Texas pastor elected Southern Baptist president (AP)

Bart Barber (Facebook, Twitter), pastor of the First Baptist Church of Farmersville (TX), has been elected president of the Southern Baptist Convention. The Protestant denomination, the largest in the US, recently released a report on sexual abuse by its clergy.

Barber, a homeschooling father of two, is “a staunch Southern Baptist conservative who would welcome bans on abortion, opposes critical race theory and believes only men should serve as pastors,” and “says he has a track record of dialogue with those who disagree on those and other issues,” in the words of a somewhat tendentious AP profile.