Doctrine and Evangelism

by John Avant                                                                                                       Vol. IV, No. 5, July 1991

In 1978 I made a long cross-country journey to attend a Southern Baptist university. I was filled with excitement and expectations as I thought about preparing for the ministry to which God had called me. I had only been a Christian for four years, but during that time my family and my church had taught me that the Bible was God's inerrant Word. They taught me to love it, to live it, and to share its message. I couldn't wait to spend four years of college learning more of its truths. It was quite a shock, then, to learn. from my professors that almost everything my church had taught me about the Bible was wrong! I was taught that the Bible had numerous errors, Adam and Eve were not real people, man evolved from lower species, there never was a world-wide flood, Moses didn't write the Pentateuch, miracles didn't happen as the Bible said they did, Satan was a myth, and Jesus' words were changed by the early church. I managed to keep my faith through all this, although one of my roommates completely rejected his.

Because of my experience in college, it has always amazed me to hear people claim that there was no shift toward liberalism in the Southern Baptist Convention before 1980. In my doctoral dissertation I set out to document this change. I also wanted to explore an even more important question: What effect, if any, did this change have on Southern Baptist evangelism and church growth? It is almost an impossible task to summarize a dissertation in this short space, but I will attempt to present an overview of my findings.

Because of the impossibility of studying every Baptist college, I examined only the six Southern Baptist seminaries. I made extensive use of sociologist Nancy Ammerman's research in her new book Baptist Battles. Though as a member of the Southern Baptist Alliance her perspective is much different from mine, she has a wonderful gift of objectivity. Ammerman says that three of the seminaries, Southern, Southeastern, and Midwestern, had reputations as "liberal." She says:

To see if those reputations had any substance, we compared their graduates. As expected, those who went to Southern, to Southeastern, or to Midwestern were nearly three times as likely to be moderate in theology as were the graduates of the other three schools. ... The reputation of these seminaries was obviously well earned. And their reputation helped to reinforce the reality. Said one faculty member, “As long as I can remember, this was the ‘liberal' seminary. It drew me to it, and it still draws students."

Men like Boyce, Broadus, and Manly, the founding fathers of Southern Seminary, insisted that the doctrine of inerrancy was indispensable in Baptist education. This changed, however, at Southern, Southeastern, and Midwestern after World War II. This change is easily demonstrated by the fact that it is difficult to find even one proponent of inerrancy at these schools before 1980! Morris Ashcraft, former professor at Midwestern and also former Faculty Dean at Southeastern said in 1987, "I have never studied under, nor served as a colleague with, a professor who identified himself or herself as an inerrantist with reference to the Scripture." Former Southeastern professor of missions Alan Neely says:

Most (Southern Baptist laymen) would have accepted uncritically some but not all the beliefs of classical fundamentalism – the infallibility of the Bible, virgin birth of Christ, substitutionary atonement, bodily resurrection of Christ, and the pre-millennial second coming. Until the 1980s, for example, I never knew a Southern Baptist seminary professor who affirmed all these doctrines. Often they would qualify the ones they did affirm.

One former professor at Southeastern told me that in the seventies there were few professors at Southeastern who would affirm the virgin birth of Christ. Wayne Ward said in 1986 that he "knew of no faculty member at Southern who was an inerrantist." Phillip Wise admits that almost all "university religion teachers and seminary professors hesitate at the door and refuse to enter the house of inerrancy."

Perhaps the most disturbing thing that I found in my study was that many professors have simply not wanted the average Southern Baptist to know what was being taught in the seminaries. Hinson speaks of a "tacit agreement not to share everything one knew or believed ... After Ralph Elliott was dismissed from Midwestern in the 60s, moderate C.R. Daley wrote:

Elliott is not a glaring example of heresy among a host of safely orthodox teachers in our seminaries. If he is a heretic, then he is one of many. ... Professors in all our seminaries know that Elliott is in the same stream of thinking as most of them, and is more in the center of the stream than some of them.

