate it at subsequent Annual Meetings. **Complementarianism (strict):** CBN supports the strictest reading of complementarian gender doctrine — no women in any pastoral role, including associate or non-senior-pastor positions. CBN-aligned messengers were the primary supporters of the constitutional amendment that would have barred churches with "any female functioning in the capacity of pastor" (the amendment that failed to reach the two-thirds threshold in 2024 and 2025). **[[Immigration restriction]]:** CBN figures have generally aligned with restrictionist immigration positions, putting them at odds with the ERLC's Moore-era immigration-reform advocacy. **Explicit Christian Nationalism:** Unlike the Mohler-aligned SBC establishment — which has generally rejected the "Christian Nationalist" label while pursuing conservative-Christian policy outcomes — CBN-aligned figures like [[William Wolfe]] and [[Tom Ascol]] have been increasingly willing to embrace or at minimum decline to repudiate the CN label. This positioning is the network's most consequential ideological distinction from the SBC mainstream. ## Organization and Geographic Base CBN operates as a **decentralized network** rather than a traditional organization — it has no fixed headquarters, no large institutional staff, and relies on Founders Ministries' existing infrastructure (website, mailing list, conference circuit) for operational capacity. Membership has been reported at approximately **6,000** (as of 2022), concentrated in the **Deep South** (Georgia, Louisiana, Alabama, Mississippi, Texas) and in rural and suburban SBC churches rather than the denomination's larger urban congregations. ## KB Significance CBN is the **organized political vehicle** of the SBC's Christian-Nationalist insurgency — the faction that argues the post-Resurgence establishment (Mohler, the seminary network, TGC-adjacent pastors) has itself drifted leftward and requires a second capture. The CBN's electoral defeats (Stone 2021, Ascol 2024) suggest that the insurgent faction commands 40–48% of convention messengers — large enough to shape denominational direction through pressure and policy fights even without winning the presidency, but not large enough to capture the institution through the Pressler-Patterson presidential-pipeline mechanism. The CBN's long-term significance may be less as an electoral vehicle and more as the network that normalized explicit CN positioning within SBC discourse. ## See Also - [[Tom Ascol]] - [[Founders Ministries]] - [[William Wolfe]] - [[Southern Baptist Convention]] - [[Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission]] - [[Russell Moore]] - [[Albert Mohler]] - [[Christian Nationalism Ecosystem]]