Posted on 06/03/2004 9:31:43 AM PDT by BobbyBeeper
Religion Today
BOBBY ROSS JR.
HOUSTON - Back in 1979, the Rev. Jimmy Allen thought the highlight of the Southern Baptist Convention's annual meeting would be a giant rally at the Astrodome featuring the Rev. Billy Graham.
Instead, Allen and other moderate leaders in the nation's largest Protestant denomination were caught by surprise as conservatives who had attacked the denomination's seminaries as "hotbeds of liberalism" flocked to the meeting.
There, they succeeded in electing a denominational president, the Rev. Adrian Rogers of Tennessee, who shared their view of biblical inerrancy - meaning that the Bible is without error in any way, including historical details.
Some thought the vote was just a momentary change in direction, but Rogers' election turned out be a watershed moment for the denomination. The 16 million-member SBC shifted dramatically to the right - politically and theologically - and in the years that have followed, its conservative leaders have pushed hard against abortion rights, homosexuality and women pastors.
Twenty-five years later, passions remain strong on both sides when Baptists discuss the conservative takeover.
If not for the 1979 meeting, Southern Baptists "would be battling the same issues of the Episcopalians and the Methodists and the United Presbyterians. We would have basically marginalized and homogenized the Southern Baptist Convention into a liberal, moderate denomination with very little impact," said the Rev. Jack Graham, the convention's president and pastor of the 22,000-member Prestonwood Baptist Church in Plano, Texas.
Allen, then the convention's president and pastor of the First Baptist Church of San Antonio, sees it differently.
"I'm sad for the fact that the Baptist witness had a golden moment in which we were at our fullest strength, and both our image and the reality was that we were a caring group of people enthusiastic about sharing the message," said Allen, now 76 and retired in Georgia. "Now, we are at a time when the word Baptist means squabbling and judgmentalism."
The conservative takeover - or "take back," as the revolt's co-leader, Paul Pressler, refers to it - came after Pressler and the Rev. Paige Patterson, then president of Criswell College, a Baptist school in Dallas, held an unprecedented series of pre-convention strategy sessions around the country.
Pressler and Patterson used a three-point message to recruit conservative "messengers" to the meeting:
_ They argued that the denomination was in trouble because of liberal seminary professors who were questioning biblical inerrancy.
_ They said the problem could be turned around by electing conservative presidents, who could use their powerful appointive authority to remove moderates from the boards of Baptist seminaries and other denominational agencies.
_ They urged like-minded Baptists to travel to Houston so their votes could be counted.
"We would get letters that said, 'Answer yes and no: Were Adam and Eve real people? Do you believe the devil is a real being? Do you believe in the virgin birth of Christ?'" said Bill J. Leonard, then a professor at Southern Baptist Theological Seminary in Louisville, Ky.
In the former Southern Baptist's view, the issue was far more complicated than the conservatives made it.
Still, the right won the fight - in part because of the simplicity of its message.
"They said, 'You either believe the Bible or you don't,'" said Leonard, now dean of the Divinity School at Wake Forest University in North Carolina. "And the moderates said, 'Yes, we believe the Bible, but we've got a checklist here about how we believe the Bible.'"
Moderates, who accused conservatives of wanting to impose "creedalism" on the Baptist freedom to interpret Scriptures, brushed off the conservative challenge until it was too late, said Louis Moore, a former Houston Chronicle religion editor who has attended 30 Southern Baptist annual meetings.
"All of a sudden, these cars start coming in, and buses start coming in, with all these people they'd never seen before from Baptist churches. ... And they had all been rallied by Patterson and Pressler," said Moore, now owner of Hannibal Books, an evangelical Christian publishing house.
After the vote, the newly elected conservative president told reporters: "I haven't come with blood in my eyes, but with love in my heart." However, Rogers added that he would not abide any "compromise of the word of God."
Now 72 and recuperating from heart surgery in March, Rogers declined an interview request.
Patterson, now president of Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary in Fort Worth, said the 1979 annual meeting "was clearly a watershed convention since it marked the first successful assault on the liberal and neo-orthodox hegemony of the convention."
At the time, most moderates saw Rogers' election as a temporary "pendulum swinging," said the Rev. Charles Wade, executive director of the moderate Baptist General Convention of Texas, a 2-million-member group that clashes frequently with the Southern Baptist leadership.
But by 1985, when moderates came out on the losing end of a fiery meeting that drew 45,000 Southern Baptists to Dallas, it had become quite clear that the conservatives were not going away.
