Birthing of the Conservative Resurgence
by James C Hefley Vol. VIII, No. 8, September 1995
In 1979 SBC movers and shakers were living in their own sheltered world of "unity amidst diversity," unaware of widespread grass root fears that the denomination was caught up in a neo-orthodox drift toward the liberalism that had captured the schools and agencies of other mainline denominations.
How the SBC was turned around is now history. Looking back, conservatives see the change in direction and the election of new leadership as little short of miraculous. The taking of the 1979 convention in Houston was the first in an unbroken chain of conservative victories that would bring change-minded conservative trustee majorities into board rooms and new institutional executives into office who held to Biblical inerrancy as a guideline in employment of professional staff, teachers, and editors. If successful revolutions in other realms have anything to teach us, it is this: the next generation will forget those who led the way in putting the resurgence on track. Lest we forget, I will present in this short report key persons who played crucial roles in the birthing of the conservative movement at Houston.
The Strategists
Paul Pressler was a judge, Paige Patterson a graduate student in theology. They met in New Orleans, where Patterson was then studying for his Th.D. They talked about how to turn the denomination around. They concluded that the only way was to elect a string of change-minded convention presidents who would make appointments leading to the election of better trustees.
Change-minded was the key. Conservatives had been elected president before. All, including the venerable W.A. Criswell, had gone along with the system that virtually allowed agency heads to nominate their own choices for trustees.
To get out the vote, Patterson and Pressler launched an informational campaign in 15 states, speaking to conservative groups, mostly pastors' conferences.
They asked for volunteers to contact fellow conservatives, pastors and laity, and urge them to get voting credentials from their churches and come and vote for the right candidate in Houston.
The Publicist
For years most state Baptist paper editors had ignored conservative concerns and editorialized for the election of presidential candidates loyal to the system. Small, independent conservative papers were published irregularly and could not match the circulation of the state papers.
Conservative leaders met in Atlanta in 1973 and organized as the Baptist Faith and Message Fellowship. This was the name of the 1963 confessional statement which declared the Bible to be "truth, without any mixture of error for its matter." They started a paper called The Southern Baptist Journal and named William A. "Bill" Powell, a graduate of New Orleans Seminary and a veteran Home Mission Board church builder, as editor.
Powell came out swinging against SBC "liberals" who held that only the truth that is within Scripture is without error. Powell quoted from the writings of "liberal" professors and printed letters to specific teachers, asking them if they believed Adam and Eve, Cain and Abel, Noah and Jonah, and other Biblical characters were historical personages. He printed yeas, nays, and sarcastic answers, and he noted those who did not reply.
Powell said the SBC "has a cancer" among a "small handful [of teachers, writers, and leaders] who believe that the Bible contains serious errors. This cancer will destroy our great denomination," Powell predicted, unless "enough Baptists ... rise up and help remove these liberals from ... places of leadership."
Powell also publicized conservative meetings and printed sermons by conservative leaders. His paper was dubbed an amateurish, fundamentalist rag, in the offices of some professors and executives. His paper stock was of poor quality, the layout uneven, and his writing ragged. His way of answering critics was to publish their letters which tended to come off as elitist and mocking. He got the word across that a house cleaning was needed. The conservative Southern Baptist Advocate later supplanted Powell's Southern Baptist Journal. Powell retired from the scene with a dread illness. Both loved and despised, he was the primary publicist who helped launch the conservative resurgence.
The Author
Harold Lindsell, Editor Emeritus of Christianity Today, introduced his new book, The Bible in the Balance, in a press conference at the Houston convention. His longest chapter was about "the crisis" in the SBC.
In a biting but scholarly way, Lindsell named names and quoted excerpts from the writings of some SBC seminary professors to "prove" their denial of inerrancy and deviation from doctrines which he said ran "counter to traditional Baptist standards." Lindsell also included results of a thesis survey by a Southern Seminary student showing a decline in orthodoxy as students advanced in their studies there. Holding up the book before reporters to show the survey results, Lindsell declared, "if I were president of this seminary, I would demand an investigation by an impartial committee."
