Paul Pressler elected SBC first vice president

by   Norm Miller                                                                                                                                            Vol. XV, No. 6, Jun/Jul 2002

Former appellate court Judge Paul Pressler was elected by acclamation as the Southern Baptist Convention's first vice president June 11 in St. Louis. Pressler is a member of the First Baptist Church, Houston.

"It is my distinct honor and privilege to place into nomination for the office of first vice president of our beloved Southern Baptist Convention, Paul Pressler," Richard Land, president of the SBC's Ethics and Religious Liberties Commission, said in nominating Pressler for the office.

Land said the first thing he thinks of about Pressler is the story of what B. H. Carroll, just before his death, told Lee Scarborough, who was about to succeed Carroll as president of Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary in Fort Worth, Texas.

"'My boy, on this hill, orthodoxy -- the old truth -- is making one of its last stands,'" Land said. "'And I want to deliver to you a charge, and I do it in the blood of Jesus Christ. You will be elected president of this seminary. I want you, if there ever comes heresy on your faculty, to take it to your faculty. If they won't hear you, take it to the trustees. And if they won't hear you, take it to the common Baptists. They will hear you. I charge you in the name of Jesus Christ to keep [the seminary] lashed to the old gospel of Jesus Christ,'" Land said.

"That is exactly what Judge Pressler did," said Land, referring to Pressler's involvement in using the SBC's constitution as a tool to turn the convention from a slide toward liberalism back to a more conservative theology through the successive elections of theologically conservative presidents of the SBC.

"Devoted layman and jurist, he took it to the common Baptist people, who have been, are and always will be people of God's Holy Book," Land said.

"All of us who call ourselves Southern Baptists owe an incalculable debt to this great Christian, to this great Christian statesman."

With no other nominations, SBC Registration Secretary Lee Porter cast the convention's vote for Pressler.

Pressler, 72, has served as a trustee of the International Mission Board and, earlier, as a member of the SBC Executive Committee.

He was a justice on the Court of Appeals of Texas, Fourteenth District, from 1978-92; a member of the Texas State Legislature from 1957-59, elected while a law student at the University of Texas; a Navy veteran; and a graduate of Princeton University. [BP]