An Arkansas megachurch pastor is the new president of the Southern Baptist convention. The Rev. Ronnie Floyd received 52% of votes from delegates to the annual meeting of the nation's largest Protestant denomination.
Floyd beat out the Rev. Dennis Kim, the Korean-American pastor of a bilingual Maryland church, who received 41% of the vote. Floyd has been pastor at Cross Church in northwest Arkansas for 27 years. About 8,500 people worship each week at one of the church's several locations. He was nominated by the powerful head of Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, the Rev. Albert Mohler.
Mohler told the crowd of 5,000 meeting in Baltimore that Floyd is the person who can lead the Nashville-based denomination at a time of "horrifying moral rebellion" in the nation.