It is disappointing that many professors have been willing to let colleagues "take the heat" while silently sharing their beliefs. Joe Barnhart, a Southern graduate who now professes agnosticism, says:

The moderates are exceedingly reluctant to let the people in the pews see for themselves just how wide the gap is between the Sunday School and other materials published by the Convention and what the professors are teaching. ... The moderates seem to fear that if the church members do see how far the professors have advanced into biblical criticism of every type, they will rise up in revolt and demolish academic freedom at the seminaries.

I do not mean to infer in any way that all our seminaries or seminary professors are alike in their theological beliefs. I found that changes at Southwestern, New Orleans, and Golden Gate have been much less dramatic. This is reflected in the fact that the theological leanings of Southern Baptists differ from state to state. Ammerman found that Baptists living in Texas, Louisiana, and California, where Southwestern, New Orleans, and Golden Gate are located, are much more conservative than those living in Kentucky, North Carolina, or Missouri, the states where Southern, Southeastern, and Midwestern are located. Ammerman says that it was the seminaries which "were largely responsible for the changes in belief fundamentalists sought to oppose." The now infamous Hollyfield thesis at Southern Seminary in 1976 also provides strong evidence that students became more liberal in their beliefs the longer they studied at Southern. It appears that as students left their seminaries to lead churches, they brought their theology to those churches. Baptists in the states of the more conservative seminaries remained more conservative, while Baptists in the states of the more "liberal" seminaries became less conservative.

The second question I addressed in my dissertation was whether theological change concerning the nature of Scripture had affected Southern Baptist evangelism and church growth. Ammerman found that there were significant differences in belief and practice concerning evangelism between "fundamentalists" and moderates. She found that fundamentalists were much more likely to view conversion as essential, to practice personal evangelism, and to join churches which strongly emphasized soul-winning. Year after year virtually all SBC churches which baptize large numbers of people are led by inerrantists. Ammeramn says, however, that church size is a more important factor than theology in achieving a large number of baptisms. If this always holds true, then churches led by moderates should be leaders in evangelism, since Ammerman herself says that "pastors of very large churches (over 1000 resident members) leaned significantly to the left and were more likely to identify themselves as moderates." If theology is not an important factor in evangelism, it would appear that there would be at least a few, if not many churches pastored by moderates which would be among the annual leaders in baptisms. This, however, is not the case.

Regional differences in evangelism and church growth also provide strong evidence that a shift toward more liberal theology hurts evangelism. I examined the baptism and growth statistics of the states where our seminaries are located. I found that the more conservative states of Texas, Louisiana, and California have trended upward in baptisms from 1949-89 while the more moderate states of Kentucky, North Carolina, and Missouri have trended downward. Their growth statistics revealed incredible differences. The moderate states averaged 117% growth in membership and 45% growth in Sunday School enrollment over the entire period. The conservative states averaged 4009% membership growth and 595% Sunday School growth! Even if you factor out the tremendous growth in California as a pioneer state, the differences are still substantial. I also examined the statistics for many other states which Ammerman identified as moderate or conservative and I saw the same results without exception. The more conservative states grew faster and baptized more than the moderate states.

I do not want to infer that theological change is the only reason that churches don't evangelize effectively and grow numerically. Many very conservative churches are not growing. But my study convinced me that a shift away from our historic belief in the inerrancy of Scripture has been one important factor. I also do not intend for this article to be hurtful or divisive. I believe that the time has come for our controversy to end, and for all Southern Baptists who affirm the truth of Scripture to join hands to reach our world. However, we cannot afford to ignore the tragic decline of other denominations. John Wesley and all early Methodists were inerrantists. Today United Methodists debate the ordination of homosexuals. Let us uphold the perfect Word of God and guard the path of our future!

[John Avant pastors Northrich Baptist in Richardson, Texas, and received his doctorate at Southwestern in 1990, having completed a doctoral dissertation entitled "The Relationship of Changing Views of the Inspiration and Authority of Scripture to Evangelism and Church Growth: A Study of the United Methodist Church and the Southern Baptist Convention since World War Il." This article is a brief summation of his findings. Documentation of sources is available upon request.]

[Above reprinted from The Indiana Baptist, 4 June 1991, p. 9. Address: Indiana Baptist, 900 N. High School Road, Indianapolis, IN 46214]