"I realized that the pendulum was not going to swing because the fundamentalists had nailed it to the wall," Wade said.
Eventually, disenfranchised moderates left the Southern Baptist Convention and formed their own group, the Atlanta-based Cooperative Baptist Fellowship, which has grown to about 1,800 member congregations. The Southern Baptist Convention has 42,000 member congregations. Some churches belong to both national associations.
Looking back, Pressler, 74, suggests conservatives were on a God-given mission in 1979.
Still, the retired Houston appellate court judge said the experience was painful, as critics accused him and Patterson of sinister motives.
"I had a very good, easy life and I forewent some other opportunities in order to be involved in the fight," he said. "But I feel that the future of Southern Baptists, the salvation of many souls and the influence that we have in our country all depended on what happened."
And that God they did!
This was probably the most important religious event in the US in the last 25 years. The SBC is the only major (in numbers anyway) Christian chruch that still holds to a conservative view of the Bible.
Without this event, there is every chance the SBC (at the upper levels and seminaries) would be in the same shape as the other major denominations.
Are the colleges more fundamental now? Baylor wasn't looking too good IMO, 3 years ago.
bump for later reading
Bump for later
Chartered in 1845 by the Republic of Texas and affiliated with the Baptist General Convention of Texas, Baylor is the oldest institution of higher learning in the state and the largest Baptist university in the world.
The Baptist General Convention of Texas is suspect. I believe that they are much more liberal in their beliefs, approaching the level of Methodists in their policy of "inclusiveness".
It always amazes me how broadly the word "moderate" is used. Is there no such thing as liberal in these people's minds?
Baylor is controlled by the liberal state convention, not the conservative national convention. In fact, they have set up a liberal seminary because the liberals were ousted from the seminary in Fort Worth.
The lies perpetrated by Pressler, Patterson, et al were outrageous. I was amazed to hear the "fundamentalists" claim that Dr. Sherman didn't believe in miracles or the Virgin Birth of Christ, that we didn't read the Bible in church. All of these were total lies, of course, and the Presslers, the Pattersons, and the Adrian Rogers knew it.
The kicker was when the "fundamentalists" called a meeting at one of the conventions and used armed guards to prevent any "moderates" from attending. The "fundamentalists" were acting like the lying thugs that they are.
It was horrible when the "fundamentalists" took over Southwestern Seminary and fired many good professors and staff members. One of the professors was my Sunday School teacher and I knew others that attended Broadway. These were loving, caring, theologically conservative men whose only sin was not joining into the politically motivated tactics of the "fundamentalists."
If anyone doubts my theological conservatism, then please look at my past religious posts on Free Republic. We "moderates" didn't disagree with the "fundamentalists" on theology, we just despised their ethics.
I'm a Baylor grad (Chemistry, 1984). I also knew many who were ousted from Southwestern Seminary and none of them were liberal.Do you have any facts to back up your assertion that the seminary at Baylor is liberal?
I'm not Baptist but my wife is and she sees it the same as you. Her church withdrew from the SBC a few years ago.
Ok, thanks. Strange for Texas, huh?
I'm still a SB member but out of the loop some. I started attending an Independent about 7 years ago. (Yes , I'm one of those dreaded Fundamentalists :'). The reason I asked the guys this questions was because I was supposed to attend a freep at Baylor a few years ago when Janet Reno invited to speak. It was cancelled though but not because of Baylor :'( I thought it really strange that she would have been courted though.
It bugs me that if I hadn't literally been at the center of the action, I might have been on the side of the "fundamentalists." They said the right things and played on peoples' hearts who, rightly so, didn't want Baptists to go the way of so many other denominations. The only problem was that pretty much everything they said were lies.
What did they lie about?
While I am glad that the SBC is now lead by people who are real believers, I would be distressed if belief in the doctrine of young Earth creationism was expected of leaders of the SBC. I believe that this doctrine is a huge stumbling block for many people (Romans 14:13).
As far as having Janet Reno speak at Baylor, I don't see anything inherently wrong with that. I recall Baylor hosting guest speakers whose opinions I didn't agree with either and I thoroughly enjoyed the question-answer sessions afterwards. I don't see inviting Reno to speak as an endorsement of her politics and actions. I would like to see Reno speak myself -- and then have the opportunity to grill her with questions!
So what exactly were the Fundamentalists opposed to then, if everything was fine as it was? I'm not familiar with the events that took place.
After what happened in Waco??? Anyway that's a different topic but thanks for the SBC input. I stopped following because I got tired of the the fighting.
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