Roots of the Resurgence

by T.C Pinckney                                                                                       Vol. V, No. 5, September 1992

Major changes usually have multiple causes, and that is certainly true of the conservative resurgence within the SBC. The following paragraphs will examine four issues impelling those who have led and supported the Southern Baptist conservative renascence. There may be other important issues; there likely are. But certainly the first three below are significant. The fourth is more of a red herring advanced by those opposed to conservative policies.

Biblical Authority: Overwhelmingly most influential, the question of biblical authority has been the primary motivation, the unifying glue, the spiritual imperative, both the cause and the goal, the rallying issue around which conservatives have forged their successful effort to determine the course of the Southern Baptist Convention. Conservative leaders have been proven correct in their conviction that the mass of Southern Baptists believe the Book and, once convinced the SBC was departing from faithful adherence to the infallibility of Scripture, would vote for those who will return to historical Southern Baptist theology.

The challenge was to make the point and get it across to enough people.

There is ample (though not widely publicized) evidence of both the traditional Southern Baptist stance and more recent theological drift. Jeremiah B. Jeter, first president of the Foreign Mission Board, wrote in 1881, "The manner of inspiration ... is such as to preclude the possibility of error in the Scriptures." [Quoted in Hefley, The Conservative Resurgence, p. 13]

J.P. Boyce, first president of Southern Seminary and SBC president 1872-1879, wrote "The author believes in the perfect inspiration and absolute authority of the divine revelation, and is convinced that the best proof of any truth is that it is there taught." [Boyce, Abstract of Systematic Theology] Dr. Basil Manly, a contemporary of Boyce also taught at Southern and became president of the SBC Sunday School Board. He stated, "An uninspired Bible would furnish no infallible standard of truth and would leave us open to the mistakes and errors in judgment of the human authors. I reject any idea of partial inspiration or partial human authorship and partial divine authorship. Rather, it is all of God and all of man. ... The Bible is truly the Word of God, having both infallible truth and divine authority in all that it affirms or enjoins." John A. Broadus, one of the first professors at Southern, warned, "Even the slightest departure from the teaching of Scripture will be logically devastating to a true and consistent biblical theology." B.H. Carroll was the founder and first president of Southwestern Seminary in 1905. He wrote, "It has always been a matter of profound surprise to me that anybody should ever question the verbal inspiration of the Bible. ... What is the object of inspiration? It is to put accurately, in human words, ideas from God. ... When you hear the silly talk that the Bible CONTAINS the word of God and is not the WORD OF GOD, you hear a fool's talk. There can be no inspiration of the book without the words of the book. ... When inspired declarations were written, they were absolutely infallible."

Similar examples could be multiplied, but it should be clear that just as the entire church down through the centuries has until recently held that Scripture is without error of any kind, so the SBC has stood resolutely on this great truth.

Indeed, the assertion that the Bible contains errors is a relatively recent aberration originating in the ferment of the Renaissance when man's abilities began to be glorified and God stigmatized. This fad received a great boost with the 1859 publication of Darwin's Origin of the Species. European Christendom quickly succumbed to the siren temptation to accommodate the new "science," while America was a bit more isolated. Soon, however, revisionist theology spread across the Atlantic.

Gradually even Southern Baptists began to diverge from inerrancy. Dr. Richard S. Alley, a professor at the University of Richmond, stated to an atheist meeting in the First Unitarian Church of Richmond on 6 December 1977 as reported in the Richmond News Leader, "Jesus never really claimed to be God or to be related to Him. ... I see Jesus as really a Jew. I don't imagine for a minute that he would have had the audacity to claim the deity for himself." In 1981 Robert G. Bratcher, an employee of the SBC Christian Life Commission, speaking at a CLC seminar said, "Only willful ignorance or intellectual dishonesty can account for the claim that the Bible is inerrant and infallible. ... No truth-loving, God-respecting, Christ-honoring believer should be guilty of such heresy." Or consider this statement by C.R. Daley, former editor of the Western Recorder, Kentucky state Baptist paper, which he made to a class at Southern Seminary on 20 July 1984, "When I came to this seminary, I can remember only one professor who stood up strongly for the Mosaic authorship of the Pentateuch." Note this passage from the book Jesus Christ authored by Dr. E. Glenn Hinson, until recently professor at Southern Seminary in Louisville and whose hiring by Ruschlikon Seminary in Switzerland led to the cut off in funding by the Foreign Mission Board trustees, "A delay of Christ's return, or Parousia, finally forced the writing down of his words but not before they had undergone considerable reshaping. What was written down, therefore, represented the mind of the early Church much more than the mind of Jesus himself. When sifted, it leaves little that one can confidently attribute to Jesus himself." Lastly, read the following quote from New Testament Theology published in 1962 and written Dr. Frank Stagg, professor emeritus at Southern Seminary, "God did not punish Christ. It is monstrous to picture the Father deliberately inflicting punishment on his beloved obedient Son as a scapegoat."

Again, similar examples could be cited almost indefinitely. But the point has been made. "Certain men had crept in unawares" and the liberal poison was being promoted within the very heart of Southern Baptist life: our seminaries, our state papers, our Sunday School quarterlies, books published by the Sunday School Board, and within the SBC bureaucracy. Something had to be done were the SBC to return to belief in the inerrancy of God's Word.

