- Southern Baptists on Tuesday elected a new leader who has decried a "decline and drift" within the denomination and whose supporters include an outspoken faction seeking to move the solidly conservative body even further to the right.

Delegates elected Florida pastor Willy Rice to be its next president.

He won 58% of the votes over South Carolina pastor Josh Powell on the opening day of the two-day annual meeting of the Southern Baptist Convention, the nation's largest Protestant denomination.