The seminary president, Duke McCall, came back with his own press conference. He said none of his faculty were liberal and suggested that Lindsell might be losing his intellectual powers. Lindsell then suggested to reporters that McCall was incompetent if he didn't know some of his professors were teaching liberalism and that he lacked moral standards if he did know and failed to have them fired.
On top of the acrimony between Lindsell and McCall, the Sunday School Board refused to sell Lindsell's new book. Lindsell gave a free copy to every reporter at the 1979 convention, and Bill Powell hawked copies on the sidewalk in front of the meeting hall. The author couldn't have asked for a better sales send-off. In a circus-like atmosphere, Lindsell and his book helped birth the conservative resurgence in Houston.
The Candidate
Adrian Rogers, pastor of Bellevue Baptist Church in Memphis, the second largest church in the SBC, was tagged as the most electable conservative candidate for president. Kentucky editor C.R. Daley later noted: "Some of us [editors] saw the rising star out of Memphis [as] the one who pose [d] the gravest threat to the Southern Baptist Convention." Daley admitted that he and other editors had used their editorial clout to "head off' Rogers' election to the SBC presidency.
For the burgeoning conservative movement, Rogers was a dream candidate, handsome, articulate, and a super-church pastor who believed changes were needed in denominational agencies. Rogers' popularity was demonstrated by being elected president of the pre-convention conservative dominated Pastors' Conference. "Every Baptist church with an excellent track record in baptisms," he told his fellow preachers, "is a conservative Bible-believing church with a pastor who "believes in the inerrant, infallible Word of God."
Conservatives had come to Houston with an eye on Rogers as their candidate. Yet Rogers told some conservatives early Monday evening that he had no clearance from God to give permission for nomination the next day. Late that night, Bertha Smith, a retired missionary whom Rogers greatly admired, told him God had impressed her that he should run. His wife, Joyce, felt the same way. Rogers took a near-midnight walk to consider the decision. Still uncertain, he participated in a two-thirty a.m. prayer meeting with his wife, Paige Patterson, and Jerry Vines. Rogers later told reporters, "God came down in tears of joy as I was praying..."
Rogers won handily on the first ballot against five opponents. Besides the election of Rogers, an influential statement on Biblical truth was adopted at Houston. Larry Lewis, pastor of the large Tower Grove Baptist Church in St. Louis, offered a resolution calling for "doctrinal integrity" in SBC agencies. The resolution was patterned after a measure passed in 1978 by the Missouri Baptist Convention calling for "doctrinal integrity" in Missouri Baptist schools and exhorting trustees to employ only teachers who believe "in the inerrancy of the original manuscripts, the existence of a personal devil and a literal Hell, the actual existence of a primeval couple named Adam and Eve, and the literal occurrence of the miracles as recorded in the Bible..."
A motion was made by Wayne Dehoney, a past SBC president, for the convention to simply reaffirm the Bible to be "truth, without any mixture of error..." This had been used as an escape for errantists before. President Rogers came to the podium and asked that Dehoney "be more specific in what he means by 'the Bible is truth, without any mixture of error,'... If [he] means the truth of the Bible is true, that's nonsensical. The truth of everything is true."
Dehoney and Rogers conferred, then returned. "My interpretation and Adrian's," said Dehoney, "is that in the original autographs God's revelation was perfect and without error - doctrinally, historically. scientifically, and philosophically.... I bring that and ask you to support it."
Larry Lewis withdrew his resolution. Venerable Herschel Hobbs, another past SBC president, said the committee that had framed the Baptist Faith and Message confession had understood the "whole Bible" to be without any mixture of error. The motion then passed. Inerrancy, as most conservatives believed it, was put on the convention record for the first time.
Now, after 16 years, virtually everyone agrees that our denomination, on the national level, is solidly under the direction of inerrantists.
We are moving into a new era of restructure with which some conservatives do not agree. Some fear that the present leadership -- particularly the Executive Committee -- is assuming too much power.
As a very small pebble in a very big pond, I'm keeping my eyes peeled. God forbid that after winning The Battle for the Bible we should divide over lesser concerns than divine truth. [Reprinted from the Indiana Baptist, 15 August 1995.]