Heritage: B. H. Carroll on Doctrine

                                                                                                                                                              Vol. XVII, No. 3, March 2004

B. H. Carroll (first president of Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary), noting a tendency to doctrinal minimalism in some sectors of Baptist life due to the rise of liberalism in the first decade of the twentieth century, warned against “any teaching that decries doctrines.” He considered the mentality of magnifying liberty at the expense of doctrine “a positive and very hurtful sin.” The stress on individual liberty meant a sacrifice of the power of united forces and the “trend toward cutting off every article of faith to which some individual crank may object, will, if tamely unresisted, leave the church without a creed and without a moral life.”

[From “Being a Baptist: We Must Not Sell It Cheap”, chapter 1 of Why I Am a Baptist, Broadman & Holman, 2001, pp. 9-10]