Organizational Accountability: Another conservative impetus stemmed from growing conservative frustration with stonewalling by SBC agencies in the face of repeated conservative motions and resolutions passed by annual conventions. Initially conservatives expected agency executives to adjust actions and/or policies in response, but they found instead that no action or only cosmetic action was taken. In retrospect, it seems likely that if the SBC bureaucracy had been more responsive, had reined-in the seminary professors and other authors, the resurgence could have been avoided or postponed indefinitely while the poison continued to spread. Praise God that He moved before it was too late.

Pride, however, is a dangerous mistress. The same pride which led men to place their judgment above God's word misled them into overestimating their strength. Associating almost solely with others of like persuasion, habitually denigratory of "fundamentalists," having managed the SBC for so long as a closed shop, and having successfully turned aside so many conservative sallies in the past, by the late 1970's denominational organization men were overly confident that conservatives could not mount a sustained and well-thought out campaign and that, even if one were set in motion, they could quash it with little difficulty.

Conservatives, on the other hand, had learned through hard experience and were becoming battle-hardened veterans of the denominational struggle. For one thing they now realized that convention resolutions and motions were ineffective. For another, they had learned that sporadic efforts were inadequate; a continuous campaign lasting a decade or more would be necessary. They had also learned to read the SBC constitution to determine how the denominational leviathan might be steered back to its historical course. They had learned that the denominational bureaucracy considered itself a force unto itself and disdained the clear expression of positions by messengers at the annual conventions. The bureaucracy could not be trusted to implement convention directives without close and determined oversight, perhaps not without changes of personnel. Conservatives had learned the necessity of organization and communication. The existing liberal manipulators had all the advantages attendant upon formal organization, established means of communication including Baptist Press and the state Baptist papers, and the numerous denominational meetings their members attended at SBC expense. Conservatives started with ad hoc groups of three or four and built oh so slowly from a small but thoroughly committed base. Finally, conservatives had discovered that the nucleus of the problem lay in the seminaries. It was there that young would-be pastors were infected with destructive biblical criticism and then went forth to spread the gospel according to Barth and Bultmann among the laity. As the seminaries go, eventually so goes the denomination. Denominational organizations had to become responsive to the Convention.

Stewardship: It galled many conservatives that their donations were going to support what they viewed as poor and, in extreme cases, anti-Christian causes. Causes such as increasingly soft denominational positions on abortion, or James Dunn and the Baptist Joint Committee on Public Affairs. They objected to many products of the Sunday School Board. They did not understand support for foreign missionaries who engaged in social work but who objected to public prayer.

Personal Considerations: (The red herring.) We may indulge in some psychological speculation at this point and note the likelihood that personal considerations also played a part, though probably subconsciously. Though varying in degree from state to state, it was common that conservative pastors were shunted to less desirable churches whenever possible and seldom received the best jobs in the bureaucracy. Trustee positions were carefully controlled so that some conservatives were represented, but moderates held solid majorities. And those majorities were for the most part rubber stamps for administration proposals.

Conservatives knew major changes in all these aspects of denominational life were necessary. The fact that those changes would place them or men like them in responsible positions could not have made the effort unattractive. But too much should not be made of this consideration. The road was clearly long, the goal distant and perhaps unattainable. The fight would be hard, sustained, and costly. Casualties were bound to be severe in terms of careers damaged, opprobrium suffered, friendships severed, families strained, perhaps even health impaired. Surely the soldier who goes into battle with a distant victory parade tucked away in some recess of his mind is no less valiant for all that.

In summary, conservatives were repeatedly shocked by the unbiblical statements and stance of "moderates" within the convention, especially those with highly influential positions and responsibilities. Conservatives attempted for over twenty years to make their points and instruct the bureaucracy through ad hoc parliamentary actions such as resolutions and motions, only to be completely ignored. Finally they became convinced through sad experience that the only way to remedy these fatal flaws was to launch a concerted, sustained effort to rally the Bible-believing majority, elect a committed conservative president, and work through the constitutional appointive and electoral process to change the composition of trustee boards, and through the trustees change the policies and eventually by attrition the personnel of the Southern Baptist agencies.

It is important to keep in mind that conservatives have carefully followed provisions of the SBC constitution. Contrary to liberal outcry about being "disenfranchised," no one's right to vote has been removed. The qualifications for sending messengers from churches to the annual SBC June convention are the same now as they were before the first conservative president committed to change was elected in 1979. And to date only three denominational employees have been fired, three in twelve years! All the others who have left their posts have done so voluntarily, retiring or resigning, usually because they disagreed with policies being mandated by newly conservative boards of trustees.

What liberals really seem to be saying is that they are unhappy that they no longer set the agenda, no longer control the denomination. They seem to equate having a vote with winning a vote, whereas the two are quite different. Everyone may still vote under the same long-standing rules. But in a democratic system, the majority sets the policy.

Conservatives choose to return the Southern Baptist Convention to its historical belief in and devotion to the Bible as God's inerrant, infallible, all-sufficient, and eternally unchanging written Word. And we praise His name for working a modern-day miracle within our beloved Convention.